Intro
I’ve been on the lookout for an original colour vector monitor for years.
A chance conversation with resident Vaccer aeroflott revealed he was looking to sell one on. It was originally salvaged from the estate of the late Mark Shepherd (Automatic Services Limited) along with a load of other items. Tony Temple has done an excellent write up about Automatic Services and the items they discovered on his blog here and is definitely well worth the read.
Tony’s article mentioned that there were 3x WG6100’s found during the clear out of Mark’s old workshop. I was curious to know where these 3 monitors ended up. I was informed that one of them was sadly necked (the other parts were salvaged though) and the other two tubes were intact and restorable.
This is one of the intact monitors complete with the frame and the boards. It is however, basically a ‘barn find’ so it’s going to need some work to bring it up and get it working again.
First Impressions
From the photos supplied, the tube looked burn-free.
It’s not often you see a burn free vector tube. There’s usually a small burn hole in the middle and/or some sort of screen burn. This one looks rather nice. The only thing that slightly concerned me was if the electron guns on the tube were still good. If one or more were bad, then it’s going to be an expensive gamble.
Tony had already started the refurbishment of the monitor. As you can see from the following picture, the monitor has already suffered the wrath of the Temple hosepipe! At least it was clean though, however the side frames were badly rusted.
Tony had also given the purity shield a coat of rust converter. This is basically as far as Tony got with the restoration before I got hold of it.
Tony described the two side frames as “shot”, so he threw in a reproduction WG6100 frame as part of the deal. I believe the reproduction frame is made by Arcade Jason in the US.
Starting the restoration of the WG6100
Tony and I met in person. The monitor was already stripped down in pieces. The boards and metal panels were neatly wrapped up with bubble wrap in a box, screws, bolts and other parts were clearly labelled in bags. The tube was separate. On the journey home I had the monitor tube sat face down on the passenger seat of my car. The seat belt strapped around the edge of the metal band of the picture tube, making sure the top of the seat belt strap was nowhere near the neck. I can honestly say, I don’t think the tube moved a millimetre during the 100 mile journey back home.
Over the next few weeks I began work on restoring the 3 boards to the monitor; the deflection pcb, the HV cage and the neck board. The HV board had obvious issues, the HV adjustment pot had completely rusted away and a Zener diode was completely burnt up. Rather than just replace obvious visible faulty components, I gave all 3 boards a thorough service, replacing all the common parts that often fail.
Restoring the monitor frame
As previously mentioned, the side frames were in a bad way – so much so that Tony didn’t originally give me both frame halves as he thought they were beyond saving. I was originally only given the side that holds two of the frame bottle-cap transistors. I looked closely and though “yeah, I think I can save this”. I asked him if he still had the other half. I was in luck, it was still sitting in his garage and was due to be thrown away. He duly posted the other side frame down to me and this is what they both looked like.
Not pretty, but nothing a bit of TLC can’t fix.
I got to work with the sander. Removing all the loose bits of rust.
The surface rust will need to be treated and the extra rust holes in the bottom of the brackets will need to be filled. I fill the holes with some bodywork filler and apply a coat of Rustins Rust Converter to the frames.
The problem with Rustins is that it leaves a thick lumpy coating. It’s not going to look smooth with paint over the top. So I start again, rub the frames down to remove the Rustins and this time use Jenolite Rust Converter. This stuff is quite expensive at £20 a can but it sprays on and leaves a nice smooth coat.
I’ve been on the lookout for an original colour vector monitor for years.
A chance conversation with resident Vaccer aeroflott revealed he was looking to sell one on. It was originally salvaged from the estate of the late Mark Shepherd (Automatic Services Limited) along with a load of other items. Tony Temple has done an excellent write up about Automatic Services and the items they discovered on his blog here and is definitely well worth the read.
Tony’s article mentioned that there were 3x WG6100’s found during the clear out of Mark’s old workshop. I was curious to know where these 3 monitors ended up. I was informed that one of them was sadly necked (the other parts were salvaged though) and the other two tubes were intact and restorable.
This is one of the intact monitors complete with the frame and the boards. It is however, basically a ‘barn find’ so it’s going to need some work to bring it up and get it working again.
First Impressions
From the photos supplied, the tube looked burn-free.
It’s not often you see a burn free vector tube. There’s usually a small burn hole in the middle and/or some sort of screen burn. This one looks rather nice. The only thing that slightly concerned me was if the electron guns on the tube were still good. If one or more were bad, then it’s going to be an expensive gamble.
Tony had already started the refurbishment of the monitor. As you can see from the following picture, the monitor has already suffered the wrath of the Temple hosepipe! At least it was clean though, however the side frames were badly rusted.
Tony had also given the purity shield a coat of rust converter. This is basically as far as Tony got with the restoration before I got hold of it.
Tony described the two side frames as “shot”, so he threw in a reproduction WG6100 frame as part of the deal. I believe the reproduction frame is made by Arcade Jason in the US.
Starting the restoration of the WG6100
Tony and I met in person. The monitor was already stripped down in pieces. The boards and metal panels were neatly wrapped up with bubble wrap in a box, screws, bolts and other parts were clearly labelled in bags. The tube was separate. On the journey home I had the monitor tube sat face down on the passenger seat of my car. The seat belt strapped around the edge of the metal band of the picture tube, making sure the top of the seat belt strap was nowhere near the neck. I can honestly say, I don’t think the tube moved a millimetre during the 100 mile journey back home.
Over the next few weeks I began work on restoring the 3 boards to the monitor; the deflection pcb, the HV cage and the neck board. The HV board had obvious issues, the HV adjustment pot had completely rusted away and a Zener diode was completely burnt up. Rather than just replace obvious visible faulty components, I gave all 3 boards a thorough service, replacing all the common parts that often fail.
Restoring the monitor frame
As previously mentioned, the side frames were in a bad way – so much so that Tony didn’t originally give me both frame halves as he thought they were beyond saving. I was originally only given the side that holds two of the frame bottle-cap transistors. I looked closely and though “yeah, I think I can save this”. I asked him if he still had the other half. I was in luck, it was still sitting in his garage and was due to be thrown away. He duly posted the other side frame down to me and this is what they both looked like.
Not pretty, but nothing a bit of TLC can’t fix.
I got to work with the sander. Removing all the loose bits of rust.
The surface rust will need to be treated and the extra rust holes in the bottom of the brackets will need to be filled. I fill the holes with some bodywork filler and apply a coat of Rustins Rust Converter to the frames.
The problem with Rustins is that it leaves a thick lumpy coating. It’s not going to look smooth with paint over the top. So I start again, rub the frames down to remove the Rustins and this time use Jenolite Rust Converter. This stuff is quite expensive at £20 a can but it sprays on and leaves a nice smooth coat.
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