First find for '08: early '70's JCPenney color portable
 

A friend picked this up at the dump last night. When I first saw it from a distance, I thought "tube color portable!" It turned out to be a 12" solid state color JCPenney (Panasonic) set model 2874. The Sams is 1395-1 from 4/74. Upon inspection, someone cut off the cord where it goes in the back. I connected my cheater cord and the set came to life with a picture; but, has some vertical problems. I'm sure some caps will take care of it. The set does have instant on and uses a low focus voltage delta gun CRT. The CRT reads about 45% on all three guns. Not bad for a 34 year old set with instant on! Of course, the VHF antennas are broken and there is some wear to the chrome trim. I think this is the oldest Panasonic built solid state color TV I've seen. Does anyone else remember these?

Cool set. THe oldest solid state set I've seen or worked with was a 68' hitachi that is now in the hands of vintagecollect. The set was all stock and working well. The only problem was that it had instant on as well and the CRT was really tired.

There's another strange thing about this set. It has a 75 ohm coax cable input. I find that weird for an early '70's portable. A great deal of larger non cable ready sets up into the '80's only had the 300 ohm screw connectors.

OK, I got it working pretty decent. I changed some caps in the vertical circuit and cleaned the tuner and controls. I can tell the tube is getting tired; but, not bad for a 34-5 year old set. The streaks in the picture are not there in real life.