Homemade Color Wheel TV

[wa2ise]

If it comes to that, I'd just install a modern small screen color set rather than throw it out.

If he were to do that, I'd have him build a circuit that would sequentially blank 2 of the 3 guns in the color CRT so as to rotate thru RGBRGBRGB. Take the vertical sync pulse from the vertical circuits and build a divide by 3 digital circuit using TTL chips. Use a digital decode chip to convert from the binary divide down count to 3 outputs, only one enabled at a time. This vertical scan output 1 is enabled, 2 and 3 disabled. Next vertical scan 2 is enabled and 1 and 3 disabled. then next scan 3 is enabled and 1 and 2 disabled. Lines 1, 2, and 3 control blanker circuits tied to the R, G and B signal lines going to the video CRT driver amps that in turn drive the CRT. You will need to turn up the contrast to make up for the fact that each color phosper is "on" for 1/3 the original time.

This should give you a good simulation of what a color wheel sequential set would have looked like.