What a beast

[Jon A.]

Set was a basketcase and is long gone.

[sampson159]

those crts are pretty damn good.produces a really fine picture when they are good.the electronics are ok.we had a few back in the day and they seemed to be good quality.they were sold at a high end electronics store here

[Jon A.]

I'm home today playing with the set as winter won't leave us alone, having dealt us a "weather bomb", and my store closes when there's a lot of snow. Lots of fools at the grocery store last night preparing for armageddon; I was just getting some food as we needed some, and that store is probably closed or will be closing as well. I'm tellin' y'all, as much as I like winter, I'm ready to give it the proverbial middle digit this year. On the other hand, I was wiped from hauling this set home yesterday and having to do that bit of shopping afterward so I was glad to be able to sleep in today.

The TV looks a little better now that I scraped the paint off with a penny. The CRT cover is missing its screws and is taped on, and I don't think there were any original screws in the back, there were a bunch of different screws. The screws I saved from a junked late-model RCA console ought to do fine. Looks like birds were perching on the CRT cover as well, yuk. Someone defeated the AC interlock, leaving a ratty cord hanging out of it, disconnected on one side. Kind of dumb as a label very close to where the cord goes in indicates a hot chassis.

Got to try to make this sad, scruffy beater live again. Lots of detailing to be done first. My Zenith was practically mint when I got it; call this one penance I guess.

Update: I found a pic of a very similar unit in a June 1975 newspaper along with some model numbers. I also added a pic of the set with the paint spots removed. My set has a couple of loose plug-in wires, one of them green and leading to the power/volume control; hopefully someone can provide me with service information so I can get these wires hooked back up. I couldn't match the model numbers for what I believe are the consoles in that ad on the Sams site.

[Electronic M]

If it's a model that was only sold in Canada or if they changed the numbers across the border then getting good service info from Sam's is going to be difficult if it is even possible....

It is a pretty neat set though. That's a rare enough bird that I'd have a hard time parting it out unless the cabinet had rotted to mush.

[zeno]

None of the model ##'s are in Sams. See if you can
find a chassis #, something like A4LXU, NP3SX etc.
I can claw through a few yrs of Sams & see if I can
find a similar set tomorrow. IIRC the seperate green wires
were grounds & prob will work without it.
Looks like the only place you will be going tomorrow is
snow shoveling..........
My oldest is a meteorologist & said you may never see a
bigger winter storm. We missed this one phew.......

73 Zeno

[Username1]

Well It looks crazy to me..... Looks like the chassis was made in different departments, everyone dropped off their work, some guy attached it all to a long chassis, and oh, yah, by the way it's in a tv now.....

Be interested to see how she works.......

Yah, lucky you and the "love you" snow storm from Mother Nature on the what 6th day of spring.....

[Jeffhs]

Your TV is very unusual, to me anyway. I never knew Hitachi made console color sets until seeing the pictures of yours; I hope you get it working. If you bring it up very slowly on a Variac you should be OK; just be sure to watch for signs of overloading such as smoke and/or sparks. Your set may need new filter capacitors as well, but if you just want to find out if the TV works at all, the slow power up with the Variac is the way to go.

Since Canada still has some analog TV stations still operating after switching to digital a couple years ago (so I've read here), you should be able to watch a few stations before having to use a cable box for everything, as many cable operators have required us in the US to do. (VK member Radiotvnut in Mississippi comes to mind, as the cable company in his area has done just that; a lot of cable operators are following suit to free up bandwidth for other services, such as broadband Internet, telephone, etc.)

As to the weather, it looks like your storm is the Canadian version of the bucket brigade of snow storms and cold weather events we just had to deal with (and deal with and deal with . . .) until just recently in the northeastern-midwestern US, making this the longest winter I can remember in 57 years of living in this area near Cleveland, except for the blizzard of 1978 which was much worse. I've been seeing the pictures and video of the so-called "Nor'easter Bomb" on NBC Nightly News the last couple of nights, and it certainly looks as if you guys up north are getting hit hard by it! While I don't think this storm is or will be your "armageddon" (the TV news here in the US often exaggerates these things to death in the name of high drama), but you will have to be very careful on the roads if you must be out in that mess. Best to stay in if you can, and get that Hitachi TV working--or at least find out if the set powers up without incident. That the CRT is probably good is a good sign.

Good luck. That set deserves to be saved.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

If it's a model that was only sold in Canada or if they changed the numbers across the border then getting good service info from Sam's is going to be difficult if it is even possible....

It is a pretty neat set though. That's a rare enough bird that I'd have a hard time parting it out unless the cabinet had rotted to mush.

The cabinet is pretty good, some of the veneer is peeling though, around the base especially. That lower control panel door is probably unobtanium, might have to fabricate one. I just checked... damn, that was a Canadian newspaper I got the ad from.

Originally Posted by zeno

None of the model ##'s are in Sams. See if you can
find a chassis #, something like A4LXU, NP3SX etc.
I can claw through a few yrs of Sams & see if I can
find a similar set tomorrow. IIRC the seperate green wires
were grounds & prob will work without it.
Looks like the only place you will be going tomorrow is
snow shoveling..........
My oldest is a meteorologist & said you may never see a
bigger winter storm. We missed this one phew.......

73 Zeno

That storm, mother nature's boot between the legs. We didn't lose power though... fingers crossed. I'm not even scheduled to work tomorrow. I can make today's hours up with more hooks made out of the metal from broken pant hangers. My pic along with my "invention" is going to the big cheese in Toronto. Those hooks normally cost a buck apiece, and I found a way to duplicate them for nothing. Mine have metal clips too, so they hold up better. They're a non-profit and always looking for ways to save money. Anyway, actually we did have a bigger storm in aught 4, dubbed "White Juan" after the hurricane that hammered us the previous fall. Got three feet that time, city was pretty much shut down for four days, a state of emergency was declared and a curfew put in place, everyone off the street by a certain time for snow clearing.

