Added another tool for my hobby: CRT Rejuvenator !

[Blanbek]

YES i have a nice working spare A51-231X tube 

I had one that worked well too, before I stupidly broke it,
Baahh, now I used as weights when I have to flatten something 

[level42]

With a rounded tube face ?? 

Anyway, yesterday evening Robin came'along and indeed it turned out that the pictured connector was the right one for that tube.
So, the one without label is also an 813 but with the different "Hantarex" connector....good to know !

[level42]

Well well....yes I said goodbye to my trusty and like new BMR-80. No, it wasn't that I didn't like it, quite the opposite in fact, I think it was one of the better toys to have in this hobby !!! Many tubes tested and some brought back to life ! The thing is also built like a tank. The craftsmanship is really perfect. I haven't seen insides of other rejuvenators like the C&K's but I've read people having trouble with them sometimes. If there's one thing I don't want is to be a rejuvenator/tester to be unreliable.....

HOWEVER, I started to like it so much that I went looking for gold.....I mean, the top-of-the range, best rejuvenator ever built this side of the ocean: The BMR-2005

Yes the year says when it was probably released. Pretty incredible to realize they built it around that time or even somewhat later.....of course, with the fall of the CRT TV, the demand for this costly piece of equipment (I think they cost a couple of thousand originally) disappeared.

SO they are pretty cheap to get now. Found one on e-bay Germany and my good friend Andreas was so kind to receive it and bring it to Eurocade...

Here it is:



The biggest advantage of the 95 and the 2005 is that the rejuvenation process is done by a CPU so there is no room for making mistakes. With the BMR-80, the few rejuvenations that I have done went fine, but you have to watch for 3 possible things to happen with the meters when you should stop the process.
Again, the device is used mainly as a tester and only in a few instances to rejuvenate, but I thought it was worth it.

Can't wait to give it it's first test-drive...

The 2005 is on par with the Sencore CR7000 I believe. That one maybe nicer because of the LED bars instead of the meters, but I am not too sure about that, analogue meters do have their advantages in devices like this.

The 2005 can also do some extra things I haven't seen on any other rejuvenator, but I will have to toy around with that on a written-off (heavy burnt) CRT....

Anyway, if you have a tube you'd like to have tested and/or rejuvenated I can do it for a fair price, but I think shipping tubes is a costly and risky affair...

[Etienne MacGyver]

I have 2 MTC 900 Tubes that i would like to have tested.
One i am sure is good (it played again fine whole eurocade except for the whobbly image, but that is a chassis / fan problem)
the other i dont know, it came out of a zacc zaxxon but the guy mamed the cab, so i ended up with the leftovers 

I guess you only need the bare tube, no chassis right ?

Can drop it in the car and i pass the Arcade capital many times for work 

[level42]

No problem of course !

Yes bare tube but it may be safer for the neck to transport the entire monitor....

The Tube/monitor on your CK looks great but you really need to fix that ventilator make it all wobbly, IMHO it ruins the gameplay, you have to time jumps very exactly on Kong games and that is very hard with a wobbly screen like that.
Get a new fan from one of your customers server racks !

[Etienne MacGyver]

Yes i know, and maybe also a cap measurement / check while i am at it 

The reason i ask for the bare tube is that the other is now without the frame (tried to fit another monitor in it to mame the other cabinet)

So its bare now 
I can ofcourse install it in the frame again, the other project did not come through so the frame is empty.
Ill leave the chassis out then.

As for the fan........ 

[Luigi]

Etienne the fan-fan
Etienne the fan-boy


what do you like more?

[Etienne MacGyver]

Etienne the fan-boy 

[level42]

Figured I'd better make at least SOME use of the 3 17" B/W TVs that I incorrectly bought.... at least one went to CKONG.

One of the others went on to become my Guinea pig for my new 2005

I ran through all the steps in testing AND rejuvenating using the manual I found on Andreas' (thanks !) website www.andysarcade.de
I found this manual much easier to use than the one for the BMR-80. It is clearly written with less words while still being effective.
I went through the entire process much more quick because of this. Oh and the manual is in various languages, incl. Dutch.

All the first tests showed the tube was in nice shape. I also did a life expectancy test (over 2 years of TV use = 10 years home arcade use I'd say...). I also made a little spread-sheet with Numbers on my iPad and with just one click had it made a nice diagram for the condition of the gun. I'll extend this and publish it here so everyone can use it. Just have to enter some numbers and you get three nice graphs to compare

Of course, even though it didn't NEED any rejuvenating, I was still very curious because HERE is the difference between the non CPRU and CPRU Müters....and I needed to know if it worked at all of course...

I only had to select rejuvenate, select between soft and strong (first did soft of course) and then hit the start button. A red LED lit on the tester and the fireworks in the neck started... the scales were going up and down and finally came to a rest, his was looking good too

After a while (actually a lot longer than I have been rejuvenating with the BMR-80) the LED extinguished and the process was done. After letting it run in emission test for 10 minutes as suggested by the manual, the tube seemed to have suffered barely from the process. So I thought what the heck and do a Strong rejuvenation after that.
The only thing that improved was the curve, it got a bit flatter which is supposed to be better, but again, I would have NEVER rejuvenated this very tube normally.

I tested the CRT back in the TV and it looked great. (Snow only, there are no analogue TV transmitters anymore in The Netherlands

All in all, I am very happy I bought this one, it made an already great instrument close to perfect...

I have plans on doing a step by step video and maybe STILL write a new manual in English because I have a feeling it can be done even more efficiently....whatever you do with these devices FOLLOW EACH INSTRUCTION IN THE MANUAL step by step...that's the only way to get a test result you can trust.....