XG owners: please help compile a how-to guide! - Page 2  

Oh and Doug, totally unrelated question: I assume it's a good idea to use a UPS with the XG852 to avoid power dropouts & glitches, brownouts, etc. What size UPS would you recommend? The specs say it only draws 650W (though it also says 6.5A, which at 120V should be 780W?). Would an 800VA UPS be good enough, or should I use a 1000VA or 1250VA unit?
Edit: Oops, I guess the 1000VA APC units are only rated at 670 watts, so I guess that would be a minimum!

No, the tubes are actually in very good condition. That, and my budget, indicate no new tubes anytime soon. So I really don't want to blow anything up while I'm learning my way around the beastie.

OK. When last we left our hero, we had established that the shutdown with Fd error seemed to be caused by a bogus Svideo entry. This apparently took some signals into the danger zone and the HV protection circuitry tripped to avoid damage, producing the Fd error. By setting the AKB switch to the TEST position, I was able to power up the PJ and select another video input. Doug said I should go ahead and delete the bad Svideo entry, but that it was imperative that I get a VIDEO input for the calibration phase.

Brief pause while life interferes with HT setup, and I go get some RCA->BNC converters for my composite video cable. Meanwhile Doug pointed me to another thread that explains why it's a Bad Idea to reset your XG.

Days later, I finally have the necessary connections to feed composite video into the projector's VIDEO input. So it's time to delete that Svideo entry and see if I can get this thing calibrated right. I popped the Avia disk into the DVD player, hooked up the video-out to the PJ, and powered up the XG.

And it promptly shut down.

Oh nuts, I said. OK, I'll set the AKB switch to TEST again so I can select a good video input. So I did, and powered up the XG.

And it promptly shut down.

"Oh nuts" wasn't exactly the term I used this time.

At first I thought it was doing this with either a VIDEO or an RGBHV signal (and I was NOT happy), but then I realized I didn't have the laptop set to send video to the external VGA. Once I turned that on, the PJ powered up and locked onto it, and I went ahead and deleted the Svideo input. But it won't lock onto the composite signal on VIDEO, and it shuts down if I try to select either the NTSC3.58 or the NTSC4.43 inputs. Both of them appear to be identical, with 15.75 kHz / 59.95 Hz settings.

Doug, if I've got to use VIDEO to calibrate this beastie, how do I get it to accept the signal? And is it really supposed to shut down any time it doesn't see a video input? (I.e. it's required to have a DVD or something feeding a signal before you can even power it up??)

Gary

I'm not sure what you mean by "store a low contrast signal." Do you mean e.g. I'm displaying the laptop's RGBHV signal, and I set the contrast low and store that? If so, yes, I've done that. I haven't done it for VIDEO because I can't display it, and it has to be the active input to adjust its contrast, doesn't it? How can I lower VIDEO's contrast if I can't display it?

(When I tell it to store, what exactly does it store? E.g. if I go to PIC FUNC and change the BRIGHT and CONTRAST, then hit STORE, does it only store the one I'm currently displaying, or both of them, or...?)

How do I do the signal entry for video if I can't display it? There are two existing inputs for video, NTSC3.58 and NTSC4.43. Neither one works. (There's also PAL and SECAM, but I assume that's not an issue for me in the US.) What should I be doing to get a VIDEO signal that the projector can actually display?

The power-up default is set to LAST, so it should come up in the last active input. (But sometimes it will come up in PAL !??) I could set it to default to VIDEO, but if VIDEO causes it to shut down then I'd be in trouble, wouldn't I?

I'll try to avoid the shutdown case, but until I figure out how to display VIDEO I'm not sure how to avoid it. I shut it down way too many times when I was first trying to understand what was going on. I'll be more careful now.

Thanks!! -- Gary

Right, I understand that. But: 1) how can I store something in a VIDEO signal if I can't display the VIDEO signal? I can't edit the CONTRAST on a non-active signal, can I? and 2) what exactly gets stored when you hit STORE? **ONLY** the thing you're currently displaying? (e.g. if I hit PIC FUNC and adjust CONTRAST, then hit STORE, does it store the CONTRAST value but not the BRIGHT value?)

