This little TV uses tubes instead of transistors

Another cool little TV for Adrian's Analog Basement. This time it's a 9" Panasonic TV with an awesome retro look to it. Also, this set uses a technology I've never worked on before, so it was a first for me.
Panasonic AN-809
Chassis Number N95
CRT: Matsushita 230AEB4 TYC
Heater voltage 4.2v, operating voltage 10kv nominal
TV is roughly from 1973 based on a newspaper AD I could find, where it was $80 USD or about $500 in today's dollars.
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[@LMacNeill]

Even after transistors had taken over the rest of the set's functions by the mid-1970s, there were still horizontal-output tubes for many, many years -- going all the way until the early '80s in some sets. The transistors that could handle the frequencies and voltages of that circuit were far more expensive (and far less reliable) at that time than the tubes which had been manufactured for decades and had an economy of scale yet to be matched by the then-available transistors. I'm surprised this set had so many vacuum tubes, yes, but not at all surprised that it had some vacuum tubes. Tubes really didn't disappear completely from TVs until the early '80s in many cases.

[@larslindgren3846]

All CRT TV:s have at least one vacuum tube so tubes were comon in TV:s well in to the 2000:s. That is the T in CRT.

[@jamesmdeluca]

Greetings: Although the CRT was a tube, the last smaller tube to go was the high voltage rectifier.

[@herrbonk3635]

@@jamesmdeluca But aren't tubes still better at that particular task? Because isn't the cascode (lots of dioes plus capacitors) a way to avoid the impossible situation of having a single semiconductor rectifier for many thousands of volts.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Indeed, hence the “fully transistorized” badges on those 80s sets.

[@sunspot42]

I had a tiny Montgomery Ward B&W TV my parents gave me circa 1981 that still had several tubes in it besides the CRT itself. I can still smell that thing - had a distinctive odor as it warmed up.

[@MrCarlsonsLab]

Neat little TV! It's always fun to see how the engineers would squeeze so many hot little tubes into a small area for the sake of portability. The thought behind the component placement in this set would have been a big challenge to get such a good result from a series set. Thanks for sharing :^)

[@solarbirdyz]

I was honestly hoping you'd come by. xD

[@danytoob]

Mr. Carlson! Fancy meeting you here. I always get a kick out of running into other 'tubers on my subscription channel list. Interconnected community ... cool. DT

[@richardbrobeck2384]

For Sure !!

[@JamesHalfHorse]

I was just about to mention you when he started talking about dim bulb testers.

[@damianred2003]

Hi Paul! More fun is see how the engineers squeese so many tubes in one compactron. Greetings from Argentina.

[@twocvbloke]

I love the way the raster zooms in as the CRT starts up, rather cool feature of older valve-driven tellies... :D

[@edgeeffect]

"valve" .... "telly" ....... :D

[@twocvbloke]

Cos British, innit? :P

[@JimTheZombieHunter]

Lol. As a lad we had a colour set that when switched off, the decaying HV oscillator and still hot CRT cathode emissions would produce 3 coloured dots that would diverge and then "fly off' .. Later (as an adult) when I saw Close Encounters, it reminded me of that. Probably just out of diapers, I would sneak up late at night and turn the set on and off just to watch the flying spots .. and of course you could leave, or sweep an electrostatic hand print artifact on the glass if it was dark enough. Indeed - to me this was more interesting than the actual stories displayed. Of course my phone now likely has as much 'power' as NASA did then, but my phone offers no awe nor mystery. It's just a thing that I try not to get too wet. I know how it works and I don't care.

[@mattcrooke8321]

I’m glad I’m not the only one. I keep shouting “they’re valves!!!” at my phone 😂😂

[@CommodoreFan64]

Regardless of the year this set came out, this for sure gives me 70's vibes of my parents first home that was built in the 70's, and even in the early 80's still had avocado, and brown, appliances, and fixtures lol!

[@projectartichoke]

It looks like the ubiquitous avocado green to me. I wonder if there was a harvest gold set too.

[@Commodore64Fan]

@@projectartichoke Yeah it does make ya wonder.

[@justinthomas2458]

Brings me back to 82 playing atari with my grandmother on an old zenith bw. Would love to see more tube electronics on the channel!

[@jackgilchrist]

For sure! In the late '60s and all through the '70s we had nothing but tube TVs that my dad scrounged from wherever, and he often had to fix them. He was no expert, but he knew just enough to get them going most of the time. And just enough to be dangerous -- one time something arced on his metal watch band and blew it off his wrist. Lol. But like most working class in the '70s, we were pretty poor, and if we didn't scrounge and fix our own stuff we didn't have anything.

