Smashed Zenith amber CRT monitor restored 

Hi VWestlife, What a strange coincidence that this was the monitor I shipped to you! One of my other eBay customers told me about this video. Anyways, I apologize for the insufficient packaging, there was no excuse for the amount of damage caused to this poor monitor, and I'll definitely follow your advice given for future shipments. This was the first time I've shipped a CRT monitor, and I'll be sure to take further precautions when doing so again. Speaking of CRT monitors, I have a Zenith Data Systems Green Phosphor CRT that currently doesn't work and has been sitting around for some time now. I could send it to you (of course with better packaging) free of charge if you'd like. Please let me know. Thank you! Ryan from Covert Computers

As a kid I worked at an electronic surplus store - some time around 2000, we were told to get rid of the old 14" and 15" monitors because they weren't selling anymore. We would take them to the back loading dock and throw them to the pavement until the tubes popped - they're surprisingly tough to smash. Now I think of all the vintage gear that people would cherish... All just trashed.

It's not about cushioning stress but about canceling point area stress: styrofoam brackets of the factory packing do just that - spread point stress to large area partially giving at the hit point. My admiration for the repair job.

I once dropped a large, very heavy, DEC monitor down a flight of stairs. Lost my footing while carrying it down, and opted to save myself in preference to the monitor. It survived, and worked perfectly afterwards.

It is amazing how some crt monitors can handle some abuse. I remember at my old school, a old 80's IBM monitor fell from a desk onto the floor ( someone's foot got stuck behind the power cable ). The case was fully cracked. We put it back on the desk, turned it on, still worked like a charm. Glad that this zenith monitor survived the trip, a nice ( and interesting ) addition to your collection .

Pool noodles that you can get at the dollar store provide excellent protection when shipping delicate electronics. You secure smaller pieces of the noodles at the corners (vulnerable areas) of the electronics to protect from impact damage. Then I use bubble wrap to fill voids in the shipping box. If you just use bubble wrap by itself all the corners of the electronics will pop the bubbles and leave it whatever you are shipping vulnerable to damage.

I stopped buying monitors on eBay after the second one I bought arrived smashed. People are just too cheap and lazy to pack them properly.

For a free monitor that was that badly damaged, that repair was the best possible outcome for it, even if it isn’t the prettiest. I’d be tempted to follow up with some Bondo to fill in the blanks, but it looks like your off-label use of plastic wood worked just fine!

The jingle at the end was the icing on the cake! Now I want to find an monochrome green monitor.

You can use baking soda and CA glue to fill in the missing gaps. It forms a surprisingly strong solid

Great work on the restoration. It's a such a shame when this happens. As a collector of vintage boomboxes and having had them shipped from all over the planet I'm very aware of the sickening sound of broken plastic in a poorly packed box. One thing I ususally tell inexperienced sellers of vintage plastics is to wrap the item in an old blanket. This is something most people have and provides excellent protection. But you're in the hands of the universe every time you get old plastics shipped anywhere. Hope you can enjoy this monitor for many years to come!

Impressive that something so heavy and relatively fragile made it there without being completely smashed with minimal packing. I'm pretty sure the short trip saved it from a worse fate.

Neat video - I think I learned more about plastic adhesives than I could have imagined. So thanks for that. Bubble wrap works well - it is designed to disperse blunt impact in numerous directions (on X, Y, and Z axes, not just in a linear fashion - think of a pogo stick). At any rate, glad you were successful in bringing the monitor back to a useable state.

I do ebay as a small business. One thing I learned is DO NOT put fragile labels on boxes. UPS is rougher than USPS, and even something double boxed can get damaged. I only had one item get serious damaged. It was a 50lb stereo receiver. Double boxed with fragile stickers. The buyer sent a picture. It looked like someone drove a forklift into it. Anyways, I haven't had any issues for a while now. Except people are are always messaging me asking if "the shipping quote is real"? First I don't know where you live. Secondly, I don't know what ebay is quoting you. It's different for everyone who clicks on the listing. Then they complain and say they know the shipping industry and it should be much cheaper.

