MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MR> "Roy J. Tellason" wrote to "MIKE ROSS" (07 Jul
03  20:01:15)  ---
 MR> on the topic of "VCR"

 RJT> MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Phil Marlowe:
 MR> My old tv has 3 a/v inputs but you could add an A/B

 RJT> We have *one* tv here that has a/v inputs,  and that's it.  Lots of
 RJT> other,  older stuff besides.  I used to think about trying to modify a
 RJT> set to add such inputs,  but what with hot-chassis designs and other
 RJT> considerations,  it always ended up looking to be more hassle than it
 RJT> was worth.  Particularly considering that what I was looking for was
 RJT> something to use for a monitor.  I now have plenty enough monitors
 RJT> around...    :-)

 MR> The old tv was found curb side a nice Toshiba but it had suffered a
 MR> catastrophic melt down around the horizontal output transistor
 MR> (HOT). The main circuit board had a hole burned out of it the size
 MR> of a dollar. I suspect it was a cold solder joint that burned up
 MR> the board. Amazingly because the HOT was heatsinked it wasn't even
 MR> damaged, as I measured good gain and no leakage at all! So I cut
 MR> away all the carbonized main PCB, drilled 3 holes, and just wired
 MR> jumpers from the good traces directly to the HOT's pins (with a
 MR> little dressing on the side ). It worked first time though there
 MR> were the usual weak electros in the vertical as Toshiba likes to
 MR> mount 85'C caps right next to heatsinks. It's amazing how long an
 MR> electro takes to dry even next to a heatsink, the best way to
 MR> ensure killing a TV just as the guarantee runs out.  

That seems to be the likely cause of trouble for a couple of (NEC) monitors
that I have here.  One's got a bit of loss of vertical,  along with the
background level not going all the way to black.  The other one is
suffering from a slight loss of width.  Got one more (Techmedia) that
starts out okay, then the screen goes to completely white,  a monitor tech
told me that it was a bad diode/cap off the flyback,  I haven't checked it
out yet.

Part of what's putting me off from doing much with these is the fact that I
really don't have any place to work in this room,  there's just too much
clutter (including those monitors :-).  And part of it is that there's a
feeling I keep getting that if I go in there and find one bad part,  I'm
gonna find more than one,  and that it's going to be almost a neverending
process,  trying to get the darn things to work properly.

I really ought to get around to doing something with these,  either fix
them or get rid of them,  sometime soon...

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