Well, I finally had time to swap some cards around. Found a few interesting things out.
Of the three CRT amplifier cards in my Ampro, 2 of them are Rev X1, and one of them is Rev B. Guess which was the ‘bad blue’? Yup, Rev B.
The new cards that Curt sent are both Rev X1 and seem to match my existing cards.
Along the way I manage to give myself a good zap when my finger slipped off the G2 control onto the pins on the back, effectively shorting the G2 control through my finger. Lesson learned.
I started by swapping the cards back, the Blue was again sort of funky. So I went ahead and tried the two new cards.
I didn’t check carefully before swapping things, but I believe my blue had settled down after the original swap I had done several weeks ago. However, now it seems to be unrelated to the CRT amplifier card(s) since I’ve tried three different ones now.
The ‘sparkly’ effect I had when adjusting the G2 control seems to have worked itself out. I have pretty stable G2 adjustment at this point — except for the blue.
Blue seems to never completely cut-off, it hits a point where it jumps up in brightness, and as you turn it down, it hits a low point where the tube is always sort of ‘floating’.
Running regular video material through it seems to give me a more stable ‘black’ — but with all three tubes cut -off, I still have an image that sort of ‘wavers’ on the blue. Almost like there is noise on the line.
I tried giving all the connections a good ‘jiggle’ to make sure they were solid and I wasn’t having issues with dirty contacts. Still no dice.
The random ‘blue’ lines are long gone now. This was the big problem as it was showing up in the projected image.
Of course my convergence is totally screwed (again). Oh yeah, and I posted an ECP vs. Ampro comparison photo in the gallery — check it out.