And even if the CONTRAST was too high on the VIDEO, wouldn't the AKB TEST mode defeat that?

Oh, LOVELY. :(

Are you saying what RGB setting it had when **my laptop** (NOT the computer in the XG) was fully booted up? Yes, the computer was booted up and displaying a desktop -- if I didn't have a signal from the laptop, then the XG shuts down. Yes, I can get the values when it fires up. What exactly do you want from the signal entry line? The frequencies for RGB are 15.74 kHz and 59.94 Hz, - & - sync. What else do you need?

??? You don't mean the signal input 1 2 and 3, do you? On mine, signal 01 is NTSC3.58, 02 is NTSC4.43, 03 is PAL, 04 is SECAM, 05 is VESA1024 (RGB), 05 is DVD (component), 06 is PC (RGB, the signal I created for my laptop), 51 is NTSC 51, 52 is NTSC 52, 53 is RGB 53.

Certainly possible, and in fact at least once I had it plugged into the VIDEO IN instead of VIDEO OUT on the combo DVD/VCR. (D'oh!! :)) Unfortunately I don't have a TV that accepts composite in!! But, hmmm. I DO have some VCRs that accept video in... :) So yes. Now I'm certain there's a good composite signal going into the VIDEO input.

Are you **SURE** I can't calibrate it using RGB? :( Especially given the comments on p. 10-24 saying "If the adjusting signal is different, " etc? But I suppose if things are as hosed as it appears they may be, then even if it was OK to calibrate on RGB, I've still got other problems.

Gary

Doug, I truly appreciate all the help you're giving me. I apologize that I'm not getting all you're giving.

Yes, the projector WILL power up on the laptop's RGB input, with the AKB switch set to NORMAL *or* TEST.

I'm going to have to read through your description and try to understand it. You say I need an RGB generator -- isn't that what my laptop/VGA/RGBHV is doing? But it's probably not 15.75 kHz though. I'll check. The composite signal from the DVD is 15.75 kHz, but I don't have a way to split that out to RGBHV. You're saying I need to feed a signal into RGBHV with the same frequency as composite video, right?

So you're saying I could feed a 15.75 kHz signal into the RGBHV inputs, then write down the values from that (which values?) and enter them into the 15-25 kHz block via ADJUST -> OPTION -> DEFAULT DATA? Or do I enter it into one of the input lines in the 50's?

See, now this is the kind of statement that leaves me a little confused. WHICH values? There must be at least 100 values squirrelled away in various menus. Are they ALL critical?

Finding a 15.75kHz RGB source might be tough. I don't know if any common PC resolutions produce that frequency, but I doubt it. Maybe 640x480 is close. How close does it have to be? Does it just have to fit into the 15-25 kHz band?

Doug (the ever-patient and amazingly-helpful) and I (the appallingly confused :)) have had a few exchanges. Through a fluke I got the VIDEO input working so I could do a "proper" calibration. I've gone through the manual's shortened white balance procedure (p. 10-28 in the service manual) and then went on to Guy's white-bal process. This has definitely improved things; for example, before I couldn't display an 80-100 IRE image without the projector shutting down, and now I can.

Some oddities: when I reduced the BRIGHT GAIN to try to get the dark edges to meet in the center (step 14E in Guy's process), the brightness level would decrease to a particular level. Reducing BRIGHT GAIN below that level wouldn't darken it any more, and in fact would sometimes brighten it a bit. Is this normal? I reduced BRIGHT GAIN until the brightness stopped changing, then went on to the next step.

I also couldn't get the black edges to actually MEET in the center. They just wouldn't go any further before they stopped, as described above. So I did the best I could, and exited the loop when the G2 was 2.5V. Does this indicate a problem?

I didn't get to the Drive Control settings in steps 19-22 of Guy's process. XG guys, any help on these points?

* I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to calibrate the grayscale in step 19. Can somebody explain this step in a bit more detail? Is this a matter of adjusting R and B so 100 looks white and 30 looks gray? So far I haven't hung the XG so I'm doing all of this looking at the tube faces {and I think I have sunburned eyeballs!! :)}. I assume if I'm supposed to do this kind of grayscale adjustment, I should hang the projector, and do a basic setup with alignment/convergence/etc before trying to set the grayscale on the screen?

