Zonked!

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by TV Engineer

...It is the same equipment that I read of folks working on now. However, it is rarer and not so easily repaired or replaced if inexperienced, untrained hands begin chopping away at it. And every time a set ends up on the unrepairable pile because someone that didn't really know what they were doing got to it, to me, is very sad. It's also a part of history that doesn't exist any more...

My counter-argument would be this: How many people attending tech school today understand or are even aware of older technology? Life before the IC and even the transistor? I'd say very few. In fact, the few times I've bothered to stop at a TV shop and seek a part or schematic from a professional technician - well, I've generally been chided and sneered at for attempting something ridiculous like trying to repair a worthless p.o.s. fifty-year-old color TV.

My point being that if non-professional people who have an interest in this old junk and the capacity to learn aren't helped and encouraged, it'll all be lost history in thirty years because no-one will know what to do with it.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

My counter-argument would be this: How many people attending tech school today understand or are even aware of older technology? Life before the IC and even the transistor? I'd say very few. In fact, the few times I've bothered to stop at a TV shop and seek a part or schematic from a professional technician - well, I've generally been chided and sneered at for attempting something ridiculous like trying to repair a worthless p.o.s. fifty-year-old color TV.

My point being that if non-professional people who have an interest in this old junk and the capacity to learn aren't helped and encouraged, it'll all be lost history in thirty years because no-one will know what to do with it.

When I took electronics at the local community college from '99-'01, we probably spent a total of 10 minutes on tubes. The first 5 minutes were discussed in solid state devices & circuits class and the discussion pretty much went like, "This is a tube, this is what was used before transistors, nobody but Bryan messes with them anymore, and they are obsolete technology that you don't need to be concerned with". The other 5 minutes was by another instructor in Electronic Communications class. He did talk briefly about how a tube operated; but, not much time was spent on the subject. Contrast that to the early '70's, when a friend went through the program with one of the same instructors. Back then, he said that tubes were the main topic of conversation and that little time was spent on solid state devices.

[mbates14]

Thats pretty much the way it was when I was in collage as well. from 04 to 06. But on the flip-side, there was a team trying to restore a hallocrafters electrostatic set, and a philco 39-140 radio as a capstone project.