Bally Alpha M9000 monitor woes and questions

[techtoons]

Hi have an Bally American Original Alpha M9000 system. It's had some issue, the latest is a bad monitor. It's a 19" Tatung L19LA25M21LC03 with AC power, VGA video, and Serial port touch interface. We had the game working fine, then one day just came up dead.

I haven't opened it up to see if there's anything visual, but is there something common that goes with these? I had a Visio TV that just died, and the common fix was to swap out the electrolitic caps. Anything like that on this monitor?

If not, I am seeing a lot of 19" replacement touch screens with USB touch interfaces, not so many with serial ports. I just replaced the MPU and it's got a couple of USB ports. Would a USB touch screen work? I hate to spend the $$ on one to find out not.

I was thinking a serial to USB adapter, but the ones I've uses take USB  off the CPU and convert it to a serial connector (works great with an SPC 2.5 board). I've never tried to use one in reverse.

Doable?

[rickhunter]

With gaming devices you cannot just use off the shelf parts like a PC.  The OS will only have drivers for devices used by Bally.  If you plug a laptop to the monitor do you get an image? If you do, then you either have an issue with the mpu or video cable from the mpu.  If you don't, then it is either the monitor's power source (you say it has AC power, but I've never seen an M9000 with a monitor that uses AC power, always dc power from backplane), the inverter, or the ccfl lamps.

[techtoons]

Hi Rick,

Never say never This one has an AC connection. It's got its own 5v/12v power supply on the back. I actually grafted an old computer power supply (adapted the floppy disk power plug) to get it going again. Seems to be working fine. In the picture I put up, the plug to the far left on the back is the AC power.

Thanks for the insight on the drivers, I kind of figured something like that.

-J