Motorola "works in a drawer" color set wanted
 

Many Years a go I bought a Mototola "works in a drawer rectangular color
TV" It wasn't a great set, but is was small and decent. I seem to recall it may have been partially solid state.

I would like to acquire one for my collection, Don't think I have seen one
on Ebay either, Somebody out there possibly can provide a lead or has one to sell. Thanks

What does that set look like?,I don't think I've ever seen one before.

I googled it and found a video of a 1970 Quasar works in a drawer tv and it just looks like an ordinary console set..why is it called "works in a drawer"?
I was expecting the screen to fold down into a cabinet!

Because the chassis slides out the front, like a drawer. These sets were designed using modules that could be replaced for easy service. The first WID models, which were branded "Quasar" by Motorola, came out in '67 and were fully solid state (except for the HV rectifier tube). Actually, these were the first solid state color TV's that were sold in the US.

There were also tube/transistor hybrid versions of the WID sets. There were still some WID sets built, even after Matsushita bought the consumer electronics division of Motorola in '74. I think the WID concept was phased out by 1980.

"radiotvnut"
Thanks for the explanation,I thought it folded up!
Why did Motorola change it's televisions brand name to Quasar?

Quasar started out as a name just for their modular TV chassis. In 1974/75 Motorola decided to get out of the consumer electronics business and sold those lines to Matsushita (Panasonic.) The Japanese company changed the name of the business to Quasar.

There have been a couple people on VK in the last 6 months or so talking about these sets, maybe one is available? I still have a few chassis' for them, so far unclaimed. rcafan, what part of the country are you in?

The Quasar brand name for Motorola TVs was invented by the same marketing guru who came up with the "hole in the handle" electric carving knife. At the time, people weren't familiar with the word, usually couldn't remember how to spell or pronounce it exactly (Koohar? Qohar? kwazer?), but it was unique enough that they could recognize it when confronted with the correct name, and therefore could ask about it at the appliance store without confusing it with anything else (oh, you mean "Quasar").

I read in a trade journal the name was adopted because Quasars were starting to make a big splash on the astronomy scene (though first discovered late 50's early 60's). It was a catchy name that lent itself to the space race (like RCA did with the PC boards). Most of the ones I worked on were junk, though better than their EGP predecessors.

Quasar et al wasn't the only works in the drawer set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/3473760...n/photostream/

An old time tech told me that starting in about the late 70's or early 80's most Quasars started having problems with oxidation with the connections on the boards which would create all kinds of problems including intermittant issues (ie set was moved and problem went away for a while). Board replacement was expensive and many sets were junked at that time. He hated working on them because you had to go through all the board connections before you knew if you had some other problem or not. He said some shops would not work on them at all after a while.

For as long as I can remember, Grandpa on Mom's side had a Quasar console TV sitting in his living room. I can remember watching cartoons on it as a kid, and I can remember he was pretty proud of it. Didn't even want to junk it when the CRT started to go south, just kept on running it. The remote for that thing was huge as I recall, never had to worry about misplacing it. Gramps on Dad's side was always an RCA man, we still have the last one he bought- a CTC-169 Home Theater.

Thanks everyone for all the information as to how the name "quasar" came about.

This site is amazing!,so much knowledge.

"Quasar" was a razzle-dazzle moniker much like Zenith's "Stratosphere" of an earlier era. But unlike the Stratosphere radios, Quasar TVs were junk from service/maintanence perspective, primarily with nuisance issues like intermittent connections. Gad, we dreaded having to work on them and to having to carry a dedicated module caddy in the truck. The later hybrid Quasars were not as bad as the first gen.

Quasar represented the industry's first major push into modularization (though Setchell-Carlson had been a minor player earlier). Those in the know recognized it as portending the demise of the old and honored craft of discrete-component troubleshooting. The "handwriting was on the wall". That was part of the old-school guys' disdain for them. Bill(oc)

ebay just had a quasar on auction nobody bid on it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/wurly110...67/spZ5X-AAaH8

Youtube video showing a commercial for "Works in a Drawer" I transferred these commercials from 16mm film.

