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Old 12-12-2013, 07:19 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by radiotvnut View Post
Actually, the early electronic remotes ran on a 9V battery. The J-battery remotes were from the early-to-mid '80's.
That's interesting. Why didn't Zenith design their electronic remotes to use 9-volt radio batteries from the beginning, rather than using the J battery in the 1980-'85 remote, then switching to the more readily available 9-volt transistor radio battery from '86 on? Was the J battery becoming scarce by the mid-'80s?

I doubt if any battery manufacturer even makes J batteries anymore, so anyone with a Zenith TV that uses such a battery in the remote would be out of luck--unless there is a way to modify the remote such that it could operate on a standard 9-volt battery. Was there anything special about the J batteries that would preclude such a modification? I'm thinking the J battery was something like an 8.4-volt mercury cell that could not be replaced by a standard 9-volt battery; that or else the J batteries were so much larger than transistor batteries that they simply would not fit in the battery compartment of the remote.
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

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