Attn: TV people
 

I'm looking for volunteers to help increase what the TV forums here on AudioKarma are and can do :)

I have ideas on everything from a tube and Sams co-operative, to having test equipment available for member use, to having a regular weekly TV chat night....we're got over 5,000 members, let's get this thing going :) . Heck, maybe even a raffle for a nice restored Tele-Tone 7" or the like. The possibilities are endless.

Bring your ideas to the table and let's use the resources we've got! Let's put the wheels in motion for the vintage TV aficionados here......how about it guys? :dunno:

Don't know much, ain't got much, but I'm willing to do whatever grunt work you need!

Looks like there are a number of us with piles of schematics, NOS parts, etc. things that might not do us much good but could be shared. I really enjoy this forum; it has helped me to make the most of my hobby & encouraged me to bring home some sets I might not have otherwise.

I have lots of different factory service manuals which I would like to share. I have no way of scanning them but if someone was willing & able to copy them, maybe to put them on the net for anyone to use, I think it would be great. kc8adu just mentioned elsewhere about, what did he call it, flyshare? I think we could come up with one big list of NOS parts & who has them available. This winter I have inventoried the majority of my old parts, including transistors, various transformers/yokes, etc.

This is a growing hobby, and especially when it comes to color sets things seem about to take off. The "book" on color tv right now seems to end sometime in the 50s and there is much to be documented about what happened through the late 50s, the 60s and beyond. Who made what, when, etc. The more we can all work together the more we can advance the hobby we all love.

For me the most important thing is to know, who can I ask. A kind of "who is who" should be created. Who can I ask, if I had problems with weak guns in crt? Who is able to help in tv history? Who is specialist in schematics and circuits?

I'll loan ya my pick-up so you can get all those old TV's to the dump where they belong........... come on, keep up with the times my friends. <------- This is me fighting the urge to have yet another money sucking hobby fit into the Mancave.

I've some Sams' for a lot of the more popular models I would be willing to scan.

Here's an example. I have probably 500 NOS tubes that I'd like to ship to somebody to start an AK tube co-operative, where we can send tubes and maybe on occasion get one we need sent back to us for the cost of ship.

Anybody think that's a good idea or willing to do it?

I have a couple of thousand NOS TV tubes that I am willing to share with anyone that needs them. I also have a couple of thousand used TV tubes. I have quite a few of these in a computer database. Just post tube needs and I am will to part with most of these for shipping costs.

I also have about 100 flybacks, yokes, etc, some in my computer database.

An idea would be to get more people to become aware of this forum via the Internet. I could post a link directly here from my homepage; I get over a million hits a month....

Say the word and I'll be happy to add it.

Steve, that would be excellent, many thanks!

I have as well a CRT tester/rejuvenator available for loan.

This only works if we all pitch in, and if we do......it will be great for all of us. Who'd be willing to organize/coordinate the whole thing? Send me a PM if you'd like to give it a shot :)

A Sam's co-op would be nice But I'd rather they be filed for AK member use online with some printing privileges (but limited so somebody can't go on a tear) or stored and available in a low storage space format like Lizardtech's Djvu because PDF is a hog in that respect. The viewer could be downloaded like on another guy's site who I know.

Stick with PDF. Lizardtech's Djvu is a total waste of time. It's a proprietary format, and not very flexible. Sure, it's a little smaller, but it's not worth the trouble. Also, it means that people like me that use only Linux are screwed. I've got a Djvu file here that I still can't print or view properly. I even tried bringing it over to someones computer that was running windows, and with the proper client, I was able to open it. It refused to print properly, however, generating lines in the printout.

Stick with PDF. The files aren't that big.

-Ian

Not to mention,you don't need ALL of the sams.
 

A LOT of the older sams included a lot of "fluff, and so, it mught be a good idea, to only PDF the vital things, like layouts, schematic, parts lists, and this would probably save a little space.

I also like the idea of a sams co-op, and have a number of them that i probably could lend to the cause, along with some other things,perhaps, like test equip, other literature, etc.

This is true, but who's to decide what's fluff and what's not? I know that personally, I really like having the board layouts with components labelled, especially since the component numbering that Sam's uses isn't always the same as the component labelling used by the manufacturer. A lot of the stuff can come in handy. I say just PDF everything. It's not like disk is in short supply these days, and even for people on dialup, a 10 meg file isn't all that much to download. I downloaded LOTS of very large files when I used dialup. It's not that big a deal. You could, however, break up each photofact, having one file that contained the entire thing, and then one file that was just the schematic and parts list, that way you could only download the part you need. If we archive things together, and set up a repository, and have many people mirror it, then it shouldn't bog down any one server. I've got 10 gigs of disk available on my webserver I'd be willing to loan to the cause.

