Do you have any "accessories" for your old TVs?
 

I like to have some optional equipment connected to my old TVs, preferably from about the same time as the TV was made to make it look time typical.

I recently found this early 90s General Instruments (Jerrold) analog CATV decoder. A very uncommon find, because people rent them and hand them back in when they cancel the service. The cable company probably didn't bother to get it back because they now only use digital decoders. It appears to work, but obviously there is no way to test it any more. It is connected to a mid 80s Phlips, along with a late 80s VCR.

I also have a mid 70s Tandberg Delta gun-set with a early 70s Tandberg receiver (only dial lights working) and a late 60s telephone on the top of the TV.

So, do any of you here have some accesories to make your old TV setup look more time typical?

When my Motorola 9VT1 black and white roundie was working, I had a Blonder-Tongue UHF converter connected to it. I still have the converter and the Motorola TV is awaiting a ballast tube replacement.

I have the matching VTX-100EC tuner for my Sony KX20PS1 Profeel monitor, a Pioneer LD7000 laserdisc player (1983), and a couple of Sony Betamax VCRs (but no 80s VHS VCRs).

Do 80s games systems and home computers count? I'd guess a lot of 80s TVs (and older, many kids got the hand-me-down TV to use for their games) spent a lot of hours hooked up to an Atari 2600, NES or Commodore 64.

I've got a collection of old consoles and computers. A while back I picked up a Japanese model Hitachi 14" set in a red plastic case to match my Japanese Famicom, later I found a National "Action" 8" set (also red). These Japanese sets are absolutely useless here for anything other than being hooked up to other Japanese gear.

Those Jerrold analog boxes were in use here up in until last year (the network may still be going in some areas). The cable company here didn't really bother to collect them when people disconnected so I used to find them every so often.

If you hook it up it should power up with a "DISCONNECTED" message from the last network it was used on. If it doesn't show a disconnected message and lets you flick through the channels someone may have modified it.

If you search around you should be able to find some information on modifying and reprogramming them. You could use it as a tuner for over the air channels if you activate it. I may still have some of the old files on my old computer, but I don't know if that kind of stuff is allowed here.

The network here used channels 1 through 57. Every so often flicking through the unused channels 58 through 99 I'd find something weird. One night I found a camera pointing at a vectorscope in a control room somewhere.

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It looks like a "550" series box. They have a mono AV output. I've seen a few with a add-on stereo adapter mounted in cutout for the talkback adapter, but it's still only mono taking it's signal from the existing mono output.

A test chip for these is just a 12c508 PIC programmed with the right code which is probably still out there on various websites.

Back when I had cable TV in the early 1990's, one channel way up above the others had a view of a spectrum analyzer.

Does anyone have one of those old brown plastic 2-piece cable converter boxes with the long wire from the box to the remote unit with a LONG row of buttons and an A-B-C rocker switch? Can't remember the name, but every affluent house had one in the early 80s.

Charles

I don't know if I still have it, but I did have a Jerrold wired remote control. It sounds similiar to the cable box Charles describes. One half is a metal box that sits on the tv and the other half, connected by a l-o-n-g cable, has a push button tuner. There was a VHF-only model but I think mine had a thumbwheel dial for UHF. Mine never worked right-dirty contacts, I think. The story of how I got that: when I was about 13 years old I would hang around this little antique store in town owned by an older couple. One Saturday the lady had me tag along with her to an auction, my first, and I helped carry stuff to her van. She asked what, at the sale, I would want as payment for my help. They had a great late thirties RCA console with a magic eye and she probably would have bought it for me, but instead I went with the Jerrold. From magazine articles I found they dated from the seventies.

I also have a Teknika wireless remote control box, infrared. No remote-someday I'll have to play with a universal and see if I can make it work.

Back in the 50s and 60s here in Italy many people had their TVs hooked to a "mains stabilizer" box, that was basically a saturation stabilizer, and was needed to protect our TVs from dangerous mains voltage fluctuations that were the norm back then

The "stabilizer" usually also worked as a step-up transformer to use standard 220v sets on lower mains voltages (some rural areas had 110v or 160v mains voltages until the late 60s)

I still remember that buzzing grey box on the floor under my aunt's 50s Telefunken set... it was still there until about 1986 when the old Telefunken was sent down in the cellar and replaced by a color set...

Francesco

I had one similar, two different versions actually. both had a unpainted box that the cable in and tv out conected to, the box was about the size of a cigar box, and one actually had tabs on the side to screw to a wall. attatched to that was the long brown wire that went to a detent style side switch that went from 2 to 36. it had the numbers on the front and a slide below it, as you clicked down the row the light behind the slider would illuminate what numer you were on, and there was a manual fine tuning thumbwheel on the far right. The other type i got later on had the similar box, but had the pushbutton 2-36 with auto fine tuning. I remember the first slide style box i had used to get very hot (the slider end not the atual box)...dunno why. from there in 91 i got a cable ready VCR (still 1-36), it was a sears special deal fir 199 bux, did timer recording and had a remote-SOLD. still have it today, had to replace the drive belts and it only gets up to 36 on cable, but it works.

I have one of those Teknika's, plus it HAD an "extra custom board" (parts long since reclaimed) and IIAC the beat up remote is still around here somewhere.

Here in Brazil those devices had a lot of use as well...from the 1950's to the 70's, and even as a kid growing up in the 80's I saw those things being used in many homes...the electric services, as well as the water supply services here in the 50's were really terrible. In 1954 they even made a music that was one of the hits of that year's Carnival, making fun of this. In Portuguese the lyrics make a rhyme, it said:

"Rio de Janeiro/
Cidade que me seduz/
De dia falta água/
E de noite falta luz."

Which translated to English means "Rio de Janeiro/A city that seduces me/During the day there's no water/And at night there's no light."

For those who are curious, on the picture below there's a picture of one of those stabilizers, under a 1956 Brazilian TV set. Both belong to a friend of mine. I have one of those stabilizers myself - I believe mine to be from the 60's or 70's - and it's not as cute as that one. I found mine on the dumpster. It still works, although It makes kind of a big noise.

Quote, So, do any of you here have some accesories to make your old TV setup look more time typical?

How about a red Western Electric Bell System Property NOT FOR SALE Trimline phone, probably mid 70's It even has a mechanical bell ringer!

I still got to have a vintage "rabbit ears" antenna to put on top of one of my sets.

The one i have doesn´t. The only connections are the antenna in/outs. It doesn´t work the way you described either, so i guess it is modified or (most likely) broken. I can´t get a signal to pass through it at all. There is a good possibility that it may have been hit by lightning at some point.