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  #31  
Old 01-20-2004, 11:14 PM
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wa2ise wa2ise is offline
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Quote:
This brings up the question of how many transistors a set can have before it's considered hybrid. Certainly a set like Zenith's 4 tube model is a hybrid, but does a transistor IF strip, or a couple of transistors in the chroma circuit like many late 60's sets have make it a hybrid?
I'm sure that everyone would agree that you need more than just a UHF transistor, SS rectifier for the power supply, and some diodes in the video detector and horizontal oscillator to be a hybrid set. I think that SS signal handling circuits (tuner, IF, chroma/luma circuits) would qualify as hybrid.
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  #32  
Old 01-21-2004, 03:15 PM
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This is the Philco AD I got from James a few months back. 1966
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  #33  
Old 01-21-2004, 09:05 PM
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Squeeze Tight!

Those sets are somewhat awkward to try and carry by yourself. He seems to have a very concerned look on his face. I bet I he's thinking that he should've taken Imodium A.D.!



Doug,

Thanks for posting that. The knob layout on that set looks very close to mine. I am assuming it doesn't have the tuning eye. The solid state sections sound the same as well.

Kinda funny to think that set's cabinet is considered to be "compact contemporary styling". They should have changed the word "compact" to "cheaper"! Those sets are large no matter what.
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Last edited by Charlie; 01-21-2004 at 09:16 PM.
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  #34  
Old 01-22-2004, 12:04 AM
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"Solid Copper Engraved Circuits"

The way they put it you would think P.C. boards were better than hand wiring rather than just cheaper.

Last edited by Eric H; 01-22-2004 at 10:34 AM.
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  #35  
Old 01-22-2004, 06:40 AM
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It seems like all the manufacturers who used printed circuit boards claimed that they were better than hand wiring. I think the only place where the boards have an advantage is on VHF/UHF circuits where hand wiring can lead to stray capacitance and oscillation.

The problem is when high-power tubes are used on cheaply made circuit boards: the heat travels down through the tube pins and causes the solder to crack, also some PC boards have been charred by normal tube heat.

Those types of sets are HEAVY, like 125 lbs. I had to pick one up like it to get it out of an estate sale, had no dolly to move it. It was a tough job!
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  #36  
Old 02-03-2004, 02:36 PM
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Re: Unique Philco

Quote:
Originally posted by Charlie
Next to the Motorola was another unique set. This one is a Philco. It's still up there at the shop because we only had room in the van for the Motor, and it's pouring down rain all today. I'll have to get this one home another day. I don't remember the model number, but I did get a couple of photos. I am guessing this one to be a 1965 or 66 model. The cabinet on this one is a little better than the Motorola.

I don't know who made this chassis... it's definitely not an RCA clone. I wish I could have got better pictures of it, but it was really dark in there and crowded. The power transformer looked a bit smaller than what we would normally find in them.

There is a feature on this set that I found to be very unique in a television. This set actually has a fine-tuner indicator like the ones found in Dynaco tuners! On the front above the channel selector, you can see where it says "tuning eye". From the inside, you can see the indicator tube above and forward of the tuner.

I dug through my Sams index to see if I could find a schematic to match up with this set, but my Sams stop at 730. I did find some listings for Philcos in the 1965-66 range, but that goes beyond my folders. There is a 769-3, 827-2, and 835-2. I am thinking that one of these might be the match to this particular roundie. I wish I had written down the model number instead of relying on my memory! If anyone has these folders, could you take a peek to see if any of them match up to what I have in these photos. A sure give-away will be the tuning indicator.
The tuning eye tube in that Philco is there to assist in setting the fine tuning knob properly. AFC circuits weren't that popular on color sets at the time this one was new; in fact, color TVs from the '50s had no tuner AFC circuits. Many people did not realize that color TV tuning is extremely critical; in fact, when color was first introduced and for some years thereafter (until AFC systems became more or less standard on most sets and, of course, many years before today's quartz-synthesized cable-ready tuners which do not need AFC to keep them on frequency), there were often situations in which a new color set owner would watch an entire program (which was being telecast in color) in black and white (monochrome), unaware that a simple twist of the wrist would have converted the picture to living color. These people were probably accustomed to the rather forgiving nature of b&w TV fine tuning, where one could, more often than not, get away with slight misadjustment and still have a picture plenty good enough to watch. Try this with color TV, however, and you will have anything but a good color picture; in fact, the chances are your picture will have no color at all, even though the monochrome component will be there and may look fairly decent. If you have color in the picture at this point, it may well be out of color sync.