* In step 20, are you supposed to ONLY adjust BLACK BIAS to get 2.5V, or are there any other interacting steps?

* I don't understand how I'm supposed to adjust Brightness / Contrast / Kelvin for each "memory slot" (step 22). Does this refer to each input line (e.g. 01 is NTSC3.58, 02 is NTSC4.43, and there are others for RGB, DVD, etc) ? How can I adjust these if I don't have a way to display them? (Haven't tried it yet, but I always got a shutdown before if I selected them.) Am I just supposed to set them to Brt = 60, Cont = 75, Kelvin = 6500 ?

Thanks!
Gary

Holy smokes. I just got off the phone with Doug. This thing definitely WAS NOT intended for Joe Public to set up. It's like you've heard a PC is a good tool for writing documents & such, so you buy a used one -- but then you discover in order to use the PC you have to understand and configure all the low-level Windows hardware drivers!!! And the previous owner has it totally misconfigured and you have to figure out how to get it to a working state. And if you do the wrong thing, you blow up your computer (projector).... eeeeek!!

At one point Doug said "I'm trying to scare the hell out of you" ... he succeeded!! It seems that a lot of my troubles were caused by one dumb error when I was first starting to play with the 852 and had no clue what I was doing. I had been feeding an RGB signal from a laptop, and had something that was better than what I started with. So I copied the RGB settings to an Svideo input, thinking that I had a decent start with the RGB settings, so I'd use those as a starting point for the new Svideo input. But because Svideo is basically the same as composite video once it gets inside the projector, that meant I OVERWROTE the fundamental default VIDEO-signal settings (on which everything else depends) with my fairly bogus RGB settings! And that not only hosed many of the global settings in the projector, it resulted in many many shutdowns of the projector (when the HV board tripped its protection circuits), and Doug says you can only do so many of those before the HV board blows up! *cringe*

So, with hopefully the proper amount of fear/caution instilled in me, I'm going to proceed a bit more carefully.........

Doug says it can take him THREE DAYS to fully tune up an XG. With all his experience and expensive test equipment, it's still a huge job. So you can imagine how likely I am to do it right myself. :rolleyes: But Doug says it sounds like I've got it to the point where I should be able to start aligning it &etc without burning anything out. So it may be a very long road to get a really good picture, and I'll probably never get what the thing is capable of, but hopefully it will be worth the journey!!

Gary

OK, after a brief interlude during which life once again interferes with HT.....

I ran a few more tests on the XG. Doug, as you suggested, I checked the Protect 1 & 2 on the HV PWB. Unfortunately something is still a bit off and the set is still prone to shutting down when it shouldn't. In this case it meant I couldn't get the brightness above about 85-90 on an IRE100 screen. The Protect1/2 test procedure says bright & contrast should be at MAX, but I couldn't. So I got as close as I could and checked that. With contrast at 100 and bright at 85, Protect 2 was 1.32V, Protect 1 was 1.45V. Not 1.50V like it should be, but.... hey wait a minute. I just realized I wrote down 1.32 and 1.45, but they're supposed to be 0.15, not 1.50. Ummm. Doug, is there any way those values could be 1.3-1.4V? (And if so, what do I do??) Or did I misread the DVM and slip a decimal place? Unfortunately after checking that, I buttoned it up and started preparing to hoist it, since the next steps require checking grayscale.

If you need me to double-check the prot1/2 voltages, I'll do that. If it's not necessary, I'd rather not open it up, warm it up, and run the tests again. At least not until I get it hung.

Then I set the AKB switch to TEST, set Bright=60 and Cont=100, centered the white balance (KELVIN W/B) and centered the Drive for R & B. Checked the G2's and they were 2.50 +/- .05V. Set AKB on, back out, store, back in, turn off AKB and set AKB switch to NORMAL.

Next step is starting the convergence/etc steps. But first I have to hang the projector, check the physical alignment (level & true to screen, etc), and that will take me a while.

Gary

I was using the video input, NTSC.

