Picked up my first Color Tube set-for only $1!!!
 

I found a GE Portacolor!!! Model WM212HWD-4 with an H-4 chassis. Sorry guy's, no pictures.(I'm on my iPod) Not sure of the year, but the set dosnt have Portacolor written on it and it does not have the clicker style UHf tuner. Anyways this set's actually pretty clean, after some cleaning... No major scratches, no real cosmetic issues.
Inside it was dirty. I cleaned it up and made sure everything looked ok. It looked good, no signs of being baked or even any monkeying around either. I slowly powered it up, and other than the CRT taking its sweet time to light, it works and has no major issues. Filter caps stay cool. Tested the tubes as well and all test in the middle of the good range. For a doller and a few hours of tlc, I've got a nice set.

Now, how I found it. I've been interested in picking one of these up for awhile now, but haven't been interested in eBay prices. I've seen enough of these sets in photos to know what to look for if I saw one. Well, this morning I spotted it on an auction house(that I sometimes go to) website. Wasn't planning on goin to this auction but the back of this little tv looked interesting. Looked like a porta, but all they showed was the back. Went over there and sure enough. They all thought it was a black and white set and nobody wanted it! Oh-well!!! There ya go, doller well spent!

Anyway's what's there to restoring one of these? All I see are 2 paper caps and then of coarse, changing the lytics. Also, is there anyway to adjust focus? Just curious for now, still have other sets ahead, radio's included.

I would just change the few "white" caps. 'lytics should be fine.
If there is no focus control there may be a jumper but they usually
have no effect. A few screen shots may help as far as focus goes,
we may see something else.
Good catch & price !

73 Zeno:smoke:

Geeze, can't argue there! Great score!!!

Good Job on the rescue. No telling what could have happened to it. 1974 model I beleive

Thanks guy's. 74' huh.. Cool! I figured it'd be in that range. I just thought 71-75, because i've read that 71' was the first for the H-4 chassis, and 75/6 was when they got the clicker uhf tuner's. When did they lose the "porta"? because mine just has color written on it.

White caps, mmmkay. Those were the papers that I mentioned about, only saw 2 in the whole set. Are all the other (beside's the ceramic disks) caps in these reliable?
Also was wondering, If I leave the lytics, and use the set, what signs should I look for if they start getting leaky, before blowing something?

After watching some more, I think the focus is about as good as it will be for a portacolor. I watched the news on it this evening, and could still read the news bar at the bottom of the screen that scrolls.

Set does have a few issue's. The contrast control is very ineffective. and the picture is tinted blue. Even when the color is turned off, it has a blue tint, and if watching a wide screen program, the bars arent black. Other than that it's good. Had it on for 1.5 hour tonight at 115v. and was real stable. Get's pretty hot though. I'm suprised the plastic backs arent weak on these, and don't break when carried by the handle on the top.

Got a couple of pictures. Better one's will come later. This thing is not easy to photograph a good image of the crt, when on. It alway's looked like crap on the camera. Never had such an issue with the b&w set's. The one pic, really emphasis'es the bluish tint...wow, I got a lot of crap on that desk...

~WOW~ That is the exact model I had ! I was beginning to think that those flat sided
knobs were something I was remembering from a different set ! Mostly because I saw
Portacolors posted here with the same tuner setup cabinet and all, but with the round
knobs ! - Good to know the 17 brain cells that remembered the flat sided knobs are
not crazy..... My other 89 brain cells were in serious doubt..... Nice TV Good Score !

.

Greyscale adjustments for the H-3 chassis - likely the same for the H-4

http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/...psuffp3grf.jpg

A dollar! Dang, that's tough to beat, nice score.

I got my H-3 chassis PortaColor for free - a curb crawl, and it worked from the start!

http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...52&postcount=8

Brian comes through again !
Do the grey scale first & see how it works.
Contrast could be AGC setting or a weak tube
anywheres from tuner-IF-video chain. Or something else.

Trouble with these & most compactron sets is when
they get miles on them tubes get "a little" weak.
You can often change the tubes one at a time & see
small improvements as you go. Trick is to find the ones that make
a big improvement otherwise you will go broke.
Even in the day they were patched up to run again.
Making an older one work perfect cost too much.
One easy test is running the set without a signal. It should
give a snowy pix with dots ( not streaks) for snow & good
contrast. Audio should have a loud waterfall sound to it.
That can tell a lot.

