[Jeffhs]

I had a Philco "Briefcase 19" 19-inch portable TV years ago (in the '70s), and can vouch for the crowded conditions in the cabinet. The most repair work I ever did on my set was changing tubes; I couldn't do much else as far as chassis repairs, etc. were concerned (long story and OT) but I never had to do much inside the set other than the occasional tube replacement; this set worked very well and had a good picture. It served me well while I had it, and until I could get a better one (I found a 1969 Zenith b&w portable in the trash), followed by getting a brand-new set almost exactly a year later, when the Zenith set developed AGC problems caused by gas in the horizontal output tube.

However, I do agree that these portables were very difficult to work on due to the chassis being almost literally wrapped around the CRT. Changing tubes was easy, but anything else was a major undertaking; this may have been why I found my Philco set in the trash when I did. Also, if I remember correctly, these portables had at least one PC board on the chassis. Because of a very bad experience I had with a Sears Silvertone 19-inch round-screen color set (a tube socket broke out of the video-output circuit PC board), I was (and still am to this day) very wary of PC boards in televisions, and am reminded of the experiences with my Silvertone color set every time I read here in VK of sets with such boards.