Retro Awesomeness (sort of) ;)

Yeah, so here's a set-up of what I could do for retro gaming if my PortaColor was currently working. (broken power switch unfortunately)

For those who don't know: http://www.rwhirled.com/portacolor/
One of the first affordable color TVs (and "portable"), also one of th elongest, if not the longest prudused TV model in history. (unusually long, just about the same as the VCS actually, ~14 years) I think the last tube TV being manufactued in the US as well. (actually 1 transistor, in the UHF tuner, except for an early canadian version with VHF only)

Used to be my standard TV in my room starting ~2000, but that only lasted a couple years before the switch (which had been flaky) shorted/burned out, and I haven't fixed it yet. (really tedious to fix without damaging the chassis)

That's pretty cool. I love old tvs like that. Too bad it doesn't work still.

You never said you had awesome biplane/monoplane wallpaper.

Where did you get that?

sexy tv you got there!

The first time I saw the picture thought it was a black and white TV, its incredible that is still working, despite being an extremely old color TV, the knobs for changing channels resemble those of my old black and white Zenith 14"
Is true is that the tube of a color TV has a useful life span shorter than the black and white TV's?

wow from the mid 1960's I thought that would be early 70's from first glance

Awesome but I wanna see that puppy in action! You're gonna have to fix it now :)

That is one hell of an awesome TV, sorry to hear that such an awesome thing broke.

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Originally Posted by Rusty Venture

You never said you had awesome biplane/monoplane wallpaper.

Where did you get that?

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It was there when we moved in like ~17 1/2 year ago, but only on one wall, the rest is crappy plaid stuff which I'm finally getting around to taking down. (the planes stay though, I'm plaiing on picking soem paint color to match well with the airplanes)
A neat coinsidence with my interest in history though, especially tech stuff, both my grandpas were involved in aviation, and after going to the Smithsonian 3 summers ago, I got really intersted again. Then I ended up on a WWII aviation discusson forum up until late winter of '09, when I stated back on the video game stuff. -Due somethat to watching AVGN. ;)
And yes, I was as big on hypothetical/what-if discussons on there as I am here, probably bigger actually. :) I've mentioned it before, but I really need to get around to putting soem of this stuff in my profile. :p
(but even as a little kid I loved that wall paper, and that TV ;))

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Originally Posted by MN12BIRD

Awesome but I wanna see that puppy in action! You're gonna have to fix it now :)

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Yeah, I'm planning on making a video once that happens, and I'm sure the switch is all that's bad, about 6 years ago we opened it up and shortied the contacts on the switch (just the power side, not the pot contacts for volume!), and it powered on fine and picked up a broadcast of news or something.

THe way that switch bracket is mounted internally was kind of daunting though, soem of the screws were inaccesible from the current loacation. (and I do not want to remove the picture tube to make sufficient room, plus I think the UHF and VHF tuner circuitry/assembly is in the way too, I need to open it up agan and figure things out)

I suppose I could ask somewone with specific experience. I have looked around some vintage TV/Radio discussion boards, but the PortaColor tends to to get shunned by the "mainstream" vintage electronics collectors/enthusiasts. That website I posted might be a place to start though.



A bit more story on that TV:
My mom bought it from some used electronics store/repair shop (it had been refurbished) around '85/86 for my dad (not married yet). I think he was living in kind of a funky trailer at that point, in Monteray, I think he was still going to UCSC at the time.
Jumping to after I was born, that little TV used to sit in my room at out old house when I was an infant/toddler. (so my mom could watch it while she was with me) I think it was there up to 1992 before we moved.
Then it ended up as the dining room TV at out new house, with some packing paper stuffed under the front to prop it up as it was a bit small for the entertaimnent cabnet built into the dining room wall.
-Soon after that (within a year of moving in I think), it stopped working, would turn on, but no reception.
So it got packed away rather than tossed (because my mom thought it was neat, and we generally don'y like to toss stuff).
It gets replaced in that spot by a mid 80s (non cable ready -ie screws) Sanyo set, somethat larger (~14/15" screen) which lasted until ~4-5 years ago. (Phillips LCD there now)
-In the late 90s I started getting interested in that TV again, took it out every so often and tried it out, to similar effect.
Finally we took it to a family freinds house, with his father who had been a TV service man many years before (and had a big case of tubes and a tester), that's how we found out the VHF tuning tube was burned out, but that was not among the types he had stockplied. (still had hs old service case filled with boxed tubes)
-This is ~1999/2000 now, and my mom found a local warehouse stockplining old (never used) and refurbshed tubes, found the one we needed, put it iin the TV and it worked great -besides the flaky switch which had been like that for many years. (not sure if she bought it that way)
-It was mine for the following couple years, got the Atari hooked up (which had been boxed away for as long as I could remember, and had recently gotten a universal power adaptor for), and it was my first (and only until very recently) TV to have in my room. Got a cheap VHF/UHF set-top antenna from radio shack to go with it as well.
-Then the switch shorted out when I was a bout to show it off to a freind at a sleepover ~2002, and we'd thought it was a tube initially, but I knew the power switch felt wrong (it made more of a dull pop than a proper fluid click when turned), an dwe later discovered the switch problem. (with that same freind/father) But found it very difficult to address. (ie remove the switch without breaking any of the bracket/chassis)

And that pretty much sums up to now.