73 Zeno:smoke:

the best way to date these sets is to look for date codes on the tubes, my portacolor seems to have nearly all original GE tubes, and they all had '67 date codes. some other parts such as speakers and caps can have date codes also. I suspect yours is a fairly early set since the small knobs are all on the far right, and there are exposed screws on the front. the first few model years were like that, with minor color/styling tweaks. Maybe not the first couple model years, but probably 68-69-70ish. In the 70s they started moving knobs around.

That is a very good point. 1974 is a guess based on chassis numbering, N-1 and N-2 were 16" sets just a step up from porta-color and they were introduced in 1971.

The channel knob type on this set was first used in 1966 IIRC but those flat knobs the squirrel refers to were more common on the 1970 and later 16-19" sets.

Of course Im going by a few brain cells myself, probably compromised by all those griplets I soldered on the later small-screen GE's

That's why I said tough to beat, rather than impossible. ;) Similarly, my Trinitron was a freebie, and was brought to me. I gave the fellow my Philips radio in good faith though because he said he likes it, and I wasn't attached to it.

H-3/HC were 69/70, so 1971/72/72 is the H-4/10HD. The 10JA PortaColor came out in 1974, followed by the 10QA in 1976 or 1977. We know that 10HE tube PortaColors were made as late as 76/77 - Andy has one....

I goe with older date for 2 reasons. Dont remember the switch overs but
they eliminated the 3 screws in the front & changed them
to 2 in the back. Newer ones had a HV focus & and looked
much different.
I remember the N chassis. Didnt see many but never saw one
that worked right even at a few yrs old. Probably the biggest POS
ever built. Makes the portacolor look like a Rolls.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Many of the Porta-color tubes are a buck a piece at the Florida tube place.
I bought a mess of them for my Porta-colors.

Isn't that the one with the 15MP22 CRT? I heard a lot about that jem. :thumbsdn:

Rookie question I suppose, but which place is the Florida tube place?

Thank you!

Other things and history. The GE Porta-Color was the first inexpensive sub $400 Color TV set in the day. It may be crude compared to higher end sets, but this set seems to have been one of the most reliable GE homegrown chassis made. And manufactured for many years, the last tube USA made color TV chassis manufactured. Overall this chassis for many families of modest means, their first Color TV they could afford to buy. I call the Porta-Color GE's finest TV innovation.

Dont remember the jug but it was an evil set. First thing
that went was gears in the tuner indicator. Real Rube Goldburg
stuff. Plastic was crap just like the tuner mounts on the 18/19
sets that would break up. So bad we wouldnt fix that. Dont
know why they didnt sell more, Zenith did well with its 16" sets.
Not a good memory but I would take a free one now.

73 Zeno:smoke:

...

Dats da one! Pure Milwaukeese. I recommend them wholeheartedly. Even their caps are allright. :thmbsp:

I used to buy from them in person when I lived in FL.....The FAWG swapmeets would be held there....Good times!

Hey guy's. Thanks for the suggestion's and info.
I've got a new issue with it now though, and i'm not sure what it did?! I had it running on the bench, at full power now, while making color adjustment's and something let go. Just heard a pop, sort of like a cap blowing it's end off. Not very loud though. Never smelled anything odd though-opened it up right away and never found anything inside either, that appeared bad. Nothing was hot that shouldn't have been. I'm dumbfounded.
I powered it back up with reduced voltage, it's not obviously shorted, (according to the dim bulb tester-lol) but i've seem to have lost reception. No more snow, waterfall sound, just blank raster. Can a tube just pop like that? tube suicide?! idk. Like I said, everything looks fine inside and I didn't smell a traditional burning smell ya normally get after something pop's.

Well I got some good picture's of it, and one shot of it after adjustment before something blew.

more Picture's

Well, huh... It's working fine now... Weird. Anyway's, I checked over some parts with the multimeter, pulled some tubes and re-tested them and still couldn't find anything wrong. Decided to power up again and everything's normal! Could that have been an arc somewhere? Mabey even a tube base arc'ing?

Also, I've got more pics now but that'll have to wait untill I get on a pc.

Could have been tin whiskers on something and it popped one of them off.

