I've been accumulating several mid to late 70's Japanese sets recently that I want to share with fellow AKers. Rather than create multiple threads, I've decided to have them all collected together here.

All these sets are Australian market sets of Japanese origin. It's hard to love them as they're not Australian production or seem rare, but then I stop to think that these sets are all around 30 years old and need to be saved.

I've also got European and Australian production sets but they'll be for another thread.

As colour TV was not introduced here until 1975 we only just caught the tail end of the golden age of TV where CRT's still used convergence circuits (on the larger sets) and integration was not too far advanced.

Very few if any colour TV sets under 22" were manufactured in Australia and the majority of the surviving sets are of Japanese origin.

To start off I introduce the General GC-143 14" colour portable of approx 1977 vintage. I obtained this set from a fellow AKer and it is in working (just) condition. It has both VHF and UHF tuners and still has the "General" logo sticker on the case.
The General company later merged with Fujitsu to form Fujitsu-General.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/GC-143_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/GC-143_chassis.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/GC-143_logo.jpg
The General!

Next is another approx 1977 era set the Hitachi CRP-141 14" colour portable.
This is another of several sets I've acquired from a fellow AKer (Thanks again) who hasn't the room to keep them.

It has a VHF UHF push button tuner and the chassis is somewhat unusual in that it uses thick film modules for the vertical output and CRT neck board.

This set is in good working condition.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Hitachi_CRP-141_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Hitachi_CRP-141_chassis.jpg

This Sony was found on the kerbside looking wet and very sorry for itself.
The case has yellowed slightly and has some stress cracking around the CRT but otherwise it's in very good shape.
On opening up the case the chassis is nearly spotless and along with the Sony sticker still on the face of the CRT leads me to believe that this TV has spent most of its life sitting around unused.

After letting the set dry out, it was cautiously powered up to show a perfect picture and strong CRT. The tuner is touchpad VHF UHF (not seen in pictures).

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Sony_KV-1400AS_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Sony_KV-1400AS_chassis.jpg

Nice theard. I was curios how old Japanese sets looked before 1985.

Thanks for the feedback. It is good to know that the thread is of interest and I'm not boring people with pictures of old Japanese TV's!

The next set is another kerbside find made by National (Panasonic) or as the company is called Matsushita.
This is a fairly early set of around 1976 using a delta gun CRT and the S1 chassis. It is VHF only and the space below the tuner is not an (optional) UHF tuner but is actually the volume control. This TV has instant on and so has two power switches on the front panel.

Although missing the tuner knob, I hope to find a replacement in my box of assorted spares. The set has been powered up under current limited conditions and attempts to work but is giving a red raster so it has issues.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/TC-2001A_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/TC-2001A_chassis.jpg

This Toshiba C-812 was found at the local charity shop. It has VHF and UHF rotary tuners and an 18" inline CRT. It dates from around 1976.

It is in good working condition. The chassis uses several plug in modules for ease of servicing.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Toshiba_C-812_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Toshiba_C-812_chassis.jpg

Always interesting to see what the rest of the world was watching!

The Toshiba C-812 is interesting in that I've never seen a Japanese set with a power transformer. Great save.

Nearly all of the mid 1970's Japanese sets for the Australian market used mains power transformers and linear power supplies. As we use a 240v supply versus the Japanese 120v I guess it was a necessity.

This is a Thorn model 9038 portable built in Japan by Mitsubishi for AWA-Thorn Australia. This set uses the "G series" chassis and was sold locally in 1975. This model is supposedly the first colour portable officially available in Australia.

It uses a precision inline tube and several plug in modules. This same chassis was used in larger sets also but used a delta gun CRT.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Thorn_9038_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Thorn_9038_chassis.jpg

Another portable from 1975, this time manufactured by NEC and sold locally under the Rank Arena brand. This is model C-1451 and has a delta gun CRT and one of the tightest chassis layouts I've yet seen in a tv. It is also a very heavy little lump!

