Black and White and Red-- LED channel display..!

[Whirled One]

Y'know those odd B&W portables that Zenith made for a little while in the 80's that had frequency-synthesized tuning and random-access channel keypads..? There have been a few threads here in the past that have mentioned them, but I don't think anyone has posted an actual picture of one. I used to encounter these things fairly regularly at yard sales and thrift stores and the like, but never actually bought one for whatever reason. [It seems like half the time these things have tuner/controller problems though.] Anyway, I hadn't seen one of them for probably 5 years or so... until today..! It's one of the 12" versions of this set (Zenith also made 19" models of this type as well) Yes, as shown in one of the photos, the price was a whopping 97 cents (marked down from $2.97). Found it at a Goodwill store in another city while on a little car trip today. It's a BT124W made in December 1983 in Zenith's Taiwan plant. It's pretty clean and in good condition except that the original telescoping antenna is gone (not just broken off, but completely removed..!). I might have a suitable replacement around somewheres. A bit more troubling though is the fact that the face of the CRT has a scratch that's deep enough to catch a fingernail on.

Couple of random odd things I noticed:
- The antenna input is just one pair of 300-ohm terminals as a combined VHF/UHF input. I'm sure that's because this set doesn't have the usual separate VHF and UHF tuners that other sets of this ilk normally have (the tuner itself just has one (75-ohm) input), but it does seem kinda weird on a 12" B&W portable. It just so happens I have the Zenith service manual for this set, and while there's no photo that shows the antenna terminal block, there is a line drawing which shows two pair of 300-ohm screw terminals. Also there's an actual photo of the back of a 19" version of this set, and it does have the usual two pair of screw terminals, so apparently at least that model had a VHF/UHF combiner built into the input balun.
- Zero points to Zenith for ease of disasembly on this thing. Removing and reinstalling the back from this set involves a lot more fuss than it should. There are only four screws to remove, but after removing the screw that holds the antenna terminal block/balun, you have to (a) lift and tilt the entire terminal block/balun assembly *out* from the back of the cabinet, (b) carefully rotate and manipulate the entire assembly in such a way that you can push it back *in* to the set through the mounting hole, and then (c) slide the line cord strain relief out of its mounting slot. *Then* you can remove the back of the cabinet. Reassembly requires the reverse of this procedure, including fishing the terminal block/balun from inside the set and pulling/manuvering it all the way back *out* through the hole just so you can push it back in position in its place on the the cabinet back. This all doesn't sound too bad, but it's made more difficult by the fact that there's not much slack in the coax line that goes to the tuner. Why they couldn't have had the terminal block mount against the 'inside' of the back cover like most other plastic-cased TV sets like this, I don't know. Granted, by the time this set was made, a 12" B&W TV would be pretty much considered "disposable" once it broke, but this was a top-of-the-line model that perhaps someone would have bothered having repaired.