Scored my First Portacolor! And More!

[fsjonsey]

I have a job working for my College's computer center. The other day, I was on a call with the head of the theater department, helping him hook up a monitor to an 80's lighting control board that was based on an old Tandy computer. The original composite monitor had given up the ghost (bad flyback), so I asked him if he had any TV sets lying around, figuring at least one of them would have a composite video input. He proceeded to take me up a rickety old iron spiral staircase to the prop room. There, there was a large metal shelf crammed with late 60's through mid 70's TV sets, Including a mint looking GE Portacolor. None of the sets had a composite input, so I casually asked him If I could have the portacolor. He said yes, that he going to be cleaning out the props soon, and that I could have anything I wanted. That evening, I ended up loading the Portacolor, a 16" SF chassis GE, a late 60's 19" B&W Magnavox, and a little Japanese made 10" Sears set into the back seat of my Corvair. All sets are tube, or in case of the SF, are hybrids.

The Portacolor works, but is badly out of convergence and has a dirty tuner. It's a 1976 model with a woodgrain cabinet/front panel and a click stop UHF tuner.

The 16" GE SF works, but has "Insta-View", and the CRT was extremely dim when I first powered it up. It's gotten much better after being played for a few hours each day, but is still extremely blurry. Maybe some slight rejuvenation will help... If anyone has a CR57 socket adapter for a b&k 465 CRT tester they would be willing to give up, I'd be very interested.

I haven't tested the Maggie or the little Sears set yet, and I will when I have a chance this week.

Pictures to come.