RadioShack 16-236 color tv
 

First tube TV acquisition of the decade, I picked up this 13" television for $15, mainly because it says Radio Shack on it, and has a very strong CRT. It was filthy and had a cracked cabinet. It is now clean and the cabinet has been glued together. It appears to have been made in Malaysia by either Hitachi or Sharp, at the end of 1985.

Looks like a sharp. Good find.

Zeno:smoke:

Thanks! And cool. So far I just tested it at my shop, where I don't have any analog sources. Is it normal for TVs of this era to mute the sound when there is no signal
?

Oops! CRT-solid state. Maybe. I'd check for open speaker first.
I was at an Illwill (Goodwill) drop off point and there was a 19" Linytron there.
The guy saw me looking it over and begged me to take it. He said they were just going to trash it.
I passed on it.

Most dont mute. Some mute pix & snd but leave the OSD on.
Toshiba high end did. It needs a hoz sync pulse to turn on.

Zeno:smoke:

I see this more & more as time quickly accelerates us away from the days when TV's had a dozen or so tubes in them, people calling 1980's and 1990's CRT TVs "Tube TVs", when the only "tube" is the picture tube.

I take no offence, to them the CRT makes it a "tube" TV, in the same way that youngsters calling what we used to call "Albums" or "Records" the newfangled trendy term "Vinyls" don't bother me either.

It's their world now, I'm all for lettin em name stuff as they see fit to......

(Remember, OUR parents weren't all that enamored with what we called stuff either) :thmbsp:

Might have an issue with the sound then. The audio output stage is really weird on this set but should be easy enough to troubleshoot. Hopefully the issue isn't in the large multi function IC, or in the volume control

Lol I just realized I opened with calling it a tube TV. Well the T in CRT means tube, and that's what they seem to call them in advertisements these days. I guess I got swept up in the new way of talking... it is in the solid state forum though. I have plenty of tube chassis TVs too. One thing that has changed though is 10 or 15 years ago I'd have never been interested in a TV from the 80s, because they were still common, but now they just aren't.

On the Sharp labeled sets the key pad was crap. Buttons broke & the
contact mat shredded up. Unhook it & try a remote first.
Otherwise a decent set. I dont think the big jungle IC is bad.

Zeno:smoke:

.

That tv sure looks like a Sharp to me too.... Best way to be sure is to pop it open
and look at the labeling on stuff... PCB & CRT were usually labeled..
I doubt that tv blanks sound when off channel, looks to old for that.
Outside chance it's a Sanyo, Sampo, NEC, or Toshiba.

Linytron's were excellent tv's with long lasting CRT's I have about 6 or 7 of
various sizes. We have a 25" in the bedroom as a daily use set since about
1986 or 7.

I don't know it they actually get this money, but just type in Linytron
into ebay, or Craigs List - those sets always have a high price tag on
them.... If you got a chance to get that one at the thrift store for
little to no money, I would grab it - not long till they are gone
all-together. I use to work at a Sharp satellite repair center
on their under warranty stuff, they made good stuff back
in the 80's.... Simulated Wood Cabinet years were the
best of the transistor tv days....

.

Inside the ICs are all marked SHARP, but the CRT is double branded Sharp and Hitachi, Made in Singapore. Also, the Sams cross references to a very similar but not identical Hitachi branded set. The CRT shows a lot of potential with snow (it's low hours and very bright), I'm finishing off a tedious home repair project before I let myself explore the set further. One thing I can say for sure is I like how light the set is.

.

Yah, I forgot about Hitachi, better guess than NEC, I was thinking of something else.
Hitachi did do a lot of products for other brands kinda like early Sanyo & Toshiba.
Well, the keypad does look like my Sharp keypad layouts.
Anyway you have a nice clean set with a good CRT, it's not like they grow on
trees, one day they will be hard to find....


.

Have had a chance to test it - sound works great, it does mute with no picture. One issue though, is no color. It's got a well converged and sharp monochrome picture but no color at all.

Has anyone got a Sams 2620-2 ? The Sharp 13MM17 seems to have the same color section as this TV (Based on IC X0212CE) , and any documentation would be very helpful in troubleshooting.

IC is probably a Toshiba TA7670 (P).Look for a data sheet.
A Sharp chassis about this vintage had a piston cap in the color
that caused either no color or color bars, dont remember which one :sigh:
Also be sure if it has any tuning mode switches they are in NORMAL
for OTA TV.
Will check for Sams Fri.

Zeno:smoke:

Wow you're good. That's exactly the IC. I've used the Japanese data sheet plus google translate to figure things out so far, but the chassis implementation is slightly different from the data sheet. What is a piston cap, do you mean the trimmer?

Hey thanks again, it was indeed the variable cap in the crystal circuit. I changed it for a 22pf ceramic disk and we have color!

Well done Max !!
Super rare for piston caps to go. They must short, as an open one will still have some PF's Usually see them in tuners & IF. High freq stuff.
Now lets find another set to put on the bench:banana:

Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

This one is probably not a piston, it's a small flat trimmer. I'd say mica but I'd probably be wrong, it looks like the sort of thing you'd find at the input of an FM tuner. Really tiny, the size of an ant. It also didn't short, because it measured open, but replacing it was the acid test. This little set has really nice color and good geometry, I need to find a spot for it where I'm not too close and not too far. I've always thought 13" sets have the best NTSC picture, because they are big enough to see but small enough to always look so sharp.

And thank you! It will probably be a while before i acquire another set, but I'm quite happy with this one. Your well timed advice really cut down on the troubleshooting time, and I really appreciate this!

Update - been watching 80s movies on this little TV, am really enjoying the nostalgia of TV looking exactly as it did while I was growing up. The colors are very vivid, and the picture is crisp, without any noise. It's also nice to have a TV without any buzz in the audio. If I ever see the 19" version of this set for sale, I'm going to buy first, and think later. I wasn't able to find a code on my universal remote, but it might just be too new.

Found a new old stock RCA universal remote from 2000... code 095 operates this TV perfectly.

Cool. You should post a couple pics of this thing in action.

Right now I'm away from home for a while, but here's a photo I took of the board while I was troubleshooting, showing the bad trimmer capacitor.