GE PortaColor; eBay seller says NOT color!
 

I just saw this one... A 1980 vintage AB-C chassis Porta-Color on eBay. Seller says "Black & White GE"! Would someone like to inform this guy that it's color??? :music:

http://cgi.ebay.com/9-GE-Black-White...QQcmdZViewItem

This is trippy, because it's usually the other way around... And I can't believe the gray scale could possibly be that good as to fool him :thumbsdn:

Charles

This is not a Porta-Color but a solid state GE portable:
http://www.rwhirled.com/portacolor/GE-AA.htm

Eckhard

Theres probably no color because someone still needs to solder all those @##$#@#@@ rivets. :D

John

Yeah; I guess they had dropped the "PortaColor" badge by then. I still call them PortaColors because of that horrible 10" tube. Not as horrible as the 60s PortaColor 11SP22, but almost. (10VAHP22?)

But he still thinks it's a B&W set :lmao:


Charles

Perhaps he is color-blind.

From the radically revised descrip: "It belonged to the family of the man who designed its innards, so it's personal."

So how does the seller not know it's color with all that background?

Already he know that it is color: "9" GE ColorTelevision Set...". But now the set is from the 1960s: "You'd be hard pressed to find a small 9" color television set dating from the late 60's in this good a shape..."
With the next revision it will be from the early 1950s... :yes:

I wonder if it works. Now that it's listed as a color GE. Seems odd to me with the antenna information and the history of the set they would say it was B/W and then change it to color.

I remember those as well as the 19" and 25" EC and EM chassis series that had them on modules.Amazingly other than the rivets they had very few actual component failures.I have a tv almost exactly like that one except mine has woodgrain in the knob area and the woodgrain goes left to right instead of front to back like the one in the picture.AB-F chassis manufactured 1983.The funny thing is someone gave it to me with a intermittent problem that cured itself.Would play for a while and then picture would start jumping and vertical deflection would go and it would blank out the picture.Did that for about a week and I didn't work on it as I was working on other sets.Then 1 night it played all evening and didn't do it.It's still playing fine after 2 years sitting on a shelf near my computer and gets played every night.The color is great and it gets better reception with its built in rabbit ears on the local UHF stations than my Zenith Advanced System 3 will on any antenna I've tried on it.This tv gets WMDT 47 better than the big tv will WBOC channel 16 .47 is weaker and harder to get where I live.It gets channel 16 clear as a bell.But it seems like a lot of the old mechanical tuner tvs outperform electronic tuners on weak signals(indoor antennas) especially on UHF.

There's another one of these for $19 BIN
http://cgi.ebay.com/Small-GE-Color-T...QQcmdZViewItem

That's a good price but with that one poor quality photo, you can't tell if the rest of the set is in good shape. So many small sets have broken antennas and they are hard to replace. Radio Shack's so called "replacement" antennas rarely fit anything. Also, I seem to remember the tuning knobs on the later versions of that set always felt rather flimsy. It is a cool set, though. I would like to have one.

I think its cute:D

I don't think it would survive the trip here though...:no:

I grabbed the one. Just got it yesterday. It is a neat little TV. January 1981.

It works fine as is. When I got it, it definately had "screwdriver drift." The green screen was maxed out with retrace lines, and the vert. size was on max as well. Redid grayscale and focus. No adjustments for the drives, they're automatic. And whomever took it apart last to mess with everything also took the schematics that were stored in the back cover.

It did do something weird however: The color control had no effect, but it was at the proper intensity, so I figured I'd troubleshoot it later on. An hour after being on, I heard something make a quiet snap, and it suddenly began working. Odd. Been working fine since.

Sharp focus, but has the same dot pitch as the striped phosphor portacolors, so its limited there.

No separate AFC switch, but when you push the fine tuning knob in to adjust, it turns it off, and when you release it, turns it back on.

Does this set has a vertical hold control, and where is it?

It doesn't have a verical or horizontal hold control, it's also automatic on this set.

This confirms me that I have the same set. It was not possible to operate this set with 625 lines/25 frames NTSC here. It only works with 525 lines/ 30 frames NTSC from DVD.

Eckhard

Thanks for showing pics, especially of the chassis. I have always loved the cabinet styling on those sets. There is a red cabinet one on Ebay right now. I especially like the rounded edges and corners on the screen as well as the simulated wood grain finish.

A TV repairman gave me one of these many years ago. The only thing I could find wrong was that the tint would jump in and out. I never bothered with it. A friend had an elderly relative staying with them and I put it out on "permanent loan". The sweet old lady really loved that little set! As far as I know they still have it. I guess that was one of the last "cheap" tv sets to be designed and built in the the US.

Yeah, I love the woodgrain cabinet on this, as well as the dials (very big for such a little TV.)

Some more chassis pics.

I had forgotten how crowded those little chassis are in those sets. seeing that set opened up makes me want to work on my 1972 Sears 9" color set. It is made by Sanyo, all solid state and definitely has that Seventies look.

How's the build quality on that GE? As I remember the plastic seemed a bit thin and creaky, especially if you used the recessed handle to pick it up.

The plastic seems pretty decent on this TV, doesn't creak or anything. The overall build quality seems decent as well.

I have one of those 1972 9" Sears colors as well. Every inch of space is used up in that TV.

I have one of those 1972 9" Sears colors as well. [/QUOTE]

I'm having a weird problem with mine. I'll start a new thread so as not to hijack this one.

It was probably a griplet connection.Those have doublesided boards with "griplets" feeeding from one side to the other filled with solder.The often developed poor/intermiitent connection inside these griplets and would cause problems.I soldered many of those back when regular consumers had a lot of these sets.BTW the one I have by my computer had a vertical problem that suddenly cured itself and never came back for 3 years so far.I thought I was going to have to solder griplets but it stopped before I had a chance to crack open the case.She hasn't been opened yet and I don't think this set's ever been worked on.The little minimanual is still intact.Gonna have to open it soon as theVHF tuner needs cleaning especially in the UHF positio which it's on all the time.Gets very snowy and a quick turn to channel 13 or 2 and back clears it up and the speaker is crapping out.loses sound and an increase in volume or a loud commercial will wake it back up.

Yeah, I was thinking griplets may be the problem... I never had a GE TV before with those.
It's working perfectly now, so I'm not going to mess with it until a problem arises.

In my experience repairing TVs, I soldered a lot of griplets on those sets. Aside from the weird intermittents they would cause, those sets rarely had any other problems. I don't think I ever replaced any components in one, just lots of poor connections. Once repaired, they proved to be quite reliable. Great little sets, Maybe I'll get one sometime.