You did great, Sir! Also: There is something special to amber CRTs. I have only one myself for use with my C64/C128, but most of the time I tend to use my green phosphor ones to spare the amber tube from too much usage. Anyways, great video, thanks for sharing!

Sad to see the case broken :( - Poor monitor.

"I thought I heard some plastic cracking... hopefully that is not the *CASE* " Foreshadowing....

Good job on getting this monitor back together again, what a lovely picture on it. I had the same kind of thing happen to an Atari 400 I bought on eBay a few years ago. Even though it appeared to be well packaged, the case arrived cracked and broken into multiple pieces. The seller gave me a partial refund, as I said that I thought I could repair it. I carefully glued all the pieces back together and resprayed it, and now you'd be hard pressed to see that it was even broken in the first place.

Hey Kevin, same thing happened to me 13 years ago. With exactly the same monitor and the same machine (Z148). I bought the set (PC and monitor) on eBay, the seller just stacked them on top of each other in a box and threw some balls of crumpled newspaper in. The computer suffered quite some damage, the metal plate the drives are mounted on broke loose and flew through the case, the small divider between the drive bays broke off (I've noticed your machine is missing it as well), and the monitor... well... it was touching one of the walls of the shipping box, and needless to say, got smashed to pieces. It still worked, as did yours, and I glued the cases back together. It actually turned out pretty darn good! Thankfully it didn't shatter, so it was just relatively large pieces. I have an ancient potato-vision video of it on my channel. And over the years I got a second machine and another amber as well as a green monitor. They're fun little machines, I love the fact it has an integrated machine monitor. Unfortunately the key combination to jump into the monitor interferes with the international keyboard driver of newer DOS versions, so I can only use it up to MS-DOS 3.2 or live with US keyboard layout.

Good points on the packing material but I definitely would have opened it up to see if the neckboard had come off, dag wire came loose (which it did), yoke fell off, cracked area by the flyback, etc before just blindly powering it on. more damage could have been done with it otherwise being ok if the neckboard just needed to be reattached, for example. But that's me. Amazing that it works. You got lucky. It actually looks great! And great job on the repair!

Dow, Borg Warner, etc., is referring to who made the raw plastic pellets melted down to make the case.

One trick I've seen used before (though never myself tried) is to "melt" wire mesh/wire strands into the plastic to give it extra strength, similar to steel-reinforced concrete. Mesh for the larger pieces, wire for smaller ones. But great job anyway!

Excellent job on the repair. I'm sure there are further masking agents that could be used to make it almost inconspicuous, though I'm not an expert on that, and it probably wouldn't be worth the time unless you actually wanted to use the thing. I gotta tell you though, I do not miss monochrome displays at all. I'm glad I only caught the tail end of them in the 80s.

This was my childhood computer. It was a great system. And I LOVED how when playing Sierra games like Gold Rush or Leisure Suit Larry, the power LED would blink when audio tones played through the internal PC speaker.

The best way to fix broken plastic with many pieces is to glue them back together and then use bondo to eliminate the broken lines. Then take a silicone mold of the repaired piece and then pour a replacement piece in the silicone mold. Unfortunately, if the piece is textured, there is no way to hid the broken lines entirely because the texture will be broken. But if it is smooth, no problem. Another solution is to get a small piece of steel or aluminum, but preferably steel for ease of cold-working. Then bang out a patch panel and glue it to the inside of the repaired piece(sistering so the outside is the plastic and the inside part you cannot see is the metal). I have repaired a lot of broken plastic with this method. Even a pretty thin steel patch panel is many times stronger than the original plastic. Plus, the glued plastic retains the original look.

Great result, Kevin! A man after my own heart...Plastic bond+JB Weld = belt+suspenders!

For structural repairs i like PC7 epoxy. It has been around for many years and the stuff grabbs great and is hard as flint. You can machine it. It is not great for high temperature work but for everything else it works very well. Available in grey and white.

