 Hey everybody and welcome back. Today I've got a brand new monitor series that I'm covering. This is one I've never really talked much about before and it is the N series of CRTs and that's the PVM. Specifically we're looking at a 14N6U but there are of course like N1Us and 5Us. So first off I want to show you a resource here. This is an actual brochure directly from Sony that was used for the sales and marketing team back in the day for these actual monitors and that's what the monitors look like they're built out. This would be the 20 inch up top and the 14 inch below. So let's just get into some of the actual specifics here on this monitor and you know it's a 20N6U and N5U. Those are the two series that are actually covered in this. First off if we look down here we notice it's got 500 TV lines of resolution and they have enhanced features. A couple of them have different features like it says the N6 can go into 16x9 mode which isn't a big deal but it does have a couple more features than the N5. Let's get down here and look a little bit more. It says it's a beam current feedback of color balance stability. A lot of the same terms you'll notice that come up in CRTs except NTSC, PAL, C-CAM, NTSC 4x4, 3 signals so it does have a lot of different signals it can take into this monitor. Now it does say loop through on composite and YC and what that means is you can run an out to another monitor on those two and the ones that do have RGB there's no out to that. There's just straight N for RGB. You can't run a series of monitors out of this. There's an on-screen menu built-in speaker. It says durable metal cabinetry but honestly this one's a lot of plastic and that's kind of what I'm going to talk about more in this video is the design problems with this monitor and it is mountable. Again the N6 is the one that includes an RGB input. You'll notice that right here RGB input the N5's generally don't unless you find something that's been converted from an N5 to an N6 pretty much and then it's got the switchable aspect ratio. So if we just look down here at specifications we're looking at the most important thing might be so if we just look right here it's hard to see but it does say the power requirements so we can go from AC 100 to 240 volts 50 to 60 hertz so this does work in different regions. You just need a region specific power cable to connect into the back of your monitor. This is what the back of the monitors look like again the N6 series so this is just a really cool brochure that Sony made and again just a little bit more on the specifics here. There's not really too much there is just a one single color palette on this monitor so it doesn't have like all the extra bells and whistles that the M and the L series would have had but today we're going to get in here and watch a video that I had shot about a specific mod that pretty much has to be done to all these N series that I've dealt with behind the scenes that could be through repair or refurbishment or a lot of the times I'll use the lower end ones like the N1 and even the N5s for parts because they have really good tubes in them that's still a pretty universal tube for Sony's it's just they're not they're not being you know the chassis don't generally have the full inputs and all the other features so here's a look at the exact problem. You can't really tell but the problem is these buttons you see the button layout for the 14 N6U it's the exact same as the 20 as all the other sides and the problem is when you push these buttons they stick they stick really bad like sometimes you'll push them two or three times and then all of a sudden you can't push them again you have to take the monitor apart free the button up and let's go ahead now I'll show you what the real issue is behind this but these buttons and what's causing the problems this one is slightly different it has a few less screws to disassemble so you get two on the outside metal part of the shell and then you've got four on the back of the shell they're all marked with little arrows but again only four screws you have to take out to get the shell off really easy to take apart but those buttons they just tend to stick and when I when I open this up I'm going to show you how to look at this and do this mod without even discharging okay you don't need to do this you don't need to discharge you don't even have to take the pvm fully apart for this the first thing you do want to do however is release the cable and the you know these little plastic connections attached to the frame as well as the cable so you can give your cable some stretch room because you do have to pull the chassis out a couple inches to give yourself some new to walk around in I'm going to show you again how to get this input board off there's these little tabs it says push down where you literally have to push on the bottom of the plastic of the chassis to unlock that from its holding place and you just pretty much move it out of the way you don't actually have to disconnect it or any cables just move it out of the way a little bit see it's attached right there at the connection point on the chassis and then you just slide the chassis out a little bit you know I actually did unplug the degaussing coil and there are some more cables that have these little you know space connectors to keep the cables together just loosen those up so you can pull it out and just give yourself a few inches to work in behind these buttons and I'll show you what the issue is so this is a close look at these three input buttons all the buttons are the same layout I'm going to put some tweezers in here and try to show you the issue so the issue is these buttons don't lay flush all the way they have you know I don't know how far it is but it's a pretty good amount of clearance under the button where something could get stuck and I'll show you what's getting stuck here this button is supposed to be just a push tactile style button that the front buttons of the shell should be pushing into but if we actually look at the back of the shell the the problem here is the combination of that button design where it's got that spacer right there between the board and the button and then back at the back of the monitor or the the actual shell you see the button design from the inside they're all one piece and it's cut out where it's using as little plastic as possible so you really only have this tiny little lip with even the tiniest little indentation or you know plastic right there that's that's supposed to be pushing that button but what happens is and I'm not sure if this is something that happens just over time these buttons will actually swing over the that gap there what happens is is that