A friend who knows enough about TV's to be dangerous gave me this '81 19" Magnavox the other day. It uses the T809-14 chassis. All I had to do to it was clean the tuner and resolder the connector on the audio module. It took the picture tube about a half hour to "wake up"; but, it looks pretty good now. It uses a similar tri-pot tube like what was used in the Zenith System 3's. All of the T809 sets I've seen in the past had a seperate flyback and tripler. This one uses an IHVT. Also, I'll bet this was one of the last TV's to use a circuit breaker.

The same person is supposed to be bringing me an RCA XL100 console this week. He said he thinks it's the "stand up chassis with all the little plug in boards." Anyway, I sure hope so. I don't want to see another CTC110, 120, or 130 with a single knob varactor tuner!

I remember for awhile in the early/mid-90s I was swimming in Magnavox sets that age. I had a console that sat in my walk-in closet for what seems like years, plus some sets just like this one. I was always swapping boards around, trying to get one to work, and never did succeed. This might be the first time I've actually seen one work!

Back in the mid '90's, I had a motel version of this set with the earlier T809 with the tripler. IIRC, I replaced a leaky voltage regulator transistor to cure a loss of horizontal sync. I used that set for a few years until it developed loose connections on the motherboard where the regulator module plugs in. I resoldered the connections; but, it wasn't long before the power supply went "poof" and I junked the set.

Most of these that I encountered had shorted safety capacitors, loose connections, or problems on the horizontal and power supply boards.

A friend of mine had one of these sets that would blow the regulator transistor and other parts every two or three weeks. His brother worked for Magnavox and took the set in to the factory service center for repair. They determined that the mother board was "breaking down" and arcing, causing the parts failures. They threw the set in the trash compactor and gave my friend a new (at the time) 25C5 chassis set.

Even though I fixed a good many of these, I still am not a big fan of these sets. I'd much rather have a Zenith or RCA from the early to mid '70's. OTOH, my family had a 19" Magnavox with the 19C1 chassis (the chassis that replaced the T809) and that set saw heavy use over the 12 or 13 years that we had it. It still played when we got rid of it; but, the CRT was just about gone.