1979 Quasar Renovation
 

I saved this 1979 Quasar "cellar dweller" from a terrible dark damp basement about 4 years ago. You can see when I first brought it home on my YouTube channel. Just today, I took the back off, blew all the dust out, cleaned all the controls, and cleaned the cabinet. I'm going to put it into service tomorrow. The flyback sounds slightly louder than any other TV I have. Is that normal? More info tomorrow when I hook it up and see how the picture is.

Is that a Motorola made Quasar or is it a Panasonic made Quasar?

It's a Matsushita made TV, but it was assembled in Franklin Park, IL. The tube was made in USA.

Man, that thing's cool. I saw the power-up video a while back.

There are probably quite a few of these still floating around. They're better at hiding than consoles.

I'm so glad you like it! I'll have a video of it playing tonight.

That was Franklin Park, IL. The plant was turned in to condominiums.
Those Quasar sets of that era were really bullet proof. :thmbsp:

Interesting that a Japanese made set would be built here in America with American made parts... :scratch2:

I'm guessing this was shortly after Motorola folded?

And is this a VHF only set or does it do UHF as well? because I only see one knob on that set instead of the usual two that most UHF/VHF TVs have.

I'm guessing final assembly was done in the US, and that some Japanese TV manufacturers avoided shipping CRTs that far because they're so heavy and fragile. I had a Hitachi console with a RCA-supplied CRT.

What I meant was that the electronics are Japanese, but the Tube is American and it was assembled in Illinois. Yes, it is a VHF/UHF, it has one knob for both. It has 2-13, and for UHF, it has a varactor tuner.

Motorola never really folded. They just sold off the lesser profitable divisions.
Matsushita was looking for a plant to final assemble products, to avoid high tariffs. They were one of the firms charged with "dumping", that is selling products for less money than it costs to build them, to gain market share.
The set shown is a higher priced model with the 18 position varactor tuner with 6 UHF presets.

Set has Panasonic chassis. Cabinet probably US. CRT
could be anything, need the EIA code. They were good
sets.
It has UHF. All US sold sets HAD to have UHF after March 1964.
Used a one knob selector with presets for UHF. Has a
varactor tuner.

There are two common lytic failures about this time.
One was the 4.7 mfd in the 200V supply. They go on
almost every brand set from the late 70's on. Its usually
near the FBT. Causes jail bars, shading, too brite pix,
poor pix.
The other is a 4.7 in the power supply area. Its the filter for
the negative supply to the tuner for band switching.
Causes hum bars on LOW channels only (2-6) & a messy pix.

73 Zeno:smoke:

You beat me to the answer!
I never took typing, as at the time, an electrician generally didn't need to. :boring:

eia-312.

Thanks for the info. Now I know what to look for if this set has picture issues.

So then Motorola basically got out of the Radio and TV manufacturing business and went into cellphones instead because they thought that radios and TVs weren't profitable enough for them but yet they thought cellphones would be more profitable?! :scratch2:

That does make sense. Maybe they time travelled into 2000 and saw that nobody was buying radios anymore.

I just realized that this thread is in the wrong category. Maestro Webmaster, please feel free to relocate this thread to your satisfaction.

The japs were under cutting prices of US companies on all consumer electronics making it futile to compete in that market, so they dropped their consumer electronics lines. They continued to make Cellphones, semiconductors, cable boxes, 2-way radio equipment and other things. All of which were profitable markets that the japs were not ruthlessly trying to take over.....It was a wise business decision that has preserved their existance.

It all started out with pocket pagers, then cellphones.
They quit building home radios and phonos in 1969. Televisions in 1974. They built car radios for the US car makers until about 1975.
They were still heavy into two-way communications for the law inforcement and others for a while, but seemed to discontinue it later.
Every time, there's a problem in communications for the law enforcement, the Police Chiefs always mention, "We never had that problem, when we had Motorola radios." :thmbsp:

Motorola's defense electronics division dried up considerably in the 90s - but they were the leader in some defense electronics programs up until then - most notably Automatic Carrier Landing Systems, where they produced transmitters and receivers for the APN-154 and APN-202 ACLS systems. Fun fact - the system was so accurate, they had to introduce a random error, else the tailhook of the arrested aircraft would almost always hit the same spot on the flight deck, banging a hole through the non-skid coating. Reliable - most failures were of external nature.

