The dilithium crystals are always the first thing I check. Haven't had a bad one yet! ;-) The tube is definitely strong, despite it having instant on. It's the first solid state set I've had that has it. I'd disable it if I planned on leaving it plugged in, but I have to say that it's really cool to have a set just pop on immediately. No other TV to this day can do that.

What am I missing here! What is a dilithium crystal?
I guess I'm still stuck in the past!

As best I remember, they were a rare material that featured in various Star Trek series.

Yes, two hundred years in the past! LOL, the dilithium crystals were an exotic mineral that more or less powered starships in the Star Trek universe, or at least the energy from the matter/anti-matter engines was funneled through. A continual plot device where they were always in danger of cracking, burning, etc. I guess they never thought of carrying any extras...

John

My brother was in the Nuke business. Worked for Maine Yankee,
Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering. He knows about dilithium.
As soon as the pols figure out how to tax it & create a massive
bureaucracy we will have it. The military already does.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Behold the dilithium. :D

I never was much of a "Trekkie". I worked nights and never saw much Prime Time TV, at the time. :scratch2:

OT, but that may be the best color I've seen on one of those!!

John

Agree with that. All these early GE SS sets were plagued with HOT, FBT
yoke & vert problems. Other than that they ran fine & were a BIG
improvement over the trashy tube chassi. It would be fun to work on
one again.
Oddest thing was the shorted yokes. These sets had the least amount of wire & were wound wide open. I looked at a few shorted ones & couldnt find where.

I was about to post the same.

Off topic related note: I bought a 1996 Nissan Sentra from Honda of Cleveland (Tennessee) some years ago. The financing was through Combustion Federal Credit Union from Chattanooga, Tennessee (Combustion Engineering had a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee). So I was a member of Combustion Engineering's Credit Union. The car was excellent, lasted 140,000 miles until hit from the side, and was reliable. $5000 well spent (and the trade in of one near death Chevy Astro Van, a 1993)

The General spec'd some of the worst pots on the Portacolors & similar sets. Every one I've had, including the later AA/AB and the larger C2/CE had very flaky controls.

I'm very impressed by that picture; I didn't know that CRT was capable of it!

The original portacolors have a tendency to grow tin whiskers and short out their own pots... after a heap of troubleshooting on one that had a dead IF I finally figured out it was the AGC pot and adjusting it with some contact cleaner brought it back.

Zeno, any theories on why they had those issues? It makes me wonder if was bad design, or inferior parts. I also wonder why they scrapped it and kept making the tube chassis after this, when they performed better than the tube ones.

I found an ad that featured both versions, the SS model was $20 higher. Was 20 bucks enough to keep them from selling well?

I'm not sure there's a tube portacolor in that ad... The set says "68% solid state" the tube portacolors only had one transistor in the UHF tuner... unless they are doing some decietfull advertising BS and counting SS diodes against the compactions, and even that doesn't seem mathematically possible, I don't know how they could come up with %68 solid state.