Sharp model 13K-M100 13" BPC color TV from 1998
 

A few years ago, I went to a small yard sale and the only electronics she had was a lower end Hamilton classroom record player and this 13" Sharp TV with no remote.

I asked her what she wanted for the record player and she said $5, and she insisted that I take the TV for free. I didn't really want it, but I took it. For the past several years, it's been basically a noisemaker in the shop (for listening to the news, etc.) while I work on things. From day one, the picture has always been a little dark.

Today, I pulled it down and programmed a GE universal remote that I had to it, and reset all of the picture adjustments. It was still a bit dark, so I cranked up the G2 control on the flyback.

It looks better, but could stand a grayscale touch-up. This is one of those sets where all of that is done via an on-screen service menu and, fortunately, I found a free service manual online. So, one day soon, I'll pull up the service manual and adjust it.

I wouldn't be surprised if this set looked this way from the factory and I'm sure many TVs, especially cheaper ones, were only "ballpark adjusted" and a proper adjustment would make it look better.

Now, here's the thing that blew me away. I was looking on Ebay, to see if someone had a cheap original remote for sale (not that I really need one) and I did a "completed item search" for this model number. Much to my surprise, a few have sold in the $55 to $115 range.

Frankly, anyone who would pay that kind of money for a 13" BPC or SPC television is lazy and can't be bothered to do a little looking locally, has more money than sense, and has a severe case of the "I've gotta have it now" syndrome.

Yes, I have bought a lot off of Ebay, but it was all stuff that I figured would never show up locally. As far as stuff like this TV, there are still plenty of them out there for no more than $10 and they are often free. Even in this dump I live in, I can find BPC and SPC TVs for very little money and I'd never buy one off of Ebay.

Holy cow!

I found a free manual online, so I was able to go in the service menu and tweak some things. It now looks very good.

That is the first 13" color model that I saw at Costco for less than $50 in the late '90s.

It sold like hotcakes. I can count probably 6 or 7 neighbors who ran one in the kitchen....great picture but terrible cabinet quality.

I've been offered a few. Might take the next one. I still have at least 3 Sharps from the 80s. Good strong Toshiba blackstripe tubes in those.

Oh, yes, those Sharp cabinets that would become brittle and literally fall apart, leading to a potentially dangerous situation. I've junked a few Sharp sets that were in working order, but the cabinet was crumbling to pieces.

Yes, sadly these all became a race to the bottom in terms
of quality. We all know Sony was not even immune--the late 90s and 2000s huge trinitrons had such bad cabinets it was almost criminal.

When I get enough courage, I want to really dig into my storage and find a 1977 Sanyo 19" color in the steel cabinet.

You may have seen this model, also common under the Sears name. Rotary tuner, beefy TO-3 HOT, but not a modular chassis. It has a mainboard, with an additional power supply board containing a full wave bridge. Best part is that it is an early inline with simple convergence. You could get them perfect.

Now those were a cheap set done right.

I used to see a lot of those Sanyo/Sears "tin can" sets, in both touch-tune and rotary tuning. I've even seen one or two with the single-knob varactor tuner.

Sony had a big black XBR set that had an exploding back. They hung about 20 lbs of speakers on it. Pull the back & everything was in little pieces on the
floor. Part NLA. I headed off a few more at the door. The corner screws
were already mostly broken out. One more snuck in & another tech opened it
& it exploded. I wouldnt take one in. I told them to bring it SFS & scream
bloody murder. 5 yr old TOTL set junk.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Hey Zeno, how've you been man?
Crazy how they got away with that. My family had a 35" 90s Trinitron and it was impossible to move. The sides actually felt like 2 liter plastic coca cola bottles.
Personally, the only Sonys I would pick up after the early 80s are the PVM monitors. Sad how shortlived some of those CRTs were though.

How times have changed. I had a Sharp 12" b&w portable TV back in the early 1970s which seemed to have been built like a tank, nothing like today's HDTVs. Mine had almost the entire set on a PC board (except the CRT, volume control, tuners and loudspeaker). I used that set about three years, IIRC, with not even so much as five minutes' worth of trouble (it still had all its original tubes when I finally put it in storage), then I replaced it with a color TV....and did not look back.

Your family's 35" Trinitron sounds like it was built like a tank as well, except for the sides of the cabinet. If the set was "impossible to move", however, the 35" CRT must have weighed close to the proverbial ton (if the set still used a conventional picture tube; some TVs still used such a tube by the 1990s--flat displays did not replace conventional tubes until flat screen TVs all but replaced standard sets, perhaps in the late 1990s).

BTW, I am expecting the flat-screen TV I have now, a 32" Insignia HDTV, to last me somewhat longer than any CRT television I have ever owned in my life. I bought the Insignia set about two years ago, IIRC, and it is still working as well now as it did when it was new. However, my HDTV, like all flat screens, is very delicate. I had a very close call with it a few months ago, when it fell on its back cover; the TV operated well after that (and still works well to this day), for which I am grateful, but had it fallen in the other direction......sheesh! I hate to think of it.

I have a couple of sharp TV's one is 94 13" set that recently got and came with remote. My school was throwing it asked me if I wanted tv alnog with a VCR. The other set is 95 19" TV/VCR combo. I have not tested the two sharps yet so I don't if they work.


Speaking of cheap cabinets on TVs the worst one I have encountered that my dad had was a funai TV rebranded as Sylvania from 2004. The tv was 27" when you tried to move it you would think the tube would was going to fall out of the tv. The TV about a year ago lost vertical and just had a white line. I have no desire to fix a funai special TV. I swapped the tv out for 24" funai CRT TV from 2005 that I had in storage. my dad has been using for over and even thow it's a cheap funai it has already out lasted most peacie junk TV's that are made today.

That set with no vertical sweep could be caused by something as simple as cold solder joints on the vertical output IC. If that's not it, the vertical output IC is likely bad and the feed resistor that supplies B+ to the IC is likely also open. Usually, the IC fails because of a bad 100uf or 220uf boost cap that is located close to the vertical IC. Usually, when that cap starts to fail, you'll notice foldover and/or white lines at the top of the screen. As cheap as those Funai CRT sets are, they still hold up better than many flatscreen TVs.

Those were bad, even worse was an RCA from 2005ish. Made in China, nothing to do with previous Thomson sets - think they had licensed off the RCA name by then. The cabinet reminded me of a milk jug it was so thin and flexible.

I got so that I would not even accept those later RCAs for repair. Bad flyback transformers and HOTs were the norm, along with weak CRTs, bad tuners, vertical sweep failures, bad tact switches, and weird problems that were often hard to diagnose.

[QUOTE=dishdude;3242682]Those were bad, even worse was an RCA from 2005ish. Made in China, nothing to do with previous Thomson sets - think they had licensed off the RCA name by then. The cabinet reminded me of a milk jug it was so thin and flexible.[/QUOTE

My grandma had 27" flat tube funai from 2007 and buttons on the front panel were sho cheap the broke. The tv was new enough to have SDTV tunner in it. She downgrade to a new Samsung TV and gave the funai TV to my parents and we used it for many years.