It's always fun to watch your videos and also fun that you say or show, thanks for watching, but i wanted to thank you for making these fun and amazing videos!

Nice repair! I’ve also had good luck repairing broken screw holes with JBWeld SteelStik and then drilling out a channel.

Such a lovely video! I did a similar repair with a smashed corner of a vintage Mac case. The plastic filler was white, so it was fun mixing the perfect beige using acrylic paint. Came out pretty well in the end

Wow so beautiful what great memorise I have from being a UPS Driver in the mid 80's and seeing all these names just breaking through in the early computing years. Thanks so Much i really appreciated this I have seen that exact PC and Monitor together many times Gret memories.

When you mentioned the color dots on the monochrome monitor, it reminded me of having B&W tv's in the 1950's and 1960's, and it seemed that the picture quality improved on these sets when color tv broadcasts started then, even though we had on B&W sets. 😊

What an opportune video. I just smashed the back of my amber crt monitor trying to adjust it because the vent turned to powder with age.

Very entertaining. Your style and timing get do it for me.

MINE ARRIVED EXACTLY THE SAME! Same monitor but mine was smashed at the top, I have respelled it in a Taxan Kuga case but I still have the Zenith shell as I was going to try and repair it.

Very nice repair. I’m glad that you were able to save it.

Years ago i picked up a monitor and my fingers smashed right through the air vents on the bottom of the case, the plastic was so brittle. It was going in a disposal pile so i gave it a slight "toss" and the case just came apart like a potato chip.

Excellent repair work! Plastic can be difficult to work with

The setup at the end looks great, good work

I have repaired plastics like this with a soldering iron. With the two sides touching, I melt down the middle of the crack, then fold it over onto itself from both sides. It makes for about as strong a hold as you can get for old brittle plastics. You can take some of the smaller broken pieces and melt them into area where you want extra support, I save a few pieces, just for plastic welding purposes. BTW, a great idea to fill areas with JB Weld. Great videos as always.

Good job salvaging that monitor Kevin! I had a similar experience with a typewriter some years ago, and am very hesitant about buying anything vintage that's made of plastic and having it shipped, unless I contact the seller first and have made it clear that I expect it comprehensively packaged...

It's a beautiful CRT! So glad you were able to save it, great job!

Excellent repair job ❤ you saved it really.

Well done! What a great video. Really enjoyed it.

A labour of love, indeed. Nice job! I like matching up monitors and PC's of the same brand also. Just the other day I found an Acer monitor (on sale for $3.50 at a thrift store) to go along with my Acer Veriton N282G running Windows 7. Works like a charm.

That is an impressive and satisfying mend. Salutations Sir.

Great job. The JB weld is a good idea. I would recommend the superglue and baking powder method instead of the plastic wood.

I’ve purchased 2 Technics 1200 turntables on eBay over the past few years, and both showed up with broken tone arms. The second one was just sitting in a box with no protection at all.

Excellent repair Kevin! And the price was right, too!!

Great imitation "Danni Elfmun" music from, I presume, the RU-vid music library to underscore the re-assembly-gluing segment. It set the mood! It did its job!

I appreciate that you didn't just toss it. Great job.

Great job! Thanks for the video.

Since I saw your video when you put back together your zenith easy pc I’ve sworn by m.e.k ever since :)

deflection Yokes and other Zenith CRT parts were manufactured by "Partes De Televisión de Reynosa SA de CV", a Zenith-owned factory located in Reynosa Tamaulipas, Mexico (Near McAllen TX on the border with Mexico) That's why many parts of that Monitor say "Mexico" despite being manufactured in Taiwan Currently that factory is owned by LG and they manufacture LED televisions for the US market.

what a fun video, great video to watch on my birthday

I've become a real fan of CA-glue + baking soda for reinforcing broken plastic. It's pretty amazing.