A community can only survive and thrive if we all help out, pitch in, and work together. If we come up with a plan, and get organized about archiving information, and backup, mirror, and keep that information accessable to the entire community. I wouldn't worry too much about people leeching large groups of files and abusing the system, I mean, we have to trust each other and rely on each other for this to work.

I've got a handfull of photofacts that I'd be glad to scan. Trouble is, that these things aren't the easiest things in the world to scan into a computer. Sam's Photofacts are created from 11x17 paper, and I don't have a scanner that can handle the entire sheet at once. This isn't a problem for a lot of it, what you call "fluff", but the actual schematic would have to be patched back together in the computer. We need to come up with a system, a standard and a protocol to digitize and catalog information. Once we have that, then anyone can contribute.

We'll make this work. We just need to do a lot of thinking and a little planning.

-Ian

Sams are difficult to scan. I've never tried doing it in PDF, I'm assuming you need the Adobe program to do that. I think I might have it somewarez but I'll have to look.

They can also be done in plain old .jpg like this one I have on my site:

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/schem/ts4j1.jpg

This is only one half of the basic schematic and it takes up 275K

I also have a few flybacks and yokes and stuff i could add to the parts database.
I think most of them are for oddball mid-late 50's stuff so I don't know how useful it would be.

Elsewhere there has been a discussion of copyright issues and Sams. Would be worth checking in to before going too deep.

Those things can be sorted out for sure.....and whoever wants to take a crack at that is more than welcome to, just let me know how AK can help make that happen.

The co-op, if anyone's interested, is something we can do right away. I may even be able to swing a top-notch tester to the person willing to give it a run. As well, sure would be nice to have some sweep and signal generators, and associated test gear to make the rounds amongst our TV kin. Again, AK can help.

While we're not loaded here, I would like to be able to make some of our funds available to dedicate to this project. I'd even be willing to get a nice set for a raffle if someone would be willing to donate the repair services.

There's a standalone browser if the plug in doesn't work, vice versa, by the way. Just FYI. What version of Linux are you using? You obviously don't recall having to reverse engineer CP/M to get it to run on this brand or that, and sometimes models within a brand before Win 1 came out and MS demanded the end to hacking your own software copies. If you don't see the good of Windows, it did bring a common functionality and less confusion to an early PC world, and it introduced the EULA as we now know it, whereas before software was thought to be owned but now it's LICENSED and REVOCABLE. Big change.

Before you get up in arms about all that, I prefered my time at an HP 3000 compiler to DOS and almost thought to learn Cobol or Fortran. Almost.

I did not touch a PC until after 1985, but started in 1979 or 80 on TRS-80 model 1 4k no DOS (cassette) and terrible keyboard that always stuck, then a day with a Commodore then Apple II family then HP 3000 in college..

I wasn't aware of a Linux version of the client. I know that the Mac version didn't work worth a darn over here. Also, chances are, if there is a Linux client, it isn't distributed as source, which means that I'm not going to be able to run it on some of the boxen here (PPC, Alpha, etc). I actually use several variations of UNIX - MacOS X, Linux, IRIX and Solaris. (not to mention all the other weird OS's on the really old machines I have...) For Linux, I typically use a hacked up version of Debian, where most stuff is installed from source, some is installed through apt, kernel compiled by hand with no unnecessary components, and a handfull of homegrown stuff.

The point I was trying to make was that it's a pain to deal with weird, proprietary formats. Some might argue that PDF isn't open enough, but it's definitely the best tool for the task at hand. PDF readers are easily available for all platforms, as are tools to create PDF. PDF rendering is pretty fast, and the cross compatibilty is excellent. Also, they print without too much fuss with resizing. Now, I don't know how that's going to work with 11x17 paper though. I have an HP Laserjet 5siMX, and it'll print on 11x17 paper, but most printers won't. I don't remember offhand how well things will come out if the source PDF has an 11x17 schematic, and it's printed onto 8 1/2x11. Resizing it to fit on the smaller paper would make it illegible, and splitting it in half makes it a pain to patch together where the printer seperated it.

Point being, PDF is nice and established and it works. Djvu, while I'm sure I could make it work, I don't think jumping through hoops is the way to go.

-Ian