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Old 08-07-2017, 10:40 PM
CPQ5360 CPQ5360 is offline
Florence
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 39
I decided to bite a bullet recently, and bought a "working perfect" Casio TV-1400, mfd. August 1990, on eBay (only because it was part of a lot that included a Sony Watchman). As I predicted, it was totally non-functional (I'll never understand what possesses eBay sellers to declare an item they know nothing about as "perfect working").

This one behaves a little differently, though - instead of the green screen of death, this one simply emitted a horrific full-volume screeching noise from the speaker (volume control did nothing) whilst green lines flickered across a white display. After a few minutes of doing that, now it just shows a blank white screen and no sound, with no tuning indicator or any other sign of life.

I decided to tear into this set, as well as my dead TV-400, and see what they look like inside, and I discovered a commonality between both of them which, for some reason, I didn't expect - quite extensive corrosion. Both sets had what appeared to be just minor corrosion in the battery compartment, but the corrosion of the circuit boards inside is quite severe.

Between this and the fact that I do occasionally find early Casio sets still working normally on eBay, I'm now wondering if the numerous dead sets I find isn't due to age-related failure, but rather damage-related failure. And I wonder if the many on eBay showing the green screen of death isn't simply sellers trying dead batteries in them. Interesting, nonetheless. I'm now more motivated to find a good working early Casio set.
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