Though they did produce comm equipment for the Apollo program, they made little for the DoD - I guess they left that to Collins, Magnavox, and RCA.

That's kind of interesting all of that information about Motorola I never realized that about Motorola Before... :scratch2: :thmbsp:

when i ran a beverage company back in the 90s,we had motorola radios.all employees carried them and never a moments trouble.they worked flawlessly for 10 years before we upgraded to the latest equipment.cell phones!worst decision we ever made

Here is a screenshot of the 1979 Quasar. To be honest, I didn't expect it to be this good. Never underestimate the power of a good cleaning and some DeOxit.

The CRT was made by Sylvania.

That does look pretty good for being over 40 years old! :yes: :thmbsp:

Interesting, wasn't sylvania at that time owned by GTE? :scratch2:

Just before Motorola sold out there was an interesting
story in one of the trade mags. Basicaly M was going to sell
sets in Japan starting with 25" then working down in size.
Was going to be quite profitable. Coincidence ???

As far as profits go on consumer electronics goes IIRC Sony,
RCA & Zenith were the only ones that consistently made a
true profit. And it wasnt much. Most others used $$ from other
divisions to keep CE afloat.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Motorola and many other firms were just customers of the Sylvania receiving and CRT division. It seems that the vacuum tube and lamp divisions remained with Sylvania Electric Products, Inc.
The Consumer Electronics division seemed to the be sold to General Telephone sometime in the early '60's. Later, Philips bought them both.
The small town, I live in now had General Telephone, later Verison, now Frontier. Right now, my land-line is Time Warner. :scratch2:

The area where I live GTE was the biggest landline provider before it was bought out by Verizon and then Frontier, my parents for the longest time had GTE for their landline company, but then it went to Verizon when they bought out GTE in the late 1990s and then they went to Frontier when they bought out Verizon in somewhere around 2012, but now their landline is owned by Comcast because they got a better deal with them than they could with Frontier plus they had issues with their landline under Frontier and they refused to come out and fix the issue without charging a ton of money to do so.

That's a sweet set. I have wanted one with separate VHF and UHF knobs for some time. There was one at a friend's place when I was about 10. I would be stoked to find one like yours though.
My 1979 Sylvania carries the GTE logo, but the remote I'm using for it carries the NAP logo. No Sylvania name on that remote, but otherwise it's identical to earlier units. Must have been a limited run of replacement remotes made.

Interestingly enough I have an Atari Missile Command Upright Arcade game at my parents place that's from 1979 and the original Fluroscent bulb used to backlight the nameplate on the front is still in it and it was a Sylvania/GTE Branded lightbulb...:scratch2:

While this TV has a very good picture, it is starting to show its age. It has nearly imperceptible vertical bars running across the screen at all times. It is especially noticeable when the raster is blank. After getting up to adjust it countless times, I finally got it just right. This set does have plenty of cool factor though. I watched The Big Bang Theory for about an hour, and I guess it gave the capacitor a great big charge. When I turned the set off, the high voltage relief flash (as I call it) was bigger, brighter, and lasted longer than any time before. I like that.

99% chance its the cap by the Flyback I mentioned.
Use a 450 V to replace it. Old ones are often 250V & they
have 200V on them so fail often. If you post the model
& chassis ##'s I can look it up & tell you exactly where it
is IF I have the manual.

73 Zeno:smoke:

I don't have the chassis or model number since the sticker is not legible.

In some sets, the cap is located on the CRT socket board.
In the Zeniths, the cap was rated at 315 VDC, which I considered an odd voltage.
That set must've been built before they started using those lousy flybacks.

Look at the tiny 'lytic on the CRT board, next to one of the driver transistors.
It's been like, 20 years since I worked on one of those. :sigh:

This TV has started having some issues with the horizontal. I tried to fine tune it since it was slightly staticy. And then this happened. Whenever it does that, I have to turn it off and back on again. This TV could certainly benefit from a complete overhaul. New caps, alignment, all that good stuff.

First did you look inside for a model / chassis ## ? Should
be one there also.

Hoz hold control may just need centering if its not a countdown set.
Also some sets by Panny, RCA, Hitachi & maybe a few others had
a circuit that would throw off the hoz freq if the HV went to
high. Usually caused by power supply. I dont think this is
one though, but its the right vintage. :scratch2:

73 Zeno:smoke: