Texas Recycles Day 2007 went pretty well...good weather and got some good equipment. I guess this will be my 4th year doing it. I think I did get some more tube type equipment this year than last. Goodwill was on hand to take the working modern electronics plus the usual other goods they collect.
I am still surprised that no flat panel sets have shown up yet, though.

These photos show the truck having returned from the recycle days.
Also we got some muddy Motorola sets that appeared to be hospital sets. Since they said Insta-View and had no "no user serviceable parts" warning and also had an interlock, I thought they were tube sets. They turned out not to be! and were also rusty and very dirty inside and were missing parts such as the speakers and wires were cut here and there. We salvaged the reuseable parts from these sets and discarded the rest. These two sets were the only things we had to discard.

Also here is a GE portable and RCA. Both are working but seem to have CRT's which are a little weak. And, a GE tube type b/w set...does not appear to have power (maybe bad switch.)

Here is an Ampex table top radio/cassette recorder, also a working Betascan Sony Beta machine plus a very cheap Action portable. There appear to be bad caps in its power supply plus a broken vertical hold control but it does work.

Here is a small Panasonic video monitor/TV...appears to work perfectly.
Also an RCA 15" 1980's portable. (got two of these but only one has the Nipper logo)
RCA tube type black and white. Has hum, likely bad caps.
RCA late model XL-100 with knob type tuners.
And a 1980's red colored Emerson. Appears to have no power but may be an AC/DC switch problem.

Here is a Sony 7" Trinitron color portable...appears to work perfectly.
And an unusual Zenith TV/monitor. This unit almost has a homemade look to it but was actually made by Zenith of Missouri. Has large knobs for volume, bass and treble. The volume knob just detents up or down for volume increase/decrease. All the auxiliary controls are on the back plus AV input jacks and speaker jacks (there are no internal speakers.)
The set does have OSD and space command.

Also there are TV's stacked up in the West building awaiting me carrying up the stairs to my room. I have a downtown Midland office just for the purpose of operating and preserving vintage TV's/equipment. It is one block away from my work office so I can come here at lunchtime and eat and watch DVD's. Also shown is the large staircase and my main room. The rent includes electric, heat and AC.
This building still has a few "traditional" office tenants but is mostly "adaptive reuse" with my rooms plus rehearsal halls for bands.

Usually this room looks much more like a traditional parlor or living room but I have had to load up with new stuff from the Recycle days. I'll certainly get it better organized.

I didn't hear anything about this in the Houston area, and don't see any events listed for around here either. Maybe I'll have to organize the Houston area audio recycling event next year.:D

Here is the final page...this shows my workshop at the West Building with a Philco tube type color set and a GE tube type portable. Also the music room there.
The Zenith monitor seems to work very well.
Also the Sony broadcast monitor where I do most of my TV watching there. It connects with a S-video cable to the DVD player. It says "Dyonix Medical Grade" so may be from a hospital? Got it from a thrift store for $5.00.

I'll try and upload the full size photos to our website...the network connection has been very slow so I just uploaded the small size photos.

I really hate those Motorola's had to be trashed. Moto's are rare anyway, let alone a Motorola hospital set. I'm glad you got other stuff that could be used. We recently had a "recycle day" here. You pull up in your vehicle, the workers unload your unwanted junk and throw it in a roll off dumpster. The stuff lands where it lands and no one is allowed to plunder through it. I took some junk TV's there and am just glad I didn't see anything of interest destroyed.

I do feel bad about the motorola sets but the insides were covered with mud and were rusty and really nasty plus the outsides of the cabinets appeared to have been left outside for years. Plus there were random parts missing inside each set so it would have been a challenge to reconstuct them. We did salvage the yokes, convergence yokes and panels, knobs, HV stick rectifiers, CRT sockets etc. We could not really salvage the modules as all the contacts on each one were rusted. If it were a tube type set I probably would have tried a re-construction of them but was not so interested in solid state sets in such bad shape.
All of this stuff was also going into a clean air conditioned environment and I didn't want to have to carry muddy dirty rusty sets indoors. There is almost no more room at home anywhere for more sets!

That Beta VCR looks like an SL-5400. If it is, that was the first VCR (of either format) with visible scan, and also the first VCR with over four hours recording time on one tape (4.5 hours in Beta III mode on an L-750 or 5 hours on an L-830). It was also the first pushbutton-tuning Beta VCR, and the first with a timer beyond 24 hours (it can record one program over the next three days).

That's all really cool! I wish we had some place like that down here. I want that GE portable. :D

Chad, Nice finds on all that stuff!

If you ever want to part with that Sony KV-8000, I'm interested!!! I bought one on eBay, paid and never got it :( . That's a rare case though... Of about 1500 eBay buys, that's one of about 3 I didn't get.