I'll have to hunt further for any chassis numbers, I was already back inside it earlier. There's another disconnected wire that's bundled to another that is hooked up, and I see only one other hookup pin in the area. I don't want to make any assumptions though.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Your TV is very unusual, to me anyway. I never knew Hitachi made console color sets until seeing the pictures of yours; I hope you get it working. If you bring it up very slowly on a Variac you should be OK; just be sure to watch for signs of overloading such as smoke and/or sparks. Your set may need new filter capacitors as well, but if you just want to find out if the TV works at all, the slow power up with the Variac is the way to go.

Since Canada still has some analog TV stations still operating after switching to digital a couple years ago (so I've read here), you should be able to watch a few stations before having to use a cable box for everything, as many cable operators have required us in the US to do. (VK member Radiotvnut in Mississippi comes to mind, as the cable company in his area has done just that; a lot of cable operators are following suit to free up bandwidth for other services, such as broadband Internet, telephone, etc.)

As to the weather, it looks like your storm is the Canadian version of the bucket brigade of snow storms and cold weather events we just had to deal with (and deal with and deal with . . .) until just recently in the northeastern-midwestern US, making this the longest winter I can remember in 57 years of living in this area near Cleveland, except for the blizzard of 1978 which was much worse. I've been seeing the pictures and video of the so-called "Nor'easter Bomb" on NBC Nightly News the last couple of nights, and it certainly looks as if you guys up north are getting hit hard by it! While I don't think this storm is or will be your "armageddon" (the TV news here in the US often exaggerates these things to death in the name of high drama), but you will have to be very careful on the roads if you must be out in that mess. Best to stay in if you can, and get that Hitachi TV working--or at least find out if the set powers up without incident. That the CRT is probably good is a good sign.

Good luck. That set deserves to be saved.

First I need a variac. I'm pleased about the response so far for an early solid-state set that isn't a Zenith. I have seen many Hitachi color console sets, even passing up a cheap '84, but I hadn't seen or heard of anything this far back.

I still have analog cable service, it came with my cable internet. The channel indicator is so grungy that I had to shine a flashlight through the window to see what channel it is on. It has a very weird UHF tuner, no detents and it doesn't travel full circle so it's not a continuous tuner either.

I don't consider the storm our armageddon, I'm just poking fun at how most people here overreact to bad weather forecasts.

[Jon A.]

Alrightie, after rooting around from different angles I found two stickers and two casting numbers, the latter being hard to read from the pics so I'll type them as well.

Left side of chassis: 4154203
Extreme right, next to cabinet: 4145561

The smaller sticker is on the HV cage.

When looking at the "last number found" photo I thought I saw something that had burned up in there. Went to check the set itself; nah, just a terminal strip with a thick coat of dust. Someone had that circuit board out before, not screwing it back in properly, so it was bowed out from sitting on top of the retaining clip. That I fixed. This'll be more of a challenge than my Zenith, but that's what I want. As long as it doesn't have major damage I'm good.

Finally, a better view of the chassis.

[zeno]

I found a few manuals that are similar & I still got a few more to
go through tomorrow.
One is like the set in the ad. The other is one of those grotesque
15" consoles on spindly legs. Never could stand the looks of them


Let me know exactly where the loose wires go & I will see if
I can figure it out with what I got.
BTW the UHF looks like a normal continuous tuner, prob bound
up from age.......

73 Zeno

[Jon A.]

I had to lay on the floor (and remove wire ties and tape) to trace those wires, doing so with one hand while holding my flashlight in the other. Feels like working under a car. It's been too long since I did that.

Anyway, the blue wire in that two-wire bundle, which I believe was the one not hooked up (I had the other hooked to that one other pin briefly), goes to the vertical hold control. The orange one in that bundle goes to the board for the Electro APS button, as does the loose green one I mentioned before, got that one wrong. The green wire on the power/volume control goes to another harness which is plugged in, so nothing amiss there. The first pic attached to this post shows the board that one of the wires in the two-wire bundle leads to.

There are a few darker spots on the boards that the camera exaggerates; normal heat from resistors? Not as visible in the scaled-down pics I see. A lot of it is just highlighted dust.

On another note, no problem getting out today, streets were fully cleared. Schools were still closed though; I predict this school year extending into what's normally summer vacation, barring the same kind of complacency I saw when I was in school.

[zeno]

The WRONG schematic shows one end of vert hold to
ground the other (blue wire) to P26 on power supply module.
The PS board is on the side of the left part of chassis.
But it may be totaly wrong on your set !

The set should run without it but roll like crazy.
Maybe loosen the left chassis & take a pix of that board & I can match that up. Also check for any 7 digit ##'s on the PS board
like 2516265. I will wait on that before continuing search.

73 Zeno

[Jon A.]

No 7-digit number to be seen on PS board. There are three boards on the left, one really small. I put pics of these on Flickr along with the other chassis pics so they can be viewed full-size. I tried my best to aim the camera so the flash wouldn't obscure large parts of the boards.

I'm planning to get a good ESR meter soon, so I'll be doing a lot of cap checking before I even try to start this thing. Who knows what spending maybe half its life in that garage did to it.

[ChrisW6ATV]

If the 7552 on the CRT is a date code, it is unusual for having a non-detent-type UHF tuner that late. I am pretty sure my grandmother's 19-inch Hitachi color set that she got in December 1974 had a click-stop UHF tuner. Unless that was a Canada-versus-USA thing at the time.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by KV-1926R

Please excuse the poor-quality photos.

Poor quality??

They are pretty good!! -- I hope you can make something good out of it bud