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Old 08-02-2013, 12:56 AM
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radiotvnut radiotvnut is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Meridian, MS
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Last September, we stayed in a motel that had a 25" CTC177 from '99. By then, the CTC203 was already out; so, don't know why they kept the 177 around that late (that one may have been a special motel set). I want to say that even the CTC169 was around until '97-'98 and was used in some of the higher end home theatre TV's. I think the first 169's were from around '90 or so. I think I read somewhere that the 169 was the longest running of any RCA chassis.

The CTC175 was used in 19"/20" sets with no A/V jacks and was a hot chassis set. The CTC176/186 was used in higher end 20" sets that had A/V jacks and used a switching power supply. The 177/187 was basically the same chassis as the 176/86; but, was used in 25" and larger TV's in all configurations. The CTC185 was a dog that I didn't really care for and was used in TV's 19" and bigger. The CTC203 was used in 19" through 36" sets, with the early version chassis having the same crap tuner on board. The later 203's had a solder in tuner that could be replaced. The 203 was a pretty good set; but, the 32" and 36" ones would eat flyback transformers and all 203's had a coil in the horizontal drive circuit that would have cold solder connections, resulting in intermittent HV and eventual blowing of the HOT. After the 203, RCA went way to Chineseezy for my liking (ATC010, ITC008, M134C, etc). These were cheap crap sets that ate flyback transformers more often than a CTC39 ate 6GH8A's and the buttons would become intermittent and cause the TV to do strange things by itself. I finally got so I wouldn't even take in any of the later RCA's.
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