Hazel, Color episode

[julianburke]

You're saying that color sets had a light like a stereo light on a receiver to tell you that it was a color program. No such animal on any RCA or Zenith that I ever saw or went to school for. It would be a useless item that would cause another manufacturing step that would make the set cost more in manufacturing. Possibly another manufacturer may have done this for a selling point like AFC but this was never a common practice and I don't recall seeing this on any set that I ever serviced. Motorola is one brand that I didn't see often around here and may have had a "color indicator" but if it did, was not used but 1 or 2 years if that was what it was and that was on a tube model.

Are you sure you don't have this confused with that tuning eye Philco used in the late 60's?

If anyone knows of this feature on any RCA or Zenith, I would like to know about it. I have examples of pretty much every RCA and Zenith color sets to 1966 and they don't have it.

[kx250rider]

I know that Magnavox had a color indicator lamp on their color sets until at least '66 or so... And I think Motorola did too, but it may have been a tuning indicator; I'm not sure.

All the color sets had a badge of some sort, with RCA using a rainbow prismic rectangular thing during the 60s that said New Vista Color. I think the only RCA color sets not displaying some kind of color badge were the CT-100 through CTC-4.

None of the RCAs lit up. However, all TVs with doors had a jewel lamp somewhere outside the doors to show if the TV was on by law.

Charles

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I know that Magnavox had a color indicator lamp on their color sets until at least '66 or so... And I think Motorola did too, but it may have been a tuning indicator; I'm not sure.

All the color sets had a badge of some sort, with RCA using a rainbow prismic rectangular thing during the 60s that said New Vista Color. I think the only RCA color sets not displaying some kind of color badge were the CT-100 through CTC-4.

None of the RCAs lit up. However, all TVs with doors had a jewel lamp somewhere outside the doors to show if the TV was on by law.

Charles

Hi Charles,

The RCA CTC-4, CTC-5 door models had no exterior jewel lamps. They did have a lighted channel indicator.

-Steve D.

[old_tv_nut]

I can find a neon lamp in the schematic of one Motorola chassis. It is in the plate circuit of the first chroma IF, which cuts off when the color killer operates.
I can't find anything similar in RCA chassis, except that the CTC-10 appears to have a pair of NE-2s that are used to limit the amplitude of a flyback pulse used for blanking. This pulse also appears to be used to gate the color killer, but it doesn't appear that the lamps would go on or off with color killer action.

[bgadow]

Last year when that Hoffman rectangular color console showed up it was mentioned that they used an indicator that lit up the controls. I think maybe that was what Jeff remembers? That sounds like a great gimmick-I haven't read of anyone else doing it. I do have a Motorola from '69, cheap all-tube model, and it has the indicator. Nothing special to it. I seem to recall mine was burnt out and that I replaced it when I had it apart. Personally I love gimmicks like that but I agree there was no real practical reason for them. The various tuning indicators in use in the late 60s were a good throwback to the great radios of the 30s.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by Steve D.

Hi Charles,

The RCA CTC-4, CTC-5 door models had no exterior jewel lamps. They did have a lighted channel indicator.

-Steve D.

Now that you mention it, I don't remember it either on the RCAs of the 50s. However, they did have them in the 60s and 70s (except CTC-47 which had the black translucent doors ), and in all the late 40s & early 50s consoles with doors. I wonder if that law was still in force, as I read about it originally regarding 1930s console radios. Maybe it changed.

Charles

[julianburke]

Most all consoles that had doors had that little "ON" indicator light.

What I was talking about was the comment that RCA color sets had a light that would illuminate the color controls when a color program was on. --Never heard of it or ever saw one and no one ever made one. Just wanting to know where he got his info from.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by julianburke

...color sets had a light that would illuminate the color controls when a color program was on.

In theory, that would be easily done. Take the color killer control line, and use that to drive a circuit that turns the indicator off when the color killer asserts itself because of no color burst signal present. But you could tell if the show's in color just by looking at the CRT...

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by julianburke

What I was talking about was the comment that RCA color sets had a light that would illuminate the color controls when a color program was on. --Never heard of it or ever saw one and no one ever made one.

Definitely I don't think RCA ever had that. However, I might recall that some remote RCAs (CTC-16?) had some sort of lamp near the color & tint controls, maybe a halo around the remote mic, which would light up green when the TV was powered on by the switch but off by remote. I honestly don't remember clearly. But it rings a loud bell!

Charles

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

...the CTC-10 appears to have a pair of NE-2s that are used to limit the amplitude of a flyback pulse used for blanking. This pulse also appears to be used to gate the color killer, but it doesn't appear that the lamps would go on or off with color killer action.

Those lamps are under the chassis and do glow steadily. The early CTC10 chassis used only one NE2.

[old_tv_nut]

You may applaud whenever you wish to acknowledge my schematic cold-reading talent!

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

You may applaud whenever you wish to acknowledge my schematic cold-reading talent!

Musta been developed during those early years you spent in that underground bunker at Zenith

[old_tv_nut]

School was 50/50 tubes and transistors, but work (1966 at Motorola) was all transistors from that point on.