Thanks a WHOLE BUNCH for sending me the "donor" Sony 8-301W!!

Arrived yesterday.... and was PROMPTLY put to good use by swapping the first and second board to see where I was getting the "crackling fits" in the audio. Turned out this was in the second board, and NOT the little IF board I thought it was.

Saw you had some trouble with the sweeps,HV board...but also saw that you had recapped this board I took the two little 47uf/12V green bipolars (C37,C38) off yours....and they fixed the "finicky" horizontal hold on mine :thmbsp:

Now mine is in REALLY nice shape with decent audio, nice NOT chipped up bakelite handle, all four knobs in back not "jury rigged" with shrink tubing...and I got "Sony's Fragile Baby" to behave pretty much as I suspect it did new.

The little 301 is my oldest set.....and sort of my "flagship" in my collection of very small sets. Now I can get going on the little Singer TV6U that I REALLY wanna get going (It's just SO small and COOL looking). Got the Sams already

Sorry the pic looks pretty lousy....but trust me, the picture looks GREAT on the little Sony. The little JVC "Everio" is a little HD camcorder....with pretty mediocre quality with stills

That is great that you got it sorted out. I love those small sets of every make and model. I have a Sony 5-303 that I started repairing and need to get back to. I just acquired a parts set so maybe I can get my little Sony going again.

My first vintage set was a 303 my dad gave me from his collection maybe 15 years ago. I actually keep it seperate from the regular collection because he gave it to me, and now he's gone.

Was running fine. I'd turn it on maybe twice a year just for fun....but it's now getting REAL dim, and takes longer to come up to a picture. I've not yet gotten into it to see what may be up with it. Have a 305 as well. That one just needed a real good cleaning up and I repainted it's little black control panel. I just FINALLY found one of those Sony power cords on ebay so I can actually run all the Sony sets. The 305 came without one. Now would be nice to find one of those cords (the funny little 4-pin one)... so I can have one on my coffeetable/workbench for WORKING on these.

That set's seen some real travels. I wasn't the one who recapped that board, that set was what was left of Sandy G's that HE sent me, after I removed a few needed parts and made MINE complete :)

I'm really glad that it was put to use, and the one set has now helped out two of its brothers. This little Sony is kinda like an electronic "organ donor" :D

As I PMed Aibo, I'm VERY happy that little set has given others "Life"...2 so far..

It also started a new mystery.

I decided that after I swapped out the second board and "fixed" my audio.....to actually power up the doner set just for fun. Of course it doesn't light up...because that HV/sweeps board is DOA, but for some reason, the audio showed up WITHOUT the weird "static fit" mine was giving me...and with MUCH stronger audio.

After work today, I will probly run my old board in that doner set for awhile and see if it does start up with that static at some point. That HV board has different HOT and stuff in it than the original Sony board mine is still running. ALL the big silicon is different part numbers...but they likely do cross reference. I've not looked. The little green 47uf caps corrected some horizontal instability I was having...even though they kinda scared me being bipolar caps (originals were 50uf/12V polarized). I'm kinda curious if that CRT is any better than mine...and have no way of really checking it but to swap 'em since I have no CRT checker.

I took a break from it yesterday to go off into left field and play with that Atari 800 and KTV Prison TV I found at the swap meet. I'm waiting for a BASIC cartridge for it to see if it indeed has a dead keyboard (seems to).

Today, sitting on my desk at work....is an OEM Sony AC cord for these that I found on ebay to bring my power cords back to the number of old Sony sets I have that use that funky four-prong cord. Was sorta expensive for just a power cord, but worth it not to keep bothering the other sets to steal the cord because I want one on the "workbench" (which suspiciously looks ALOT like a coffeetable)