I had a good day at the flea market, and as I was loading up my finds my wife asked the vendor about the 13" Zenith sitting on a table. $8. Well, she has been wanting to replace our bedroom set (a Commodore computer monitor hooked to an old vcr) so I bought it, as is. Of course, it doesn't work. Before I toss it in the dumpster I'll ask the experts here.

It tries to come on at first but then nothing, you can just here the relay clicking on and off as you hit the power button. Has at least enough hv to charge up the crt. I pulled the chassis out hoping to find a bad solder joint or maybe a crack somewhere, or an obviously bad electrolytic. No such luck. I'll give it a reprieve for a day or two...you guys are its last chance, before it goes to TV hell!

Zenith Model 5Y13245, chassis CN-150, built 11/96. Made in Mexico, mostly Daewoo inside. Pitiful.

Sounds like its shuffled off this mortal coil. Say a few words over it, & give 'er a good send-off !!-Sandy G.

With the chassis exposed and hooked up to a isolation transformer....plug it in, switch it on.....AND PISS ON IT!

Anthony

...or stand over it, lob a breezeblock through it, while reciting the words "this is the solution to all our problems". Oh sorry, mispent youth there...

...here's one I imploded earlier:
http://www.btinternet.com/~domfjbrown/images/mates/bw_tv_imploded.jpg

...and one of my mates killing a computer monitor which did the same thing as your Zenith is....:
http://www.btinternet.com/~domfjbrown/images/mates/d_implode.jpg

Highly dangerous, but a great sound!

Another way I mis-spent my youth was to take my trusty .22, a couple boxes of shells, & head off to the city Dump looking for old TVs & rats to "put out of their misery". Imagine a kid doing that today.-Sandy G.

If it uses a switching power supply check for the voltage from the rectifier off the power line (around 140 volts), check the caps around the switching supply regulator if it uses it. The supply should be running in standby mode to operate the remote control circuitry all the time its plugged in.

The Commodore computer monitors have very a good picture...we have one here at the radio station hooked up to a Telecaption decoder unit to receive TV signals.

Just wanted to clarify my position. I love Zeniths. This set is a POS that was marketed and distributed by Zenith. It is NOT a Zenith. It's a Mexican assembled Korean (Daewoo) box of eventual short circuits.

PISS ON IT! It shames the once great and proud Zenith name.

Anthony

It's a good thing Commander McDonald isn't around to see what's become of his beloved company. -Sandy G.

I'll take a quick look at some of those caps. I do show something like 160v on one leg. And, yeah, that Commodore is pretty sharp. I think they were made by JVC. The VCR gives us the ability to change channels with the remote but my lovely wife wants to change the volume, too...so....

That same 8 bucks could have bought another 13" Zenith she has, a real, honest to goodness American made set that looks to be from the early 80s. Click stop tuners, though, and it might not work, either. Still tempted to get it but I don't need to start collecting 80s tv sets! I could just stop in to the local Zenith dealer, last time I stopped in he still had a couple NOS 12 year old 13" sets gathering dust on the shelf, at 1992 prices ($350ea.).

Obviously he'll never get anywhere near $350 for those sets, but I have a possible solution......see if he'd be interested in donating them to a charity for a tax writeoff. He may at least break even on paper (his actual cost may be close to the resulting write off).

If he goes for this you may luck out and be able to purchase them from the charity for cheap! Ain't I a stinka?

Anthony

...and one of my mates killing a computer monitor which did the same thing as your Zenith is....:

Dammit, wear goggles if you're gonna do that. Jeez, eyeballs are real hard to repair... :eek:

...that wasn't me, that was my totally insane mate, Robbie.

I'm partially sighted, so don't really worry about taking one of my eyes out as much as I should, since neither of them work very well. That said, when I imploded stuff in my yoof, it used to be from a distance of a few feet...

Ahhh, you're all a bunch of girls.....you haven't lived till you've dropped a set from over 20 floors up. NYC is filled with such buildings. Don't ask.

Anthony

Uhhh,Anthony, y'all DID make sure nobody was on the sidewalks below when "roof-testing" TVs, didn't ya ?!? I've heard about being careful in the "sportier" parts of some of our cities, but...-Sandy G.

We had a maint man at work who would dump a/c compressors off a 4 story bldg 'cos he was too effin lazy to tote 'em down. They'd hit the ground, bounce a time or 2 & spew a/c compressor juice all over the place. Once one landed in an electrical sub-station behind the plant & REALLY raised a ruckus. Blew several transformers & shorted a bunch of shite out. Big bad lightshow. Bosses wondered WTF-they never did find out what happened. Was kinda kewl watching 'em bounce & spew that compressor juice all over the place, though. Guy finally retired a couple years back.-Sandy G.

That reminds me of the scene in the original Italian Job (with Michael Caine and Benny Hill) where someone tosses a bicycle into a substation and shorts out the power for Rome.

