[Charlie]

My '59 Motorola 21" B&W floor model used to do the dot in the middle of the screen. It would take roughly 5 minutes to slowly fade away. I just figured it was normal since I remember sets doing this when I was a kid.

This was when I first got it... and the set didn't play correctly anyway. Took me a long time to find the little bug causing the bad picture... it was one of those peaking coils... and it was well hidden in a little can. This was my first experience with Moto's failure-prone coils (I remember many people here spoke of them often).

After I changed the coil, the picture was perfect. Later, after I finished playing with the set for the day, I turned it off and quickly noticed that the little dot went away quickly... within a couple of seconds. Never again did that dot hang around. I don't know what difference the new peaking coil could have made for the dot, but, it apparently did something. That was the only thing I ever changed in this set, so, I have no other parts to blame it on.

I have a late 60's Truetone portable 21" b&w that does the same exact thing... bad picture and the dot when you turn it off. Will be interesting to see if it has a bad peaking coil... and if replacing it fixes both the bad pic AND the dot.