Sony Indextron, need assistance.

[sturo]

Hey all, I recently acquired a Sony Indextron XAV-U50 TV. It was made for Automotive use, but I am looking to get it running at home to play some games on. There is very little information online about it. There is only one connector on the back, and I've never seen it before. I did disassemble the unit to check it out, and it looked pretty good, caps weren't blown or anything. There were no markings on the board near the connector to denote what the pins would be.

Does anyone know more about this unit, or possible have one themselves?

Pics: Here!

I am also getting this unit soon as well, it seems to have gone with it. From Goodwill.

Thanks for looking!

[Electronic M]

I've heard that 80's Oldsmobile toronados had a Trinitron in them... maybe it is one of those and you need the cars wiring diagram and radio plug to use it.

[MadMan]

Strange! It looks like yesteryear's equivalent to those irritating aftermarket double din radios with huge lcd screens.

When you said automotive use, the first thing my mind went to is being put in the back of a conversion van and coupled with a vcr or maybe a SNES - if you were lucky. But the housing on this unit and the fact that it has FM and AM buttons really makes me think it's actually meant to mount in place of a conventional radio. In fact, it *might* just fit in a double din slot. I like how it has a picture of an airplane cockpit on top of it. I kind of doubt there are many 12v system airplanes. Not sure, but I think 24v is more common.

The plug is likely proprietary. It's hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like a serial computer plug... maybe game port... but with a thingy in the middle. You'll probably have to attach your own plug.

[zeno]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I've heard that 80's Oldsmobile toronados had a Trinitron in them... maybe it is one of those and you need the cars wiring diagram and radio plug to use it.

The Toro's & Rivieras that I saw used a Zenith monitor. Should have
learned how to fix them, they all failed but I suspect it was CRT's.
IIRC they were abt $800 exchange !

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[MadMan]

If you're talking about the green touchscreen crt that controlled the radio and climate and looked like an old atm, yeah those were monochrome green, not trinitrons.

[Chip Chester]

The Buick Reatta had a green touchscreen in the center of the dash.
"Just like a Tesla..." Or not quite.

[etype2]

You have acquired a very rare and desirable piece of technology. The CRT is a beam index. It uses one electron beam and is indexed to each color phosphor stripe by a photo diode. Overly simplistic and I don’t want to get into it much, but Google ‘beam index’ CRT.

Member Jerome Halphen has one. Send him a private message.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by MadMan

If you're talking about the green touchscreen crt that controlled the radio and climate and looked like an old atm, yeah those were monochrome green, not trinitrons.

No that wasn't what I was talking about. But I'm aware of those green screens too, they were in the Buick Riviera and IIRC another model. There are Utube videos showing them in opperation.

[dtvmcdonald]

Originally Posted by etype2

You have acquired a very rare and desirable piece of technology. The CRT is a beam index. It uses one electron beam and is indexed to each color phosphor stripe by a photo diode. Overly simplistic and I don’t want to get into it much, but Google ‘beam index’ CRT.

Member Jerome Halphen has one. Send him a private message.

Several of us have an Indextron, of various sizes and qualities. I have one.

I tried making mine work, recapping it, but failed because I didn't feel like
putting it in water in an ultrasonic cleaner, so sent it to the expert, Andy Cuffe.
I don't know if all varieties of these sets have the same
electrolytic cap problem. It looks like yours may have the same CRT as
mine, but it could still have different circuitry.

These things don't produce the greatest pictures but they are really really interesting.

[sturo]

Thanks for all the replies. I'll update if anything develops.

[GRudolf]

Jerome has one, is also looking for info, and Andy seems to be the local expert on them. Whatever you do, take good care of it. It's exceedingly rare.

[sturo]

UPDATE!

I managed to track down a component that may have been sold with this TV. It has the same model number and connectors. 2 issues though. One is that the 15 pin connector is obsolete and there is no info that I could find on it. Only one ebay seller in the UK that sells an adapter. If I could locate a pinout I could work around that but nothing has come up.

Secondly, it looks like some caps busted and there are parts of the board that look pretty nasty. I am going to try to clean them up as best as possible.

Here are some pics of the unit.

[Chip Chester]

Well, it's got a couple of tuners on it, so that's a start. Whether they're US-spec is not a sure thing.

In your analysis, attempt #1 would be a pin-for-pin straight-thru cable. But that doesn't mean 'make one and fire it up' by any means. You might be able to make a connector by using board-style connectors offset and back-to-back. Further research would show which are power, data, signal, etc...

[rpm1200]

This is kinda interesting:
https://translate.google.com/transla...50&prev=search

Looks like it is an aftermarket car stereo from around 1993. I wonder if it was only sold in the Japanese market, or if it was available in the US, too.

There were a number of car audio magazines published around that time (Car Audio & Electronics; Car Stereo Review), and they typically had an annual buyer's guide issue. If it was offered in the US, there might be information about it in one of those issues. You might want to try reaching out to Dereck Williston on YouTube; he does reviews of car audio including vintage stuff, and he collects the old car stereo mags, too.

I hope you find the interconnect cable and get it all working!

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by rpm1200

This is kinda interesting:
https://translate.google.com/transla...50&prev=search

Looks like it is an aftermarket car stereo from around 1993. I wonder if it was only sold in the Japanese market, or if it was available in the US, too.

Sony had SO many products that never left Japan. Even the unit the OP has is a Japanese head unit. Since for all of us so far we've never heard of this before my guess will be it did not sell anywhere near good enough to cross the pacific.