And for that Atari, this I have mentioned before a couple times, I finally got my parents to set it up (actually my uncles while babysitting my brother and I ~1999), with cheap Radio Shack manal RF switch and changable tip AC adaptor. I used it with the PortaColor until it broke. But within the following year the VCS stopped working and 2 games (combat and cicius atari) burned out. We later replaced the voltage regulator but discovered physical damage to the chips (either RIOT or TIA had insulation popped off the package). I much later concluded that the AC adaptor must have gotten set to the wrong polarity and the chips overheated, carts got burned out, and voltage reg blew.
About that time, my uncle found my granpa's original 1977 (heavy sixer) VCS which my grandpa had spliced a co-axial end onto the RF cable for convienience. ;) Oddly enough, we ended up transferring the chips into my moms newer VCS to discover it still worked fine (so if I can somehow find replacements for RIOT+TIA+6507, I'll have 2 working VCSs).
The chips ended up sticking in the "wrong" VCS until this month actually, when I swapped them back into the heavy sixer.

I think my dad lost the burnt out chips though. (not positive all 3 were dead either, we didn't test chip by chip, but it seems likely that they were all dead, and I think 2 showed physical damage, one with cracked/split insulation, and another with a peaice literally ejected from it)


So there's a wall of text for you guys. ;)

And like many TVs of that age, the portacolor has a multitude of manual fine tuning controls externally, th emain ones on the front. (hue, color, contrast, brightness, V-hold, H-hold) Plus some additional ones on the back. (Ha dn V overscan pot knobs, RGB pots, and a couple others I don't recall, plus a degaussing switch/button) I used to put frogger in "poluted wasteland mode" by setting hue to one of the extremes. :D

Oh, and in addition to the pale grenish shadowmask (typlical to the time, but unusual now, and not used on some later portacolors), the dots are in the delta pattern rather than vertical bars. (little tringles of round dots)

I need to post a link/parallel to this on atariage. (more to do with my Atari than Sega stuff)

I was hoping that was newer stuff, my dad was looking for wallpaper just like that for his "hobby room" aka my old room.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

So there's a wall of text for you guys. ;)

And like many TVs of that age, the portacolor has a multitude of manual fine tuning controls externally, th emain ones on the front. (hue, color, contrast, brightness, V-hold, H-hold) Plus some additional ones on the back. (Ha dn V overscan pot knobs, RGB pots, and a couple others I don't recall, plus a degaussing switch/button) I used to put frogger in "poluted wasteland mode" by setting hue to one of the extremes. :D

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I had a 13" color television (1986) that was pretty much like that. The pots on those knobs eventually wore out and you'd have to turn them left and right to get the right setting. I'd sold it to someone in my old apartment building, for about $50.

All the knobs on the front worked perfectly last time it was functioning. I never tried adjusting the recessed pot controlls on the back, the RGB or overscan stuff. (the kind necessitating a flat blade screwdriver to adjust)

I'll probably mess with the overscan once it's fixed though. (especially with the excessive overscan on such old sets, often with only 192p/384i lines visible and more horizontal overscan as well)

OK, update, and something really real this time. ;)

I got a 20" flat Emmerson CRT (composite+S-video+stereo) for $20 off of craigslist, but wasn't really that happy with it after a little while (mainly due to the lack of picture adjusting controls as I later discovered).

However, some of you may remember me mentioning a really cool 25" Zenith Advanced System 3 that my freind has in a few other discussions. As it turns out, he didn't end up taking it to his dorm as his roomate ended up getting a TV, the Zenith was still at his parents' house.
So I called his parent's and asked about possibly obtaining the TV, they said that they weren't sure if my freind's granma still wanted another TV, or if my freaind wouldn't later need it with a change in roomate. So I told them about my Emmerson, and they were happy to trade. (has a remote, and is a LOT lighter, but not too much smaller screen)

So now I've got this great Zenith with an automatic fine tuning feature and a pretty good comb filter (though right now it doesn't look quite as good as I remember it with my freind last fall).
I was thinking it was probably a late 80s/early 90s set, it turns out it was manufactured september of 1988!

This must have been one high end TV for 1988, stereo built-in, trebel/bass/balance control, plus composite video (and stereo), plus aux composite video and video out (and audio out), but also S-video! In fact, it doesn't even list it as S-video, but as "SVHS" and "Y/C" below that. :D

However, as I noticed before, there doesn't seem to be any way to manually switch to comp/s-video modes (I haven't tried cycling through all the channels though), so I'll probably need to find a universal remote. Zenith used compatible IR remotes at least up to being bought int he early 90s (by LG iirc, and the quality of the products dropped a ton then), but I've read of people using common universal remotes (including programmable cable/satellite box remotes) successfully with AS3s, so that could work.

Not nearly as old as the portacolor, but still almost a year older than I am, and stil from the gloious "wood age" of electronics (or psudo wood finish, as was more often the case). ;)

Also, my Sega CD is now working fine :D (other than gears needing lube), apparently it wasn't the caps in the CD, but a problem witht he Genesis it came with: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread....489#post213489

Note of couse, that all these pics are in RF, also the vertical overscan has apparently been adjusted to show almos the full 240/480 lines, horizontal overscan doesn't apear to be adjusted as much though. (so it kind of liiks like Fusion does, with square pixels in 320x224/240 mode and more stretching than usual for 256 width mode -thus Sonic is close to perfectly rouns when rolling, as are the loops)

Neato tv's you got there, and really nice set up....Reminds me a bit of my younger days....Although believe it or not, my first tv was a black & white one.....
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Nice old sets.

Makes me feel sad. We used to own (was it called ferguson?) TV my Mum got used back in 1999 that had real authentic wood which was i think was about (29") i think, that was mid 80's looking with an oversized remote control with billions of buttons on it, Autotuning feature with red digital numbers on the front panel with full featured TeleText and lacked a Scart port, just RF. lol.

What happened? We left the thing at our old home alongside a broken old Sony 21" because the Attic hatch door "wasn't big enough to fit the TV through for storage".

What a nice set it was, i would have used that for my older game consoles and prolly would have complemented an Atari 2600 i'm planning to get in the near future. It was quite a big son-of-a-bitch though lol.