Charles

It's always tempting to try and get a foot in the door at the local electronics recycling day but I really don't have the space for half what I'd likely bring home.

Now, Friday I dropped off some stuff at our town's recycling igloos and somebody had left a TV on the ground out there. 25" Zenith System 3 table model from about 86/87. A little muddy inside and out from sitting there through a little rain. Brought it home and it works perfectly! Off to freecycle it goes. Yesterday I stopped to pull another set out of the ditch. Turned out to be a Sylvania TV/VCR/DVD combo, one of those nasty walmart specials. Full of water-I might plug it in just to see what happens.

Yesterday I stopped to pull another set out of the ditch. Turned out to be a Sylvania TV/VCR/DVD combo, one of those nasty Wal-Mart specials. Full of water-I might plug it in just to see what happens.

Keep us posted. :D

Yesterday I stopped to pull another set out of the ditch. Turned out to be a Sylvania TV/VCR/DVD combo, one of those nasty walmart specials. Full of water-I might plug it in just to see what happens.

Yeah, plug it into a long extension cord at night and have a video camera going to capture the effects. I've got a 9" Memorex (same crap) TV/DVD combination that was a reject from the local shop. He never opened it. After spending half a day getting it apart, I found that the HOT was shorted. It's one of those new ones that's not near the size of the old HOT's. Got the set going thanks to a junk board; but, it didn't stay fixed. Tonight, I turned it on and the red light came on and that was it. I calmly unplugged it and slung it on the trash pile of junk waiting to be hauled off! A friend brought me his 2005 Toshiba (Funai) TV/VCR combo. It works for a while and then shuts down. It's one of those that will take half a day to tear into and I'm just not going to waste my time with it. I'm sure it's just a cap heating up; but, why bother? Something else would just fail in six months (or less) and then I'd hear about it! I could just let him have, oh say, a 1977 XL-100; but, that would be TOO OLD!

Something else would just fail in six months (or less) and then I'd hear about it!

yeah as a mechanic i have those 'friends cars' that i work on as side jobs, never been in for service and have 150k on them and from that day on ANYTHING that squeaks, rattles, leaks and falls off the car i hear about and its expected that i fix it free cause it 'must be related' to what i did. :no: I too avoid that kinda side job like the plague.

TV techs always get the blame after a repair... Its true, very similar to a mechanic's work.

If you repair the vertical out, and then a year later the set loses power its your fault! people are funny when it comes to repairs.

As for today's crt sets, especially anything funai, just advise that they toss it, since its only designed to work through its warranty period, if that long. :thumbsdn::thumbsdn:

Yesterday I stopped to pull another set out of the ditch. Turned out to be a Sylvania TV/VCR/DVD combo, one of those nasty walmart specials. Full of water-I might plug it in just to see what happens.

Don't forget the short across the power relay so it stays on first :D :thmbsp:

Aw, gee, no fireworks! I think the board was busted up too bad for it to do anything. I've been known to waste my time on a lot of dumb things but I refuse to take the time to pull the back off this pitiful thing! Into the dumpster it went. Bad thing is my father has the 27" version of that same junky set...

my son is a supervisor for a company that refurbishes electronics. you are right about funai. he told me that they may as well toss em when they are new. about 50% are defective when they get it. he is really dismayed about the state of this. i let him check out my zenith chromacolor set from 1974. went through it with a fine tooth comb and is amazed with the quality. he grew up around these things but never realized these issues. sad truth is-plasmas,lcds,etc,are creeping up on that 20-30% range also. his daily watcher is a toshiba i bought him for his 10 th birthday. 27",remote long gone- plays 24-7 never turns it off. he is now 25 and this set still looks as good as the day i brought it home. my roundie project also is something he has observed. cant believe the circuitry,etc. i just wish i could keep it together!! breaks down constantly!!!

At least when those old TV's break; they can usually be repaired. Most new stuff is so cheap built and so small that it's just not worth it. Would your '74 Zenith by chance use the horizontal 25EC58 solid state chassis? If it does, it probably will still be going in 33 more years. I see the newer junk, and, then I see the build quality of the '68 Magnavox tube set that's currently apart in my shop. It's hard to imagine nowadays needing a wrench larger than a 1/4" to remove the chassis.

that would be the one! i also just got a vertical chassis zenith last night (1975)
was a dead set? carried it up from a basement and took er home. plugged it in and -wham! high voltage! crt was sharp. some adjustments and we watched blade runner on it. the color from that 25v was spot on! has a slight width problem (not enough horizontal spread) i will have to possibly repair. imagine,a zenith of that vintage needing some repair.my son cant believe the quality. who needs high definition!!!