Setting the HV first -- you mean step 2 in the "Adjustments for HV PWB Replacement" on page 10-11? Unfortunately my DMM can't handle 32kV. I'll have to borrow one to do that. But since the VR is sealed in silicone, it shouldn't have been changed, right? Am I just double-checking to make sure something else didn't change it?

Sigh. Don't hang until I confirm protects? Which means I need a DMM that can measure 32kV? And I need to check the protect 1/2 properly, which requires 100 brightness, which shuts down the PJ !?? How can I test it if it shuts down the PJ??

Yeah, it seems like the readings are different if ANYTHING changes -- any of the picture settings, the test pattern you're displaying, the color of the carpet, the phase of the moon ....

I'm 6'4" and the ceiling is under 8'. The PJ will hang down another 15" or more -- I'll have to duck to avoid bonking my head. :) So I'm not worried about falling off a ladder.

I believe all the pots on the HV board are sealed. They're weird-lookin' beasties, black cylinders with white tabs sticking out all over. Apparently the white is the silicone they used to seal the pots. I'll take a picture of the HV board so you can see it, if that would be helpful.

An HV probe, eh? Guess I could even make my own if I wanted, see e.g. http://home.austin.rr.com/cthompson15/HVProbe.html. Just a voltage divider, nothing tough about that. That one is only a 10x multkplier, but it would be easy to change the resistor values to get 1000x. Or I could buy a used Fluke for maybe $20. Not sure what the input resistance of my DMM is -- probably 10Mohm, but... it's a cheapie and I probably just oughta spring for a better DMM anyway.

OK. I'll scare up an HV probe and check the HV, but I'll probably go ahead and get this beast on the ceiling while I do that.

None of the electronics shops in town have HV probes, believe it or not. I'll dig one up on fleabay or somewhere. But I'm assuming I only need it for a "just to make sure" check, since the pots are sealed. They should still be set right.

So while I've been looking for an HV probe, I've been busy. I wrestled the beast onto the ceiling the other day, so I can proceed with the setup process now. I'll go back and check the HV when I get an HV probe.

I'll be doing the physical setup on the box soon: getting the CRT level & square to screen, hanging the screen exactly where the PJ throws a picture with all menu settings normalized, etc.

QUESTION: does anybody have a good procedure to follow here? If not, I'll be trying to apply Tinman's PG setup guide to the XG.

QUESTION: the PG has magnets for centering, setting rotation, etc. (Astig too, but I don't want to mess with that yet.) I don't see anything about those in the XG manual. Is ALL that supposed to be done with the menus?

QUESTION: how do you adjust the grayscale? I'm not sure if this is done with the KELVIN W/B sliders (for each signal), or with the BRIGHT GAIN / BRIGHT BIAS / BLACK BIAS settings (one global setting), or what. I think I'm confusing white balance with grayscale settings? Guy Kuo's guide says you should use DRIVE CONTROL for 100 IRE and BRIGHT BIAS for 30 IRE. Help?? Some details would help here...


So I believe the things to do now are:

* Set the Drive level on R & B to midpoint. Set RGB Kelvin W/B to midpoint.

* Display 100 IRE window. Go back and re-check the Protect 1/2 voltages and make sure they were actually .13 and not 1.3, etc.

* Set AKB switch to TEST position, verify RGB G2's at 2.5V. Adjust with Black Bias if wrong.

* Do a rough check on grayscale, then verify G2's are still < 2.5V.

* AKB ON, store, AKB OFF.

* Set AKB switch to NORMAL position.

* I think this is the point where I should run through Guy Kuo's G2 settings. I've done this several times already, but it's an iterative process and I want to run through it after doing the above.


Now start to build a "perfect" VIDEO signal:

* Do physical setup. Level & square, focus & aim CRTs, etc. Any other steps I should be doing in the physical setup??

* Center rasters, center image in rasters. I believe this is done with the RASTER CENTERING item in the REF.ADJUST menu, then center the image with the POSITION menu.

Since I'm working with the VIDEO input at this point, and VIDEO signals are going to be 4:3, I'll be setting up a 4:3 image here. (Right?)

