CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[uncletom]

I used to have my old MTC 9000 (revision "BZ") as favourite chassi for testing various games and certain older computers. The 9000 has always been absolutely wonderful, together with a good CRT the image in the 20-21 inchers is unbeatable, even considering japanese monitors at the time.

About the revisions BZ and MZ; the BZ has the tripple-pot as RGB input regulator at a corner. The MZ has a bit different layout, and instead of the tripple-pot it has a three position switch for low-medium-high RGB input level. This makes the "Contrast" a bit harder to tune, you need to use the Gain pots on the neckboard.

The bad thing about the MTC9000 was the flyback, now I'm not sure if it was only in some earlier batch or if it was true for all revisions of the MTC9000. But most of the dead-flyback MTC9000 chassis I've see has been the MZ. Personally I've never had any problems with my BZ, and I even got a 25kHz version of the MTC9000 (a rare "BQ" revision) that has worked well ever since I bought it. Like the 26" type MTC9110 it has a fan just above its flyback.

I've seen plenty of vertically mounted chassis on the inner cabinet wall. The heatsinks obviously fry the capacitors in no time at all. So regarding the placement of a chassi, and presuming that the caps are of fair quality from the factory, the monitor should not break. Also many cabinets have way too little air around the monitor, too small, or no vents also kills any monitor.

New flybacks were purchased from HR Diemen here in Europe. The 7025 and 7107 are two very good replacements. I once bought a chinese one but that didn't fit physically although it was supposed to be an official replacement. Where did you buy your replacement flybacks from? And what type was it?

Now, I've recently dug up a couple of old MTC900E chassis from an old carton, they are infact not real 900E if you look closely, more like some hybrid between the 900 and a 900E, it has 220 and 128 VAC inputs, and a slightly different "interface board". And, what's really good about these is the lack of any "Hantarex" proprietary ICs. Still they look very much like the "900/E U.S.A." found in the manual.

Since people generally don't bother much with monitors, mostly they just buy a new chassi from China when the old one quits, I'd like to hear what your experience with Hantarex is, out there in the world.

[uncletom]

Also I've always wondered about the design of Hantarex MTC900 and 9000. Is it really italian? Not Korean or other? Just that I've seen some really interesting looking chassis that were similar to the MTC9000 but somewhat more advanced. So I wonder if Hantarex simply didn't buy it all from Korea, and marketed it as their own. Like so many TV brands.

[barclay66]

Hi,

Many years ago I did arcade machine repairs for a while. It was then when I stumbled across one of these: http://andysarcade.de/data/picseries/vecmon_hantarex_mtrv/pic001.html

Extremely reliable and worked like a charm inside an Asteroids cabinet (vector B/W).

And yes, Hantarex seems to have its roots in Italy.

Regards,
barclay66

[uncletom]

Aha, yes. Hantarex's vector monitor. They used that in many various clones of Atari games at the time. I've never had the opportunity to look at one up close, I only briefly saw one at a friends shop, and that also was inside an Asteroids clone cabinet. I think there are more components in it than in the original Electrohome. Perhaps it is a better/improved design.