Stay away from??

[radiotvnut]

I've seen some Wells-Gardner-built 25" consoles that had SCR's for the horizontal output. As I'm sure you know, the WG sets were built for a number of department stores.

[Zenith26kc20]

The problem with replacing the Star system battery was the cusomer would not call until it failed. It was a regular carbon/zinc battery. Once replaced one would have the fun job of programming every cable station the customer had programmed in before the failure. If I remember right, the 25 inch Star sets had vertical trouble also.
The only reason we "disliked" them was the amount of time it took to reprogram everything.
9-160 solder connections were no problem. The big problem was they would not always start. They would sit making an obscene noise for a few seconds which aggravated the customer to no end. If I remember right, that was mostly cured by clipping a resistor off the board in the front of the module. And, as mentioned those harness assemblies were aggravating. Also, a few burned up yoke plugs made customers mad from the smell and the famous 315 volt capacitor which opened causing half dark, half light picture. Other than the few problems that the System 3 sets had they were good performers.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Zenith26kc20

The problem with replacing the Star system battery was the cusomer would not call until it failed. It was a regular carbon/zinc battery. Once replaced one would have the fun job of programming every cable station the customer had programmed in before the failure. If I remember right, the 25 inch Star sets had vertical trouble also.
The only reason we "disliked" them was the amount of time it took to reprogram everything.

Most non-technical people do not realize or care that there is a battery in these TVs. Further, most televisions had (and still have) a warning on the back cover not to remove said back, due to high voltage and electric shock hazards. This warning is enough to scare most people into keeping their hands out of the innards of the TV, even to replace a battery.

Even if they knew there was any kind of battery in the set, most people would not have the faintest idea what it is there for, let alone how to replace it. When the battery in these Magnavox, et al. TVs finally failed, erasing all channel programming, I imagine most people just left it alone, changing the channels manually using the keypad on the remote.

There is also the possibility of the dead battery leaking in its holder inside the set, but again most set owners didn't know or care about it. (I wonder how many of these Magnavox Star System and other TVs have been found with defective backup cells that have leaked and corroded the contacts of the holder, when the set is being repaired due to some other problem. )

The same thing can and probably does happen all the time with today's flat panel TVs, which I'm sure also use backup batteries for channel memory and backup of other settings, although many FPs quit and are junked long before said battery fails. Remember, most non-technical people know only three things about their TVs: how to turn it on or off, how to adjust or mute the volume, and how to change the channels, once the set is installed and set up. They couldn't care less about backup batteries or anything else inside the television, so long as the set works properly.

[Zenith26kc20]

The Star battery was hidden in a small black rectangular box inside the tuner chassis. Tuning became difficult when it failed as the set needed a allocation number assigned to the selected frequency. In other words, number 4 showing on the readout could have been channel 9 RF wise. There was a switch that was turned on to program the slots. I cant remember how many slots there were but each one had to be done then stored in memory. The later Star sets were pretty much standard keyboard types. I'm talking early Star System.
BUT! I would do them all day compared to some of the late model sets with shutdown circuitry that makes some (Funai) sets terrors to repair.

[zeno]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I've seen some Wells-Gardner-built 25" consoles that had SCR's for the horizontal output. As I'm sure you know, the WG sets were built for a number of department stores.

Interesting. I never saw a SS W-G set that I can remember.
Latest ones were the hybrids with modules. Seemed to be well built
but suffered from a low grade CRT. Wonder what they would look like
with a Zenith or RCA black matrix jug ?

73 Zeno