QUESTION: I intend to run a 1.85:1 raster, and any 4:3 signals will be in the middle of the 1.85:1 raster. Do I set the 1.85:1 raster size at this point with the VERTICAL BLANKING control, and set up the VIDEO signal with a small 4:3 image inside the 1.85:1 raster, or...???

* Center the test patterns in the raster with the CURSOR PHASE adjustment.

* Do electrical FOCUS for each gun.

* Erase all POINT settings. (How??)

* Do complete ALIGNMENT for Green gun.

* Do STATIC alignment of R & B to Green. R & B should already be aligned horizontally with the lens aiming, but fine-tune it and adjust vertical alignment.

* Do full CONVERGENCE of R & B to Green. Doug says I should NOT use the MCAT, but should do it "by hand." Grumble.

* Adjust PHASE. Not entirely sure what this is supposed to do.

* Adjust color temperature. (I won't be doing this since I don't have a colorimeter.)

* Adjust grayscale with KELVIN W/B settings, or at least that's what the service manual seems to indicate on p. 4.59. (??? I thought you were supposed to adjust grayscale with DRIVE CONTROL and BRIGHT BIAS??)


OK, that's our "perfect" video setting.

* STORE everything.

* Turn on AKB, store, turn off.

* Set this VIDEO signal to be the DEFAULT.


So now I have a wonderful setting for VIDEO. But I don't intend to watch much with the VIDEO input. What do I do to set up the RGB input for watching DVDs at 1.85:1 720p from my Momitsu DVD player?

Gary

Yes, I do have Avia. I'm just a little unclear on the process of creating the new signal.

Doug says building the perfect signal in NTSC VIDEO, and setting that as the default, configures everything and then all new signals somehow use that setup. So how do I create the new signal?

- Set up the Momitsu to output 720p. Doug recommends 72Hz.
- Feed the RGBHV from the Momo to the XG
- Somehow the XG locks onto this? (And hopefully doesn't shut itself down!) It uses the appropriate memories for that signal frequency, which I don't entirely understand (where are those memories stored?) but I know it does it.
- I save the settings to a new signal line?
- Then I do the focus (electrical only, I assume), astig, alignment, convergence, etc, saving as I go.
- Any other settings I should work through for the new signal? Not Guy Kuo's G2 procedure, since that adjusts global settings. But what else?
- Presumably the next time I fire up the XG with 720p from the DVD, it will automatically select the 720p input signal?

Does the rest of my procedure above look correct? I hope to start working through it tonight or tomorrow and I'd like to have some confidence I'm doing the right things...

Gary

Pete, thanks. I understand how to do the mechanics of creating the new signal. It's details and concepts that aren't explained in the manual -- like copy "except Hpos and Phase," NOT "All" -- that have me worried. Following mechanical steps in the manual, without understanding the ramifications of the process and how it interacts with a dozen other things, is exactly how I screwed up my XG in the first place. I copied an RGB signal into an Svideo signal, and suddenly the whole thing blew up. I've spent a month since then trying to learn how to un-do the damage I did, hopefully before I fry the HV board.

Centering: I put the lenses back on my projector before I hung it. Guess I shouldn't have put those on until I did a good raster-centering job. Ohwell, that's why I bought the extra-long Phillips screwdriver. :)

Doug, I really have read through the manual, honest I have. But it's like trying to read a technical manual written in German when you've only got "restaurant and hotel level" German abilities. It goes into gory detail on trivia like "if you push the up-arrow button it increases the value, if you push the down-arrow button it decreases the value" (duh, like I couldn't figure that out), but it almost never explains the important concepts like what the value IS, what it controls, why you would want to change it, what process you should use to set it properly, what other things it interacts with, etc etc etc.

The service manual makes perfect sense to you because you already understand this stuff. I don't, not yet anyway, and it DOESN'T make perfect sense to me. Telling me the manual will answer all my questions doesn't help me. The manual does NOT answer the questions, for me, which is why I keep asking for clarification here. Even when I read the manual, I'm never sure I'm understanding the process right. I'm making progress and understanding more all the time, but it's a slow and painful struggle.

Page references like 4-122 for Default data are helpful. That at least ensures I'm looking at the right thing for the concept you're discussing.

Gary