That Heathkit set looks way nicer than the Motorola WID sets!

I remeber seeing an ad for some set, possibly CM? where the entire chassis was removed and replaced with a new unit.
This became common later with sets like the Zenith System Three where the "Motherboard" would get swapped out with a new or rebuilt unit.
I swapped a ton of those out under warranty back around 79 or 80 when they first came out, they were a disaster!

That era Heathkits were built like tanks (you're welcome). The copper (copper-like?) coating on the chassis is so doggone purty and the way the boards are modular reminds me of a moderner (Pat Pend on that word) version of a Setchell Carlson. Very military grade overall.

As many of either know or surmised, I'm more of a tinkerer (especially after too many beers) than a profeshinull smoke reinstaller. Other than connections the weak spot of these sets seems to be the power supply as there's something that's Heath specific and made out of unobtainium. The kits were shipped with this already preassembled...always wondered if that was due to liability concerns or that it was uber tricky to get right.

Sorry for hijacking the thread. :nono:

Pre-assembled so that the HV could not be misadjusted (required for UL listing, I'm sure), the builder was prevented from making rough solder connections that might cause corona, etc. The IF also was a potted pre-aligned assembly that used a complex LC filter, so the builder didn't have the impossible job of aligning without test gear.

I worked for Modan Service here in Knoxville in the late '60's and we serviced only Motorola's and Zeniths. Charlie Duncan, a former Motorola field service rep and Dan Geddings, a Zenith only service guy merged/partnered with Charles Moore who was retired from Graybar (distributor of Zenith products) and it was a rather large operation servicing about a 100 mile radius. I did field work on both models and funny, I never saw any evidence of a Quasar being "junk". I worked on hundreds of them that came in from all over east Tennessee and even taught a regular class on servicing them. I still have my module caddy and the most trouble I had out of most Quasars was the IF/SOUND module with the VERTICAL module to follow. Quasar was a very expensive set of the day to the tune of $800-1000 when a high priced Zenith was about $700.

Like any other brand and the "servicemen" who have not been to any school of like model and get lost in it through not knowing how it works or to properly troubleshoot it, I suppose they would consider it "junk". It was a very revolutionary and timely set that unquestionably set the standard for modular TV's PERIOD. At that time the market was very ready for more reliability and that the set could be fixed quickly and properly in the customers' home. Tubes and soldered in parts were quickly becoming unpopular not to mention obsolete and the handwriting was on the wall for the old tube guys who could not service or adapt to solid state. Also heavy tube sets that could not be fixed in the home had to leave the home and owners often would have heartburn over this fact as sets would commonly come back with scars, scratches & scrapes from clumsy, careless or poor and cramped work spaces. I personally have seen sets with cigarette burns all over the inside of the cabinet from smoker servicemen. Yep, the Quasar was a welcome and timely instrument for the day!

BTW, I found far more intermittents in Zenith module stake connectors than Motorola. The only Motorola set I would ever consider "junk" was their first rectangular set with a 23EGP22 but that model led the way for newer design of delta picture tubes, AND it was a very short lived set and is an extremely hard TV to find nowadays. I have one of those in my collection.

Also, does anyone know why Zenith had handwired sets for so long?? That manufacturing process was a cumbersome and expensive way to manufacture a TV for the day and was obsolete. Zenith touted it as quality, quality, quality in all of their advertising! Quality had virtually nothing to do with it as Zenith did NOT want to spend the money to update their manufacturing process. This is fact and was a very bad idea at the roundtable as it started the beginning of the end for Zenith. Most of their products were always 40-50% higher than comparable products of different manufacture. Too little too late cost Zenith market share and as always in manufacturing there are three little words in the 'biz--BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER and not necessarily in that order. Magnavox was made right here in Knoxville to their end of manufacturing and every year the engineers HAD to come up with designs & ideas that would lower the cost of a set by at least 7% annually. Not really hard to do as new IC's and other components would always come on the market yearly.

