Picked up this 1963 Motorola 23" BW yesterday for cheap. The seller had already powered it and the CL pic showed a hugely streched pic from a cable box. Damage done...maybe. It had been in the family since 1963 and was a basement watcher until 10 years ago.

I took it home and powered it last night with no signal and it lit up a strong raster with snow. I did not check or change any tubes. A quick look underneath through the vent screen showed a bunch of Moto branded caps. Ceramic looking tubulars. Not paper. Tiny chassis and a bunch of noisy controls. VHF only. A pair of 4" speakers. Solid wood top and swivel base. Masonite printed sides. There has been some kind of service as the back was missing two screws.

Today I opened it and found a brightner on the CRT. I took it off and put the Beltron on. A few minutes at 8v helped the meter to .85...good. And the life test was 10 seconds to a quick drop. I did a Beltron cleaning and got the same .85. I quit there. Dusted the dust from the chassis and forgot to look at date codes. Will do that the next time the back is off for spraying.

I grabbed a DVD player and a RS modulator and hooked it up to ch. 4 and a Dean Martin DVD. I got a very stretched pic like before and a few minutes on the V controls brought it back to proper. The CRT does not have the same punch it did in 1963 but is very watchable. Focus is a bit soft and I saw a 3-pin terminal strip near the cage with a single wire pushed on the center pin. I suspect this is focus but when I find the Sams I will know. There is a bit of a H drive line through the middle but not not a problem for viewing. The vertical takes a few minutes to get full height.

It has a backlit channel indicator and the channel knob is pushed in for fine tuning which swings the channel indicator. When you release the fine tuning you continue turning to get the channel indicator back to its proper spot. Odd.

It also has an "optomizer" control that works like a sharpness control. It does its job but adds buzz in the audio approaching full sharpness. The set also has buzz on bright DVD graphics to tune out later. The buzz may be Macrovision wandering in and out. It is great for normal DVD viewing. I don't know much about Moto builds in the day but they did a great one on this 51 year old set with an original CRT and caps. 3 hours and counting on viewing.

Got to love 23" of high-res hijinks. You should definitely take the soldering iron to this one.

Rod, this set leans heavily towards leaving it alone along the fine line between full restoration and leaving it as it is considering its current excellent operation quality. I will leave it as is working for now on its ancient parts to see the quality of the build and see how long it lasts. When the intermittants show their ugly head, the iron will go in on the next stage of restoration. And the original parts will still stay tilll they go. And experiment in a life test.

We had a 19" version of this, a year older but also with the optimizer control but very different channel knobs.

I seem to remember a plug-in vertical integrator, maybe hit with freeze spray after its warmed up. the 6GK6 vert out could be weak also.

Dave, post the chassis number if you can. I might have a factory schematic. The sams is 615.