I have had this set for a while now but it has a suspected weak green gun as the greyscale is tinted. I've recently acquired a second set with a healthy CRT so that is no longer an issue. Both sets suffer from poor geometry (pin-cushion and s-correction problems) probably due to tired capacitors.

The case is badly yellowed from age, it should be bright white.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Rank_C1451_front.jpg

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Rank_C1451_chassis2.jpg

This is a view of the left of the chassis showing the IF board and PAL decoder.

http://www.65c02.org/andrew/AK/Rank_C1451_chassis3.jpg

Unlike many sets of the era, NEC chose to use a multi PCB layout with wired interconnects instead of plug in modules. The PAL decoder PCB contains only the extra circuits needed to decode PAL colour. The rest of the set is essentially a NTSC set.

Nice collection ! Thanks for sharing w/the rest of us !

Next is another approx 1977 era set the Hitachi CRP-141 14" colour portable.
This is another of several sets I've acquired from a fellow AKer (Thanks again) who hasn't the room to keep them.

It has a VHF UHF push button tuner and the chassis is somewhat unusual in that it uses thick film modules for the vertical output and CRT neck board.

This set is in good working condition.

this reminds me of TV SET, such as design, the Grundig portable 70s

Those Panasonic Quintrix sets produced an excellent picture. They had a black matrix CRT. I had one similar to yours but since it was a NTSC set it had UHF and a mod style cabinet similar to the Zenith mod styles of that era. The chassis looks the same as mine was. Nice collection!
-Tony

I've been neglecting this page for a while due to having hit the limit to the number of images I could upload.

Over the next few days I'll be changing the images to links to a photo hosting site. Sadly this means no more images visible until the links a clicked on. However the linked pictures are bigger and of better quality.

I must have missed this thread the first time it came around.

A Sony KV1400AS was my first color set back in the 1992. After it's original repair (it was dead when I got it) it never failed in the 15 or so years that I had it. It was one of the few sets that could resolve the 80 column text from my TRS-80 Color Computer 3.

I let it go a couple or years ago when I thought I was going to have even less storage space than I have now. I missed it so I picked up two more later on. One in white like my original set which has a bad flyback and one in black with a bad CRT. I've yet to get around to making one good one from the pair. Those cases always crack, though sometimes in different places. My original set was cracked as are the two I have now.

Before I got the KV1400AS I had a borrowed Rank Arena C-1451 for a while. There is something strange about the PAL decoder it used. While fine with broadcast TV it always produced the wrong color when being fed by my Atari 800.

Andrew: I can give you some web space on my domain. It's easier than messing around with free hosting sites with their linking/embedding limitations. I'll email you the details.

Thanks to the generous offer of web space by Dr.Ido, I have updated the images on this thread.

More sets to come!

Toshiba CRTs always have the manufacturing date printend on the label near the Toshiba logo in YYWW format, the set would have been manufactured a few weeks later.

Dr Ido's recent thread with the HMV Braddon has spurred me into updating this thread.

This General GC18A dates from around 1975 and is in good working condition. The chassis from these sets was also used in the first generation Australian Healing/HMV 18" sets. The chassis uses an unusual PAL decoder which uses two crystal locked colour demodulators 7.8KHz apart plus some other tricks to recover the R-Y and B-Y signals.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/General GC18A front.jpg

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/General GC18A chassis.jpg

Another very early Australian colour set is this 1975 Hitachi CEP-288. The chassis is the PAL3A and was the last delta gun CRT chassis Hitachi made.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Hitachi CEP-288 side.jpg

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Hitachi CEP-288 chassis.jpg

The Hitachi has a blue Philips delay line, was this actually a Japanese made set?

The Hitachi is a Japanese manufactured set. I can only assume that at some time someone has replaced the original delay line with a Philips one. I haven't checked the PCB for evidence of rework but I will when I get around to repairing the TV.