A lot of good CRTs can be instantly destroyed due to poor packaging. At least the glass didn’t break on yours, the plastic cracking is unfortunate but at least it works! Nice repair, considering the damage the end result turned out great! Makes me glad I have a selection of tubes that are in good shape.

8:17 - NOOO! 😢 17:50 - What, no fireworks?! Nice job with your repairs! As others have suggested, super glue and baking soda is supposed to make an incredible bond, although I've never tried it and can't vouch for that. There's a certain allure to amber monochrome monitors. I have a Magnavox Model 80 that I simply refuse to part with, even though it's currently collecting dust, because it's a really crisp display AND has a very quiet CRT whine compared to others.

Another fun fix. You can achieve, if using ca glue, a super strong bond when mixed with baby powder sprinkled onto it as a catalyst. It will quickly fill the gaps more solid than the wood putty that you used.

Same here in Germany. I shipped a 3 Head Tapedeck these Days, i packed it unbelievable fat and fluffy.. and DHL get it managed to Break the Front of the Tapedeck and also smash it so hard even the Metal Lid was bent. These shippers must throw them out of the Second floor of a House. I've done the same as your seller. I refunded it for good.

The only CRT I would consider would be an amber CRT. I just love the way that looks. Don't think there are too many of these available here in Norway, though...

This is why I don’t buy CRTs nor heavy vintage computers online, because they can end up getting damaged. I would only go on Craigslist or from a flea market for these vintage computers, since I get to see in person the condition of the CRT. The sellers don’t usually take good care of those machines, too much of a risk!

Great job. I collect vintage electronics, and offer to pay the seller extra for added packaging. Also. Borg Warner made hvac and York air conditioners, and furnaces. There was also borg warner racing. Dow is a chemical company as well. At least you got it for free. Great job.

Nice repair, I'll have to remember the JB weld. I was kind of expecting you'd use superglue+baking soda. I've had good luck with that. I had a similar repair to the corner of an Amiga 500, put some masking tape over the outside and used superglue+baking soda on the inside. The tape held the shape and kept the stuff from coming out until it was cured. Of course it's a little salty but it's strong.

I've given up on buying monitors that need to be shipped. Last one was an IBM 14" monitor for my PS/2s. I won the auction for $1 Aussie dollary doo, but they charged $70 for shipping from interstate. It would've been fine since they packed it with the tube facing down in packing peanuts, but they didn't use enough to fully fill the box, and IBM monitors have a support at the back of the tube, so I think it's actually better to ship them in the normal orientation. I could hear the broken glass as soon as I received the box. If you're looking for a good strong bond but can't that kind of specialised glue, I've had a lot of success with clear PVC plumbing pipe primer. It should work with ABS, PVC, polycarbonate or polystyrene, the only disadvantage is that it flashes off very quickly, so you need to apply it to the parts and press them together within a few seconds. The active chemical is methyl ethyl ketone, so you need a proper respirator rated for volatile organic compounds (not just a dust mask or N95 mask). But most of these kinds of solvent bonding glues use pretty toxic chemicals, so I'd always use a respirator with a VOC filter anyway. I've also heard cellulose/lacquer thinner works as well, but I haven't tested it since I've hardly used any of the bottle of PVC pipe primer.

In the end, it looks great when taken into consideration that it looked like a shattered dinner plate. Think of this project as a plastic scale model assembling. I love the smell of polystyrene glue... and enamel paint. The best part of this hobby👌🤤

nice you were able to save it and it didn't go to the landfill, now it has its own unique history tied to it

Good repair Kevin! I would have tried to reinforce the super glue with baking soda, but the jb weld is even better, at least if you pot it entirely!