Philco's tuning eye (and GE's tuning meter, which was used for the same purpose and operated on the same principle) prevented such mistakes. All the viewer had to do was adjust the fine tuning until the two segments of the eye tube just met (or the GE tuning meter was at its maximum reading for the channel to which the set was tuned); this was the point at which the tuner was now set exactly to the center of the channel and at which the color picture was at its best.

The Philco tuning-eye TV was made, IIRC, in the late '60s (I saw a picture of one of these sets in a 1967 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine, in an article on then-new color TV designs).

The two letters S on either side of the Philco's red emblem badge on the front panel may (and I emphasize *may*) stand for "solid state", though in my heart I doubt it very much. A TV of that vintage (except for Moto's works-in-a-drawer set, of course) isn't likely to have many transistors in it, if it has any at all. In fact, the only place I can see that Philco having transistors is in the UHF tuner, and even then it would likely only use one as a UHF oscillator (I don't think any of the major manufacturers, and certainly not the cheaper makes, ever used fancy-dancy UHF tuners with IF amplifier stages).

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Last edited by Jeffhs; 02-03-2004 at 02:59 PM.
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  #37  
Old 02-03-2004, 10:52 PM
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I happened to have the Sams photofact(1024) of this set(I have since sent it to Charlie). The set has a transistorized IF and some other solid state circuits if I remember correctly.

In the same folder is a Montgomery Wards B&W set that is completely solid state except for the HV rectifier. I also have three small Philco's and a Sylvania of similar vintage that are solid state except for the HV rectifier.

In, addition, in my workshop, I have a 1970 Sylvania table top square tube color TV that is solid state with the exception of the vertical and horizontal circuits. The Sam's for Charlies set was issued in 1969.

As you can see, solid state circuitry was fairly common in TVs of this era.
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  #38  
Old 02-04-2004, 07:32 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by peverett
I happened to have the Sams photofact(1024) of this set(I have since sent it to Charlie). The set has a transistorized IF and some other solid state circuits if I remember correctly.

In the same folder is a Montgomery Wards B&W set that is completely solid state except for the HV rectifier. I also have three small Philco's and a Sylvania of similar vintage that are solid state except for the HV rectifier.

In, addition, in my workshop, I have a 1970 Sylvania table top square tube color TV that is solid state with the exception of the vertical and horizontal circuits. The Sam's for Charlies set was issued in 1969.

As you can see, solid state circuitry was fairly common in TVs of this era.

Oooops! Sorry about that. I didn't realize several manufacturers besides Motorola were making hybrid TVs in the '60s. Guess I've been away from the old sets too long. I was always under the impression that the first all-solid-state sets were the Moto works-in-a-drawer TVs, followed by RCA's original XL-100s, followed by Zenith's modular chassis, followed by most other manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon until all sets were eventually 100 percent solid state. (I do not consider TVs with tube HV rectifiers all solid state, even if the rest of the set has transistors and/or ICs; to me, these sets are still hybrids. If you want to split hairs even further, there may be people who consider any television set with a standard CRT as being a hybrid, even if every other tube in the set, including the HV rectifier, has been replaced by transistors and/or ICs.)

