1981 Montgomery Wards Portable Color TV

[compucat]

Originally Posted by Captainclock

I did look up the A7R code and the furthest back the code goes with Orion is 1982, whereas my TV is from 1981 so I'm wondering if maybe the code belonged to someone else prior to 1982, but then Orion got the code in 1982?

Also I have been trying to leave this TV on for about an hour or 2 at a time to try and "wake up" the picture tube but it doesn't seem to be helping it any, it still has to have the brightness control turned all the way up in order to get a viewable picture, otherwise the picture is so dark that you can barely tell that the TV is on, the contrast and the color is good yet, just the Brightness sucks for some reason, and I'm hoping that the Picture tube isn't about shot because that would be a little strange for a low hours TV like this one was, unless the picture tube they used was known to go bad prematurely, then that would be a different story, but still disappointing none the less.

Small screen CRTs generally last a long time. You might see if there is a sub brightness or brightness range control on the board somewhere. Even a G2 control (often located on the flyback) may help to increase brightness. Just watch for retrace lines. It may be a low hours set because the brightness range was never set quite right from the factory and it didn't get used much because it was so dim.