To this day I can't go by a substation without evil thoughts LOL

Anthony

I think the Compressor Juice musta been under pressure, 'cos they'd hit the ground, rupture, & the Juice would start shooting out & making a very delicious big-ass mess. Kinda reminded me of the Horrible, Awful, Nasty stuff thats in the center of a golf ball-except Compressor Juice was usually greenish, & Golf Ball Juice is always milky-white.-Sandy G.

Thanks a lot Sandy, now I have to go and find me a golf ball to open up........... just to see whats inside :D

The "compressor juice" was Freon and a lubricating oil under high pressure....just like in your fridge or any other air conditioner (including cars). Besides being stupid and dangerous, that guy who was tossing those was violating a Federal law by allowing Freon into the atmosphere.

As for golf balls....after hearing all sorts of silly stories when I was a little nose picker (notice I said "LITTLE") about an acid center I finally opened one up. Under the dimpled shell it's like a ball of rubber bands. You can cut part of this and it'll "boing" a little bit but not unravel like a spool of yarn. The center is a hard rubber sort of deal. At least this is what I've found inside. Report back your findings. Am still looking for the ones with the Flux Capacitor core.

Anthony

He he - Led Zep ROCK'N'ROLL! I've always wanted to lob a telly off of a tall building - I don't think I'd get away with it though! Probably makes an excellent noise though.

Hmm - yeah, those freon coolants are NAAAASTY! Shame on that guy for doing that - they need to be properly disposed of. I bet that substation was cool though!

I loved that bit in the Italian Job - reminds me of a UK safety ad about electricity where a kid goes to retrieve a frisbee and gets nuked on the HT leads in a substation. IIRC there was also an ad where kids dump a shopping trolly (cart?) on the live railway tracks and get zapped - this actually used to happen a LOT on UK railway lines.

I guess if the kids got hit by a train, the parents'd be the first to complain. Maybe they should try, err, looking after them properly and they'd have nothing to complain about :uzi:

Dom- Oh, yeah, baby !!! ROCKIN' ROOOOOOOOOLL !! Bisting up a TV is very much good, dirty fun=because you know down deep it's Something You're NOT Supposed To Do. Another is to let fly about 25 rounds of 115-grain 9MM ammo at one. Now, you Englische have a history of Busting Stuff Up- there's a guy over there who made a Trebuoche & let fly tellies, commodes, pianos, Volkswagens, & a dead cow. I always wanted to get a barely running old car-a '72 Ford LTD or something, & try to clean out ditchlines, jump thru fences, & all that stuff you see in the movies. If you tear it up, who cares? It's a '72 LTD. <grin>-Sandy G.

reminds me of a goldstar monitor that came into the store and was declared dead.
had bad burn in and severe arcing that burned a big hole in the board.
we took it outside and plugged it in to see if it would catch fire and spread outside the case.
well all it did was arc and stink so we got out the dead pc parts execution tool
a 4 foot long heavy sword.
i put on heavy rubber gloves and sworded it live.
another employee who was known to be a bit on the stupid and crazy side(tryed to stop a gas drive off by getting in the path of a van)ran out into the yard hollering your f****** crazy!!
got a nice shower of sparks and crt inplosion:D :D

And as for Golf Balls-Doncha remember from the Compendium of 11-year Old Boy's Irrefutable Knowledge that there's a nasty, horrible, awful acid in the center of most golf balls that eats thru EVERYTHING & will go down to the Center of the Earth & let the Mole People out ?!? Good God, man, how could you forget?!? How or Why the stuff ends up in golf balls is never explained in the 11-year Old Boy's Irrefutable Compendium of Knowledge, but there it is. My Irrefutable Source was a 13-yr old guy whose dad Knew a Lot of Stuff. So there. -Sandy G.

I did throw a 19" color crt off the roof once but the neck had already been broken. I think the tube is still laying out there in the yard...My favorite way to dispose of a tv set was to set it on fire, and then just stand back. Did this to probably 4 or 5, the last one was a big GE color console from the 80s. While I was standing there watching my girlfriend walked up, I knew what was going to happen but she didn't. The phosphor would start to turn dark on the edges of the screen, then-LOOK OUT! Within a minute there would be a very healthy BOOM! She didn't like me much the rest of the day! I could never get a good boom any other way-the ones I threw in the dumpster didn't make much noise.

I used to love when David Letterman would throw things off of a 12 story building (or however tall it was). The one I most remember was when they sat a 19" color set face up on the ground airing the competition (at that time) the CBS Late Movie (I think is what they called it). He dropped, from the top of the building, a bowling ball right through the screen. Awesome.

Apparently at one time the accepted method of diposing of a picture tube was to throw it in the river, as both my father and a teacher I had mentioned finding one floating when they were a kid. My father hit his with a boat paddle; the teacher carried his onto a bridge and dropped it off.