Thats really sad that happening, particularly when products are rare. You are so right about bubble wrap. Might be worth doing some experiments to find out the best way to pack it. ♥from 🇬🇧

Jeez. Many years ago I sold two pristine Amiga monitors on ebay, and with the cooperation of, and extra payments by the buyers, I put them in a custom (crudely) cut plywood box with bubble wrap and dense-ish foam between the monitor and wood box and more heavy foam between the wood box and outer cardboard box. It made the shipping way more expensive, but everything arrived in one piece. Throwing a CRT into a cardboard box with bubble wrap is what the more genteel among us might refer to as "tard city" behavior

very good repair....zenith rocks!

ahhh reminds me of all the shipping fails people see from sellers that don't pack it right, oh and that's this story haha started typing at the start of the video

Nice restoration!

Just so sad to see rare and pristine items that have survived for 30+ years being damaged or destroyed within 5 business days! If I were living in the US, I would offer a monthly delivery service for such items operating coast to coast, that way I would enjoy a road trip and take the stress out of purchasing vintage gear...

Great video!

I had an IBM XT clone with a green-screen monochrome monitor!

4th time trying to watch this vid (life,) 😅 just hope YT don't class it as false traffic. Nice vid man, shocking packaging 😮

You did a great job!

I just bought an Epson 486dx66 laptop on eBay and same thing, only had .5 inch of foam around it and the top was cracked in shipping. Just like you I got a full refund and kept the item but still sad that it lasted that long till some couldn’t ship it correctly.

The fact that people STILL try to buy and ship CRT's any amount of distance is what's most surprising here. I don't care how well you pack them the major carriers will find a way to break them. FedEx requires contents to survive a 8' drop. You'll spend more in shipping materials than the monitor is worth.

Very nice restoration.

Well done! The only way is up when it's going to be recycled for parts.

Packing is an art-form. I always use new boxes.

Let me know if you're looking for any more monitors for vintage electronics and/or other vintage electronic items, and I'll keep my eye out.

And thats why I don't buy CRTs from eBay. You pay $50+ for shipping and the seller uses whatever garbage they have layong around to pack it up.

Nice repair job.

It’s funny, since yesterday I received a (dead) Mac classic in the mail whose case also got damaged in shipping. I think my repair (which is not finished yet) could have been done much better - but the current state is still okay considering it is my first time doing that. I used two-component-glue and the pieces from the box, but ended up needing to sand down quite a lot. Well.. gonna spray-paint the case anyway in the end. (Maybe some day I put an ITX-PC inside, I don’t know.. the original board is toasted thanks to the battery) Also I still have a Sony CRT monitor in my basement where I also cracked the front bezel. It still works, maybe I will attempt to repair the front some day..

You broke the mold on this One

Definitely has an apocalyptic cyberpunk computer look to it now.

Nice job! 🙂 It is a shame more resellers don't know how to package properly.

I successfully packed and shipped a Macintosh Portrait Display from Sweden across Europe - even though I packed it by the book I was still pretty nervous.

ya i feel your pain man! i ordered the cheapest cheesegrater mac pro on ebay last year and when i received it one of the alumium feet was bent and halfway sheared off the front of the case... the weird part was the box wasnt beat up or anything... i wish i had submitted a return request to ebay and gotten my 60$ back...

An intriguing use of JBweld.

I gotta say: I love that microwave footage

Nice kintsugi work!

Entropy is a harsh mistress. All these old plastics, desperately wanting to return to dinosaur sauce

Your glue music should get you an Oscar award for music😂🎉

Yeah, I still want to buy a good old CRT monitor to go with my recent 486 retro PC build but when I do I will go and pick it up myself 😀

For several eBay electronics purchases, I was shocked by how poorly sellers wrapped, protected, or boxed various items (receivers, speakers, turntables, camcorders, VHS top loader VCR's, etc.), especially when I made a point of messaging them regarding how I would prefer the items to be packed to prevent damage while in transit. The key is to anticipate stupidity as well as boxes being dropped, travelling along conveyor belts in postal depots, being impacted by heavier boxes, or being deliberately mishandled by some disgruntled postal workers, etc. and double-boxing makes a huge difference to improve the chances of survival of electronics.

Salute to this individual he is one of two who still have a fetish for old computers and monitors. I don't know why but they are more knowledgeable about them than I am