I had one where the AGC pot was DEAD SHORTED to ground from a whisker (before I got it)....It killed all video and sound reception and even static A/V noise. A couple of days chasing my tail led me to the pot....I unsoldered and cleaned the pot and it was back to working just fine after that.

The only good whiskers are on house cats!

Tin whisker's huh. hmm, Is there a "for sure" way to find out if a control has them, without dissasembly?

Well, i've got more pics. This time of the gut's:D I'm thinking that my set may be from 1972. Some of the "compactron's" have 72 on them and some other odd #'s. CRT's label also has 72 on it. Also have a pic of the white cap's, are those 2 the only one's? There the only ones i've seen.
Are there any other parts that should be swapped right away? or is it good for now?

Well, I believe I have a HV problem... I'm now noticing the same symptoms my '49 GE has. Seems all good at start up, then starts sizzling quietly, then gets louder. I'm now thinking those snaps I heard may have been arcs. Last time it snapped/popped I saw a few lines appear on the upper right corner of the screen. Looked like a vector style image, then that faded away. Other than that, I've never noticed any oddities on screen. Are these most likely flyback issues? Or is there something else I should check into.
Oh, by the way, I've replaced those white caps.

Take a look in your next-to-last post (post# 30), last picture. The anode connector cup on the CRT looks like it has a burn-through and traces of arcing at about the 11 o'clock position. An arc-over to the metal CRT shield would indeed produce a very loud "SNAP!!":eek: The hissing sound could be from corona there too.

Change those two caps, right away, especially the .1 @ 1KV.
Great pictures! As someone else stated: the HV anode cap, does look like it's punctured.
I'm used to seeing the clear vinyl ones, the other firms used. I used to save the ones from bad tripplers. :D

I allready changed out those caps.

Anyways, the HV anode cup does not have a hole burned through. It's darker, but that's because the wire(that looks coaxle) was rubbed up against it for who no's how long.
I pulled that apart tonight, and it was clean under there. I recleaned it though, just to be sure. I also pulled the side of the HV cage off to get a better look at everything in there. Only thing that didn't look to good was that plastic thing the tube socket is screwed into. The socked showed no signs of arcing, and the flyback itself, looked great. Idk. I'm going to reassemble it tomarrow after work, but I doubt anything will change.

Looks like I didn't read #31 carefully enough.
Run the set in a dark room, with the cabinet removed and the brightness turned down and observe where the arcing is coming from. I could be coming from the screen controls, that are at boost potential. :scratch2:

Well, I put everything back together after some cleaning. Powered it up without the back, and guess what? It wouldn't do it! The HV just made a little noise depending on what was on the screen. Made the most noise when on a blank channel.

Another issue came back though. Same issue when I started messing with the set. No raster at startup,(after 30sec warm) except when the brightness was played with. When the brightness is played with the screen just flashes dimly. After running a bit, it quit having that problem.
Now that's back and the sets not recovering from it. I noticed though, in the dark that it will light the screen dimly, if set low but when you raise it, the image zooms in and raster dissappears. Sometimes (intermittantly) full brightness will reappear and it looks good but diss appears again. As it does that, the HV tube will flash dimly...And you'll hear a little zzzz from it.

I have a general question -- when working on these PortaColors to replace the paper caps, do any of them require extensive disassembly and/or moving the PC board? It seems that while a lot of the underside of the PC board is exposed, portions of it are impossible to get to without removing it.

Also, do you guys lay the unit face-down (propped with blocks & padded material) on the bench to access the PC board?

I only had 2 papers on mine, both towards the rear edge. I was able to reach the solder joints easily with a standard 40 watt pencil iron. And with carefully monuvering you don't really have to pull up the board to reach anything. It's suspended up a little bit at its mounts. As for how I get to it, I just tip the set on its side, and put a little padding down.

Anyway's, thoughts-any suggestions on my current issue? Is something sucking my HV off?

IIRC there is a screw holding down the board....Once it is loose you can move it as needed. I propped mine on it's side for servicing. It may have needed something under it to keep it propped up.

There is a distinct double entendre in that statement......

Ah, you caught that....lol

I was serious though... Hell, should I just crank that hv control up? to up the voltage so it(raster) won't bloom and disappear???
I dont think that would be the proper way, and it'll probable "pop" even more but.....