Good things come to those who wait

[Electronic M]

So Friday morning I was dragged along on a trip to Chicago. I was initially frazzled to not be able to buy a 5$ late 60's Magnavox color set due to going in the parent's sedan (for what a piece of crap that car is becoming they sure baby it) I found at a thrift in my home town....I will go back for it tomorrow in my car if it is not going to rain, or wait till Monday and go back with mom and her SUV.

I got some nice Linear Dynamics speakers for 10$, and on the way home stopped at Chester's electronics.....I've been wanting a SuperBETA-HiFi deck for years, but could never find one for a price I could stomach....When I saw it on the shelf I did a double take. The 5$ price tag made me snag it without being deterred by the sign on the shelves saying something to the effect of "back room repair sets, not working as is". It is remarkably clean and unworn for something it's age!


I powered it up at home and it is playing back real fine (still need to test the tuner and record functions) with the only issue being that the toothed eject belt is loose (yet still functions acceptably, albeit more loudly than I think it should)....Given this is probably a 300$+ machine when in working order, I feel like I stole it! I wonder if Sony had adopted their present IR code scheme before this was made....If so I could probably program a universal remote for it.



I also got a bunch of great mostly NOS TV goodies too including a CATV to UHF converter (I can't wait to see which channels it converts), some NOS convergence yokes (they had about 10 more of the white ones), and NOS HV socket cups of the type RCA and Zenith used in their early offerings.

[pac.attack76]

Nice haul.

[Jon A.]

Man, some nice finds there. I wouldn't expect to find anything really good at a thrift store these days, or any electronics store that hasn't been closed for 20 years or so.

[Electronic M]

That Maggie is the ONLY tube based TV I've EVER seen that chain put out on the sales floor.

Chester electronics is one of those places that one would half have expected to have went under 20 years ago. They were a parts house for TV repair shops and still have many parts dating back to the tube era. I would have a hard time verbally trying to convey all the stuff they carry, and it would probably take lots of pictures to give you a good idea. They have retail space similar to the average pharmacy chain, full of more stuff than can readily be taken in in one trip.

[Jon A.]

If I were there and had enough cash I'd be draining most of their stock.

What kinds of sets are the clovers for?

[ChrisW6ATV]

Tom-

Yes, that VCR should work with standard Sony IR codes. You did not post which model it is, but at some point in that era Sony started having two sets of VCR IR codes (and later went to three), VTR-1, VTR-2, and VTR-3. Unofficially, VTR-1 was the original Beta code set, 8mm VCRs were VTR-2, and Sony VHS machines, once they came out, were VTR-3. Through the late 80s and into the 90s, some of their remote controls could be set to the various code sets with a slide switch.

The cable block converter may come with a chart of its channel conversions, but roughly it converts the 120-300 MHz range to an equal block in the 470-890 MHz range, but exactly where, I do not remember. That corresponded to the cable-TV channels 14-22, regular channels 7-13, and cable channels 23-36. It may also do a usable job of converting other signals above or below that range into the UHF band as well.

[Dude111]

Very nice!!!!!!!!!

[Electronic M]

The white ones are the same style (though clearly for rectangular CRT) as the replacement yoke on my Zenith 29JC20 roundy. I'd suspect most convergence coils were fairly universal.

My universal remote does work the controls of the Beta. The beta (model SL-HF450 which you could read if you clicked on the smaller pictures to see a bigger version) is recording well, and the tuner works (though programming the analog cable channels here is about 10X more confusing than a modern VCR, and has not worked well), but I've noticed that the still frame advance and slow motion playback buttons are dead (not a big deal, but I'll probably want to fix that eventually).

I still need to test the cable converter box. It does have instructions that are based on frequency, but I don't know enough of the cable channel frequency assignments to make useful sense of them.

I called that thrift today in hopes that TV set would still be there, but it would seem someone in Lombard got a nice late 60's Magnovox tube color TV for 5$.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I called that thrift today in hopes that TV set would still be there, but it would seem someone in Lombard got a nice late 60's Magnovox tube color TV for 5$.

Well... maybe this will help thrift store management to wake up and stop recycling stuff like that. The more non-technical types we can get sniffing these out and passing them along intact the better.

One time I lost out on a Sanyo varactor-tune remote console because of a lister who wouldn't answer. It was likely pre-80s, so that's one I would probably still have. There was also a '74 non-remote Zenith console that popped up around the same time as my flatty but I couldn't arrange transport. Not a huge disappointment there as I got the better one. That and I think it was French Provincial.