Motorola Color Roundie TS-912

[timmy]

i have a silvertone dated 2, 1963 and it has UHF.

[DavGoodlin]

Wow, what an unusual set in the golden age of CTC15 clones, likely with a much better fly than RCA used and OEM'd. It lacks a tint control but looks like a roundie version of a TS914.
Even the convergence board is up front ala Zenith. Super cool, good luck and I cant' wait to see the progress.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by timmy

i have a silvertone dated 2, 1963 and it has UHF.

It depends on what area it was sold in! Milwaukee was a UHF town from 1953 or so.
IIRC, Chicago didn't have UHF channels until the mid-60's or so. Chicago members, please enlighten me regarding this observation.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

Wow, what an unusual set in the golden age of CTC15 clones, likely with a much better fly than RCA used and OEM'd. It has the tint control and looks like a roundie TS914.
Even the convergence board is up front ala Zenith. Super cool, good luck and I cant' wait to see the progress.

I used to visit the service shop at Dykro, Inc. the Wisconsin distributor for Motorola and talk to the technicians. One remarked that RCA sells more flybacks in a week, than Motorola sells in a year. I thought it was comical, but true.

[drh4683]

Motorola seems to have always had a pretty robust flyback design like Zenith.

I believe the first Chicago UHF station was WCIU channel 26 and went on the air in February, 1964. WFLD channel 32 was next in 1966, followed by WSNS channel 44 in 1970. Those were the earliest. As the years progressed, many more stations came on line. Up until the shut down in '09, it was fun to tune across UHF on the old sets. There were close to 20 UHF stations going.

This Motorola looks like a factory UHF to me. I don't know if they offered this control panel with the UHF knock out, did they? I have a couple rectangulars with the TS-914 that used this near identical control panel. Mine say "All 82 channel" but they are '66 models. Its hard to see in the photos, but does this one say "All 82 channel"?

[tvcollector]

Thanks for all the compliments.. Doug the UHF channel indicator goes up to 83.. I'm surprised that it goes that far, I thought there were only 60 something channels for UHF...

[drh4683]

Ok, yes, all TV tuners should have gone up through 83. The FCC pulled channels 70-83 from television use in 1983. I believe those freq's were reallocated for translators and mobile radio use.

Does your TV have any wording on the control panel stating that it's "All 82 channel"? That would tell us if it's factory UHF. Do you have a model and s/n for it? I'd like to see if I have factory service data for that model.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

It depends on what area it was sold in! Milwaukee was a UHF town from 1953 or so.
IIRC, Chicago didn't have UHF channels until the mid-60's or so. Chicago members, please enlighten me regarding this observation.

Ditto for Philadelphia and Baltimore. No UHF until 1965.

[tvcollector]

My other sets go up to 83 also, don't know why I was thinking that, I guess I never really paid any attention to how far the numbers go up to..

It doesn't say anything about it being all 82 channels...

The model number is 21CK19MPD I'm pretty sure.. It's mostly faded..
Serial number on the CRT is N694878 assuming it goes with the chassis..

That would be great if you could find more info.. Would be helpful too..

The plug on this thing is a polarized plug, what would happen is it was plugged into an outlet reversed?

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by tvcollector

My other sets go up to 83 also, don't know why I was thinking that, I guess I never really paid any attention to how far the numbers go up to..

It doesn't say anything about it being all 82 channels...

The model number is 21CK19MPD I'm pretty sure.. It's mostly faded..
Serial number on the CRT is N694878 assuming it goes with the chassis..

The plug on this thing is a polarized plug, what would happen is it was plugged reversed?

I doesn't make too much difference if the plug is reversed or plugged into a misswired receptacle. A polarized plug arrangement insures that the chassis is not hot in relation to ground. That is, if it's plugged into a properly wired receptacle.
I see the set uses 19CG3 damper tubes. What are the horizontal output tubes. It looks like it could use a new set.

[tvcollector]

HV output tubes are bad, one is shorted and fails grid emissions, and give zero emissions, other one tests strong but short light comes on for checking shorts.. Damper Tubes are 12BE3, and test good.. Sams says they are 19AU4, a totally different tube..

[Tim]

My TS-907 set does have the "All 82 Channels" wording on the control panel.

[tvcollector]

I assume the TS-907 is a year or two older than mine and maybe they just decided that wording was not needed anymore. It would look odd and out of place not having a UHF knob the way the set up is.. I tired finding a Sams photofact for that version and I could not get anything to come up on Google..

[Tim]

907 is the same control layout with the same number of controls. "All 82 Channels" is in the center where yours reads "Motorola".

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by tvcollector

I assume the TS-907 is a year or two older than mine and maybe they just decided that wording was not needed anymore. It would look odd and out of place not having a UHF knob the way the set up is.. I tired finding a Sams photofact for that version and I could not get anything to come up on Google..

The non-UHF Motorola's, the lower knob was the on-off volume. When the UHF kit was installed, the volume control was moved to it's present place. The kit included the proper knobs for the UHF tuner, small volume knob, hardware, ETC. The bezel had a knockout plug where the volume control is now.