RCA Colortrak 2000 (CTC-131) inop.

[Red October]

Sigh... This is long.
My old TV, a Thompson-made RCA, was getting on in years and the tube was getting, well, crappy. Picture fuzzy, badly overscanned, etc. So this resulted in a trip to the TV shop. $20 bought me an American-made RCA Colortrak 2000 with the CTC-131 Chassis. It had been abandoned by its owner after having the picture tube (or should I say "kinescope", as RCA still called it then!) changed, and was partly disassembled, though the TV shop man made all the connections for me, not that I could have screwed it up, as everything is keyed in that set anyway. Upon getting it home and assembling it, I discover that it doesn't turn on. When you plug it in, you can hear the caps energize, and the big cap in the power supply does give 167 volts (and big blue sparks if you're careless with your meter!), and there is +5v at the switch (which works), as best as I can tell, it doesn't power up. Some Q+A at Badcaps (read the thread here: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5048 if you feel like it) seemed to have narrowed it down to either a dead microcontroller or bad solder joints in the control box. Trying with a remote with or without the keypad hooked up did nothing, as did disconnecting the remote sensor and trying the keypad. Anything else I can do here, or is it time to seek out a new Micro for this set?

[radiotvnut]

Does that set use an MTT series tuner/system control module? It's a large metal can that is mounted beside the chassis. The antenna connections are on this can. If it has this part, unsolder and remove the metal cover and resolder all of the wirewrap stakes and the connections where the cables plug in. Also, change any electrolytic caps inside the module. Those MTT modules were high as a cat's back years ago; but, they can often be repaired by doing what I just suggested.

[Red October]

It has a two-part syscon module on the left of the chassis. One side has close to a dozen connectors on it, and a wire-wrap line going to the keypad. The other side has more connectors and the VHF/UHF inputs on it. When you say "resolder" should I actually get some desoldering braid and replace the solder, or is it safe to just heat up the joint with an iron so the solder flows back in -I heard they made a lot of cold solders in these modules, so I would assume making a propper joint (by heating the metal, not the solder) would help things out. Am I right?

[andy]

You don't need to remove the old solder, but you need to add some new solder. There are also several caps in there which are almost always dried out. That fixes a lot of them. If it still doesn't work, you should know that these tuners are difficult to repair.

[julianburke]

Didn't I offer a CTC131 complete working chassis here before for $25pp? Not one reply on it. Julian

[Red October]

Do ya still got it?

[julianburke]

I'll look and see.

[Red October]

Thanks!

[julianburke]

No longer have it.

[Red October]

Nuts. Thanks for looking!