HEY FELLOW VKers. Keep one thing in mind! Motorola is still in business!

even thought the picture was bad,my father thought the motorola was electronically advanced for the period.that 23gp22 was sooooo bad.we saw one when we bought the philco.julian is right-it was much more expensive.didnt see many in the shop but there were a few up in german village.service calls were almost always audio problems.with a sylvania replacement crt,that might have been the best set.

A corollary would be Fairbanks-Morse locomotives which gained a reputation as being troublesome, but the truth was revealed by Southern Pacific who used them exclusively on their Bay Area commuter runs and once the maintenance crews became familiar with the differences from EMD or Alco they discovered that they gave superior service. You can't fix a Ford with a Chevy part....hmm, you can't fix a Ford PERIOD LOL

Not in the TV biz ;-) Hell, Studebaker is still in business for that matter: https://www.studebaker.com/name.html

I was just thinking the other day, Zenith, RCA, Magnavox-are just brand names now, the companies don't exist. But General Electric does! What does that say?

Bullspit G.E.
 

:banana:GE is now a French company.....................
Any AMERICAN FRIES AVAILABLE ?????:banana::banana::banana:

Thompson
 

:smoke:Thompson

I once trashed a WID set. It was interesting technology to explore/dismantle. Quite a unique TV. And if I'm not mistaken, it was the world's first all-solid-state color ? I remember the special (expensive?) HV rectifier was solid state and looked like the Seattle Space Needle. It seems it rectified the entire 25kv from H.O.T. with large coil winding (no high voltage Multiplier employed ?)

First large screen color all solid state. The solid state HV rectifier consisted of a stack of lower-voltage diodes. The shape of the fins was designed to equalize the capacitive current and therefore the transient voltage across the individual diodes from the top to the bottom of the stack.

I believe that story about Zenith not wanting to update their manufacturing process. Same reason I keep my old cars, I know them inside out. Reminds me of a story I once read online from a former Chrysler engineer that outlined how the company had planned to keep the 225 6Cyl. alive into the 90's. He concluded at the end, that they just loved that engine, and did not want to spend the money on a new design when they knew all the buggs in the current design, had fixes, and the plant to build them was already built.

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Unless something has happened that me and wikipedia don't know about, General Electric is still a US company. Sure, the TV division was sold off decades ago...but GE survives, making everything from jet engines to nuclear power plants.

I'm not even sure if Thomson really exists anymore? Hard to keep up with it all.

Hard to say who owns who....For the RCA division in my hometown, the facility was Thompson, then part of Burle, and is now owned by a French imaging company. They continue to produce very elaborate imagine tubes typically for military purposes. I've had a few friends who have worked on the line their recently, and talked about how many hours it takes to make a single tube.

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RCA (the name at least) was bought by Audiovox. I think they morphed into ON corporation.

Once greatest name in TV, now a brand selling remotes/accessories in Dollar Stores.

Their most valuable products - not their latest TVs, but their earliest TVs :scratch2:

Works in a Drawer ad - 16mm film transfer
 

Hi:

How did you do the 16mm film transfer. Do you have a pro shop setup? Is there a consumer grade tool to do the same thing?

I assume you've seen this?

http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=250014

i was just going to post that there is a works in the drawer set on ebay but i see the link above , now this set was all solid state , there was no rectifier tube ?

mike

I remember when they changed the huge letters on the top of the RCA building (at Rockefeller Center in NYC) to "GE". I refused to refer to it as anything other than the RCA building (as did most everyone I knew).

that is really really depressing (the demise of companies like RCA/Zenith/Slyvania).

"See a demonstration of the New Solid State (except for rectifier tube) Motorola"