BTW, now I'm wondering. The original "XL-100" RCA TVs were 100-percent solid state, with the XL, of course, being an abbreviation for "X-tended life." That explains what the first RCA XL-100 label stood for. However, I have a 1999 RCA 19-inch set with "XL-100 Commercial Skip" plainly displayed at the top left corner of the cabinet, above the CRT. What, if anything, does the XL-100 stand for on my set? If I were a betting man (I'm not), I'd bet that's just another meaningless/useless marketing label, like Zenith, RCA(!), GE, Magnavox, et al.
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  #39  
Old 02-04-2004, 09:20 PM
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Jeff, I'd say you are right on the money about XL100 meaning nothing today. Guess using that was easier than coming up with a new name! Heck, just as well dust off the New Vista name!

It sticks in my mind, from something I read long ago, that the first 3 solid state color sets were Motorola, RCA & Sears. I don't know the story behind the Sears set but clearly remember reading that in more than one place. May have been an RCA in disguise? I would say that having a solid state set in your lineup would have been a real matter of pride at that time...there are several major players for whom I can't recall seeing a solid state color set from "the turn of the decade". GE comes to mind as does Admiral. I once had a junker Sylvania, which had been a very nice set at one time, it looked like about a '70 model give or take, and was solid state if I remember right. (I brought that home the same time as a similiar Magnavox, one was tube, I think)
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  #40  
Old 02-04-2004, 11:28 PM
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Motorola built what they called an all solid state B&W TV around 1960. This TV was called "The Astronaut" or something to that effect. I am not sure about the HV rectifier or how good a set this was. Philco also built what the called an all solid state B&W TV about this time. The Philco's are fairly collectable.

These are the earliest solid state TVs that I am aware of.
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  #41  
Old 02-05-2004, 06:41 AM
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I think that these very early solid state sets such as the Astronaut used a tube HV rectifier...even the RCA CTC-40 used a tube HV rect. There is a little Sony 5" solid state portable from 1968 uses a 3-tube HV tripler.

Another unique thing about the Astronaut is that it had a built-in battery pack that recharged when the set was plugged in.

I don't think that solid-state HV became really popular until the early 1970's.
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  #42  
Old 02-06-2004, 11:28 AM
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The color bands around the channel selector on the Motorola are definitely interesting. I've seen the usual color badges on the front panels of old sets (I even had an RCA indoor TV antenna in the '70s which had an RGB color badge on the base, with the colors in small squares in a row), but never anything like the one on that Moto. Just goes to show how clever some of the early TV manufacturers were.
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  #43  
Old 02-06-2004, 11:38 AM
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RGB color bands on Moto channel knob--cool!

The RGB color bands in the center of the channel selector on Charlie's Motorola roundie are definitely very interesting. I've seen the usual color badges on early sets and, in the '70s, even had an RCA indoor antenna with such a badge on the base (the three primary colors were presented as three small squares arranged in a row). Just goes to show how clever those early TV manufacturers were.
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  #44  
Old 02-06-2004, 09:38 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by peverett
Motorola built what they called an all solid state B&W TV around 1960. This TV was called "The Astronaut" or something to that effect. I am not sure about the HV rectifier or how good a set this was. Philco also built what the called an all solid state B&W TV about this time. The Philco's are fairly collectable.

These are the earliest solid state TVs that I am aware of.
the philco is the safari.
its an odd looking portable projection set.
everyone that comes into my shop ask"what the hell is that?"
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  #45  
Old 02-08-2004, 11:51 AM
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Re: Re: Unique Philco

Quote:
Originally posted by Jeffhs
The two letters S on either side of the Philco's red emblem badge on the front panel may (and I emphasize *may*) stand for "solid state", though in my heart I doubt it very much. A TV of that vintage (except for Moto's works-in-a-drawer set, of course) isn't likely to have many transistors in it, if it has any at all. In fact, the only place I can see that Philco having transistors is in the UHF tuner, and even then it would likely only use one as a UHF oscillator (I don't think any of the major manufacturers, and certainly not the cheaper makes, ever used fancy-dancy UHF tuners with IF amplifier stages).
Just to clear the air, the following stages are transistors. This info was obtained by the tube/transistor diagram in the cabinet.

VHF & UHF tuners
I.F.
Video Amp
AGC Keying
AGC Amp

There's a total of 10 transistors. All of the remaining stages are tube... about 17 IIRC.
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