button that little piece of that button right there that's supposed to be hitting the actual circle of the button well it'll get jammed under here and then it's just pushing against the bottom of this button and it's not actually hitting the button so then you're like pushing the button nothing's happening and it's not really like a huge problem you know as far as like technically but it is it does cause a lot of issues because you can't use the buttons so but it's just a small mechanical problem and a little bit of a design feature problem so we're going to try to go in here and fix that with the easiest mod possible and that's just going to require a little bit of good old fashioned electrical electricians tape electrical tape I like to cut the tape down and then you want to cut this into you know maybe four or five slivers they got to be thin enough to fit between that circuit board edge and the bottom of those buttons I'll show you where we're going to put this in a second but this is what we're going to use to kind of take care of this is just four or five strips of this tape I'll show you what I do with this to see I just stack it up the important thing again is that you cut that tape to where it's just wide enough that it pretty much doesn't go over the edge here you want it to just sit under that button between the edge of the circuit board and the button so you put layers of tape that way you build up a nice base under that that the buttons it forces those plastic buttons to not slide under there it doesn't give them any room to so it actually keeps them pushed against the tactile buttons on the circuit board so again just layer that tape up make sure you got a good like it's a four or five pieces should be enough and again that doesn't cost anything to just use some of this tape I did try I just wouldn't recommend other types of tape really just because it's going to be more difficult to have it actually work and you know you don't want to make anything conductive this is a rough showing of a different monitor this is a N5 okay so it doesn't have a tube in it it's just the chassis right here and the frame and I wanted to get you a good shot so I could show you how I designed this from using this old frame just to try to figure out how to just fix this as easy as possible now this is really rough this tape it's just kind of stacked up in there kind of like a rough cut or testing but it sits under there and again it prevents those buttons from sliding under that button on the main frame so I'll show you I'll push it in here and it still fits in there nicely like that okay but again it's going to keep those buttons pushed up to where they're always engaging that tactile switch whenever you're pressing it it's not going to be able to then slip in between the button and the base of the circuit board pretty easy stuff see just right in there and it's not again too tight where it's pushing and the buttons won't actually engage and it's not affecting the chassis or anything else in any other way it's just could have created a good wedge against there to prevent it so there again this is our main chassis that we are working on and just to get it back together you just push it all in there make sure it lines up nicely and it's really good idea after that to test the buttons and make sure that they are you know very responsive and this is just huge difference I mean they're they feel brand new now you just hit them and they're going every time so I'm I'm really excited to see how it works but we reassemble the monitor really quickly for testing and I went ahead and just put everything back I'm not a big deal again I didn't take this monitor all the way to part to do this mod but let's go ahead now fire it up and then you know try to see how the buttons work I mean they seem to work fine as is but whenever the last thing to do is put the shell on and see how it works after that today I will have RGB hooked up and we'll switch between the inputs we'll also pull up the menu and make sure all that stuff work is working well but again this is the Achilles heel on this monitor for the most part it's still a great monitor but these buttons are just a terrible pain so if you see one of them that you come across and they say is you know button problems or I'm having problems with the buttons I just got this great monitor I can't get the buttons to work because you need those buttons to use to get into the service menu for the most part too because this one does although it only has seven buttons on the front it has a full service menu that you can run calibrations through and you need it you need the buttons to be very responsive to be able to do that properly so again if you run into this button issue just put some tape on there and put it back together and you'll be ready to go because that's again the easiest mod that you'll probably ever come across with a CRT or you know anything like that so sometimes just gotta think outside the box but this one I really do like this monitor because it's very simple to use you can use it as like a display for something and there's not a lot of buttons on here for people to press and mess with if you know if they got in here and let's say you had one set up to show or like at a video game conference or something or convention this is a perfect one because again it's just got the minimal buttons and it's really you have to know what you're doing to be able to get in that service menu and adjust anything important on the screen but still has a lot of good picture quality on here the 500 lines are nice and it does make nice scan lines RGB monitors so just keep an eye out one last thing I will say about that N series is it is really a great monitor for parts too if you need a new tube for say an M series or an L series or like a 1354 Q a lot of those you could still use the same tube that's in this monitor and switch that over to those if you have a bad tube and your higher end monitor and you just need a new tube then you can take the tube from the N and the L series that are like even just the S video monitors you can use those tubes in the higher end monitors it's just a great they usually have not got a lot of hours on them because a lot of people didn't use those unless they use them for security and then you can tell they'll have some kind of screen burn right in there where it's like crossed hatch pattern or something on there so that's it for today's video thanks again for watching please let me know if you have any questions about this mod I will be doing a full tear down and restoration of this N series coming up soon so look for that I thank you guys for watching I'll see you next time with some more retro content