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Review by Kevin Steele, August, 2003
Reliability, Service, and Support
A scant two days after I originally posted this review, my D9200 monitor failed — instead of a bright, colorful display, I now had a barely-visible dim gray-green picture. (When reviewing a product, you always would like to be able to comment on the service and support for a product, but you don't often get the opportunity. This time, I got the chance!)
I called Wells-Gardner's toll-free number, and immediately (no ring!) got a live human receptionist. I was so startled I was almost speechless. After I composed myself she transferred me to tech support, and I spent a few minutes with an extremely helpful engineer who walked me through some tests to see where the problem was.
I was a bit nervous poking around the back of the monitor while it was turned on, but eventually he decided it was a board failure. Instead of having me ship back the entire monitor, they sent me a replacement board set that I could install myself (considering the shipping costs for the original monitor, this is a good idea!)
The replacement boards showed up in less than a week. Next, of course, came the adventure of replacing them. Working on a monitor is a tricky, dangerous business: there are parts of the monitor that can carry over 20,000 volts. It's not something to be done lightly. (The big red wire with the suction cup in the right-hand side of the picture below is the anode, which is what carries the high voltage.)
The Replacement Board Set for the D9200
Luckily, the D9200 does seem to have an auto-discharge feature that drains the dangerous voltage from the anode. (I say "seems to" because I wasn't taking any chances — I discharged the monitor anyway. See the Arcade Controls FAQ for details on arcade monitors and how to safely discharge one.)
After that, the rest of the board swap was anti-climatic. Just take good notes of where every cable goes, disconnect what you need to, and then plug everything back in. I only made one wrong cable connection, a small wire that controlled the degaussing circuit. Once again, a quick call to Wells-Gardner helped find the problem.
Once the board set was replaced, I was amazed at the difference — the picture was much sharper, and the colors seemed even more vibrant. I suppose that if the monitor had to fail, it was better to get it out of the way in the first two weeks.
In talking to other D9200 owners, I've found several that have had the same type of failure, all of them happening within the first few weeks of ownership. I don't know if this is a common problem or not, but all of them reported good results after a board swap.
Conclusions
The D9200 seems to have been designed from the start for the MAME cabinet builder. It seamlessly combines an arcade monitor and a PC monitor into a single unit, and eliminates many of the hassles of trying to adapt an arcade monitor for use with a PC.
As a PC monitor, it provides a good (albeit low-res) picture. At 640x480 the picture is every bit as good as a regular monitor. You don't get all of the resolutions you would get with a regular PC monitor, but then again you can't buy a 27" PC monitor (well, maybe you can, but we're most likely talking big, big bucks ;-)
As an arcade monitor, there are very few negatives I can say about the D9200. Images were sharp and bright, with rich, saturated colors. Arcade games look as close to "arcade perfect" as you can get short of buying the original game.
After the board failure I had on my unit and after talking to some other D9200 owners, I have some concerns about the reliability of the D9200. Luckily (or unluckily), all of the failures occurred within a few hours or days after receiving the monitor. If you don't have a failure within the first month, odds are you won't have a problem.
If you're building a MAME cabinet, the D9200 should be at the top of your list. While it's a bit expensive at $495 (actually the total is about $550 once you subtract an on-line 3% discount and tack on $65 in shipping charges), the D9200 is like a TV, PC monitor, and arcade monitor all rolled into one unit. It's worth the cash.
Pros
- PC and arcade displays in a single unit
- Simple “plug and play” connection via VGA cable
- Supports CGA, EGA, VGA (and unofficially, SVGA) PC resolutions
- Bright, vivid colors
- “Arcade-perfect” resolutions
- Prompt, helpful technical support
Cons
- Convergence problem that couldn't be corrected
- Limited screen adjustment options
- Color purity not uniform across the screen
- Early board failure in review unit
- Pricey
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