I recently got given this old TV which is a great match for old computers and consoles. Patreon: / mrlurch Discord: / discord Twitter: / mr_lurch Facebook: / mrlurchsthings Instagram: / mr_lurchs_things Merch: www.redbubble....
Thta tuning system brought back memories. We had a Toshiba, slightly bigger, that our ZX was plagued into in 1982. I still have my Rank Arena 12 inch B&W that I bought in 1977 when I got my first pay packet.
Agreed, using a period correct TV for game consoles or a CRT monitor for computers is a wonderful experience. Nicely done on the Toshiba clean up. Having an air compressor verses using canned air is so much nicer (and cheaper in the long run).
That’s the way things were back in the day. I had a 12” b/w Goldstar. I basically spent the majority of the time I had a C64 playing in shades of grey rather than brown.
That was interesting and also entertaining. When you opened up the little door on the side and I saw those little dials, I knew what that little knob was for! You worked it out in the end. I used to be good at tuning in TVs, VCRs, etc, so I seem to adapt to computer stuff straight away. When I got my first gaming console, I had to wait for the 26" Rank Arena to be free ie: could not use it around 6pm onwards.. the news.. When I got my first computer it was worse, as I wanted to program all the time. Luckily for me, the 26" Rank Arena started to lose it's focus and/or colours (or both), so my parents bought another 26" Rank Arena for the family room and I got the old 26" Rank Arena for my bedroom! It was OK for the programming of my first computer - a Tandy Color Computer. Such joy and memories!
When I first got my Commodore 64 in 1983 it was set up in the lounge room. At that stage we had an old 20" Philips VHF only TV so I had to use our old top load National VCR as a go-between. Two RF sections (C-64 to VCR & VCR to TV) made for a hideous image. I did end up making a C64 AV cable to connect to the composite/audio input on the VCR which was a little better. I ended up with a General 14" VHF/UHF TV a few years later (my cousin ran a small electrical appliance store). That TV ended up in my bedroom together with the C64. This TV stayed with me for over 25 years!
I always use Murphy's Oil Soap when I clean acquired retro computers, etc... it really does a nice job. When i was a kid, there was one 19" black and white vacuum tube console TV in the house and video games were not invented yet. I enjoyed your enthusiasm for cleaning up that TV, which thankfully you have a purpose for or it may have been scrapped.
Cheers to you for this one! I could watch cleaning up and testing old CRTs all day. Have a few myself and even got back to liking RF after all the AV, S-Video and RGB craze of recent years. It's mostly not what I experienced back in the day, so I prefer RF more today than I did years ago. Very nice little telly, love that you put care to it and looking forward to more CRT content 😎 Thank you!
Holy shit this is the same model of TV I had in my bedroom as a kid. Exact same model and everything. It served me well for many years of Nintendo and C64 gaming, as well as aa lot of late-night Rage viewing, X-Files viewing, Letterman viewing and many other things. Great little TV for the era. I was always amused by the fact it had a channel marked as A/V despite not having any non-RF inputs.
That'd be the alternate time base for VCR. I've seen that on TVs as early as 1974. If you preset your VCR on a channel not marked A/V, you will likely get a shaky, unstable picture. Although some 90s VCRs have some kind of time base compensation and when you get to the VCR/DVD combo era, often a full-on Time Base Corrector (TBC). What does it do and why is it not on all channels? - IDK. My guess is that the horizontal frequency has some lag to it changing the frequency, so it takes a while to sync up. On noisy RF/weak receptions, this will cause the horizontal sync to be less affected by the noise. On VCRs, there are two physical video heads scanning the picture. If one comes just a nanosecond before the other, every second frame will be shifted by roughly an inch, yielding a jittery picture. Also the effect of wow&flutter on the tape transport will result in a warbling picture. The alternative time base will probably switch the frequency averaging capacitor for a smaller one, allowing for much faster reactions to changes in the horizontal sync pulse. The downside is that if you pick up a weak RF signal (back when live TV over the air existed), the horizontal will be all jacked up, vertical lines will start to look like oscilloscope waveforms rotated by 90°. NOTE: I do NOT know this. I'm merely doing an educated guess.
@@senilyDeluxe Ahh wow I had no idea that it would be something like that. We always had the VCR on that channel (back when it was our main TV and not my bedroom TV) so never realised it could be a problem otherwise.
Someone needs to give you a camera for Christmas with a variable shutter speed that you can adjust to match the refresh rate of the screen. I think it's not too late to write to Santa!
Nice video! I grew up with the Laser 200, C64 and Amiga on an old color TV that my parents used in their camping-wagon in our vacations. Having a lot of old computers, I realize I do not own an old TV. Think I need to find one :)
Green text on gray background on NES -> Big modern LCD screen: You get unintelligible green blobs of Garble (plus .2 second lag). Any 70s 14 inch CRT TV: Perfectly legible. My 1977 Grundig 18 inch TV that accidentally had a Monitor CRT (fine pitch dot mask) from the factory, still RF only: You can use a caliper to size the pixels, it's that sharp. (btw. the NES produces a better picture over RF on that TV than it does over composite on most other TVs). Helps that it's relatively low hour too. I have a 1981 16 inch Metz that is ultra low hour and if you dare to turn up the contrast, you'll need sunglasses!
My family had a Philips TV that was like that one in quite a few ways, I think they bought it not too long after I was born and they semi retired it in 1997, though I would still occasionally use it to play Nintendo 64 games on. By 2001 the TV was on its way out, with the screen flickering and flashing like crazy, and the colours were going all weird. We very soon replaced it with a little JVC portable TV as I'd just bought myself a PlayStation 2 and of course I wanted to play it.
That TV looks old enough to possibly have a composite signal somewhere on the board, but it's also probably a hot chassis, so be careful if looking to do mods!
Yep! Always check if there's any kind of continuity between ground and the power plug (unless it's a dead short to the earth lug on the plug, but TVs usually don't have that). And sometimes, it's the exact opposite - there's just RF on the outside, but on the inside, there's everything prepared for AV with composite, RGB and even YCbCr (had that happen to me - needless to say it's cold chassis too)
The four-switch 2600s seem to have worse RF than other models. The six-switch models with the heavy shielding around the main board have EXCELLENT RF. So much so that composite modding is a moot point
I don't know the general conditions in your shed, but are you not worried about dry cleaning (brushing, air-blasting, etc.) inside? You're basically just spreading the dirt around in the room, potentially getting it on and/or in your other devices? I always take my stuff outdoors when it's time for the air compressor.
