The Vectrex is a rare beast in the world of retro video games. Introduced in 1982, this was the only video game system to put a monitor right in the console, and it did so for good reason. This was a games system with vector graphics and rotating 3D objects, something that just couldn’t happen on the TV in the family room. A while ago, [John] dug his old Vectrex out of his basement and replaced a faulty logic board. The CRT was still broken, but with a little bit of research and a not-so-ugly kludge, he managed to replace the CRT in a Vectrex.
[John] found someone willing to part with an old CRT online, and after whipping out his credit card, the tube was on his way to his front door. This new tube wasn’t a direct drop in; The original Vectrex had small ears around the edges of the screen that served as mounting points. The new tube had no such ears. Now, a bit of plastic strapping holds the CRT in the chassis. It’s a bit of a kludge, but at least now [John] has a source of Vectrex CRTs.
While the rest of [John]’s repair work didn’t go as well – the Vectrex in question still has all the logic board problems it had when it was taken out of storage. This Vectrex does have a new CRT, and with a bit more work on rehabbing this old machine, it should keep on working for another thirty years.
Whenever you come cross an interesting CRT, make sure you snatch it up. Here’s another offering that uses a tiny screen for some classic MAME action.
It would be interesting to see a CRT swap for a longer persistence phosphor. Vectrex has a pretty slow slew rate – I think because they used cheaper drive circuitry for standard TV deflection coils.
My favorite CRT display: a ‘widescreen’ model used in Brother word processors: http://starringthecomputer.com/snapshots/iron_thunder_brother_wp510_2.jpg
I have one of these. I think it’s just TTL ‘Hercules’-style video.
From that kind of era there was the display used by the ICL/Three Rivers PERQ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ#/media/File%3APerq_screen.jpg
Wide screen for a word processor, not that good an idea.
I have a videowriter, same setup. Amber half-height crt, z80 cpu, printer on top. Someday I’m going to attempt rewriting the ROM to make it a real computer – cp/m maybe?
Has anyone done a conversion of say an old CRT scope to incorporate an LCD display once the CRT has died? Thereby extending the usable life of scopes for which some spares are impossible to find…
That would only work for early digital scopes as the analog ones relies on being able to control the beam accurately and very quickly i.e. very linear and high bandwidth.
And only the ones that were fully digital at that. Some DSOs were CROs with sampling tacked on and relied on being able to drive the CRT in vector mode.
When you tire of the few Vectrex games, you can convert it to an XY monitor and play all of the Atari vector games via MAME.
As someone that have fixade a friends broken Vectrex: The service manual schematics thats available isnt correct with what you find on the board, and if it says +9V it might as well be +13V, and there will be components missing or replaced with other values or models.