[@squirlmy]

​@@jackgilchrist IDK, I'd say the "working class" today is poorer, because of so much debt. It was much more difficult to accumulate debt in the 70s, credit cards were a novelty, etc. And because everything in the 90s onward was made disposable, today we CAN'T salvage and scrummage old electronics, whereas things like old tube TVs were repairable. Just my impression, although there's long been a massive effort to make people feel if they didn't buy new, that was bad that was an indicator of poverty. I sometimes try fixing things for my mom and she inevitably throws it out, thinking a repair was what the poor people in her community growing up did. Well, that and a certainty that I'm too incompetent to fix anything right. lol

[@agurdel]

It find it amusing that everyone seems to forget that every CRT monitor/TV is tube based. Regarding the light bulb test: A light bulb is more than just a resistor. A cold bulb is almost a short and the resistance goes up when hot (PTC). So it acts more like a very crude current regulator or overcurrent protection. And as a bonus it also lights up making it a (again very crude) current "display".

[@GenerationXT]

The CRT is in itself a vacuum tube. But whether a set is classified as a tube or solid-state was dependent on specifically the chassis, not the CRT. That's what manufacturers meant they called their sets 100 percent solid-state.

[@coyote_den]

Some devices actually used a tiny bulb as a PTC. The monitor for the Xerox Alto was a notable example. The bulb won't have a visible glow unless there is a short, which is a handy indicator, but if it's open you get no sweep or HV. So if the monitor doesn't work, check to see if the light bulb has burned out. Not the CRT, the light bulb!

[@telocho]

The CRT normally doesn’t count on a solid state versus tube television. Which is nowadays getting difficult to find online as peope advertise any old set as a tube tv (versus lcd/plasma) but they really have no vacuum valves whatsoever.

[@jacksongunner7122]

I remember our TV which had vacuum tubes in it, the tubes would fail on a regular basis and the grocery store in town had a tube tester and a stock of replacement tubes. So when the TV went out we would pull all the tubes and go into the store, test the tubes, buy a new one for the one that failed and replace them back. Pretty easy but good luck finding a tube tester now days.

[@heskrthmatt]

I remember my family getting one of those “No warm up” sets from one of my grandfathers. They both got into the radio/TV repair business in the late 40’s/50’s. We were told to unplug it when not using it.

[@N00B283]

Good idea

[@irtbmtind89]

I found an ad for this TV in September 1973 in the Toronto Star, it was called the Panasonic "Teton" and cost 120 Canadian dollars (Canada had fairly high tariffs on TV imports then which would explain the price difference vs the US). The ad boasts "speed-o-vision" (the quickstart feature) and "10 solid state devices and 10 tubes", and it also shows the 12 inch model that I'm almost certain is the other one mentioned on the PCB silkscreen (interestingly it's cheaper). Matsushita stuff from this era is indescribably well built, I'm not surprised that it still works.

[@taunusv4power]

That name is funny. It means someone with big boobs in Spanish lol

[@phelyan]

I'm only a year older than you, and the first TV my parents had had a little button on the side that you had to press first to warm up the tubes and then waited 5 minutes before turning on the set. The memories.

[@misterhat5823]

The stay warm feature actually increases the life of the tubs by reducing thermal shock. Tubes will run almost forever at reduced filament voltage. (As long as plate voltage isn't applied.)

[@z06rcr]

I had a 1972 Magnavox Color console that lasted 18 years with “Quick on” enabled with no tube failures . Was always bright and clear … flyback finally failed which condemned it.

[@monad_tcp]

Sandby power increases life of anything electronics, because of freaking in-rush currents. People always wonder why my computers function so well, well, I never turn them off, I just let them idle. All electronics idle in my house, except for the switch-mode LEDs, because I need the lights to turn off to sleep (otherwise I wouldn't even turn off LEDs, only dim them).

[@BenState]

@@monad_tcp nonsense

[@monad_tcp]

@@BenState if it was nonsense why would electrical engineers design against it. Nonsense is old people unplugging things from the socket because of 20W extra per house per month.... That's just one extra iPhone charge, it literally doesn't matter.

[@BenState]

@@monad_tcp Im an electronic engineer, it was designed to prevent annoyance and speed up conductance. your comment is nonsense and been shown time and time again in studies of MTBF for components.

[@albinklein7680]

I have a grundig b&w TV set in my (small) collection which has tubes, transistors and ICs in it. The horizontal section is tube (horizontal output and damper; PY500 and PL509), audio output is tube (PCL82) and the video driver is tube (PCF801/PL80) the rest is transistorized and it has a sensor button preset tuner which uses ancient TTL ICs. There are also Telefunken color TV sets which use tubes alongside a color demodulator with ICs. That's the amazing 70s.

[@sobolanul96]

Aaaaa, the PL500 series tubes that would burn out so often that they stocked them at most corner stores.

[@albinklein7680]

@@sobolanul96 Absolutely. In b&w applications they lasted ok. But in color TVs they were driven really hard (in Europe/Germany the tube manufacturers never engineered a real color TV horizontal output tube (color tv kicked in fifteen years later than in the US), so they used the b&w ones) and held up very poorly. Some European/German TV sets (Bang&Olufsen for example iirc.) used two PL509s in parallel and a ballast triode shunting the HOT to keep them tamed. Those sets work as furnaces. In the horizontal stage they burn up like 300 Watts. You can (literally!) warm your dinner on top of them.

[@prk55]

@@albinklein7680 About 1975 we had a new 26inch tube colour set (possibly ITT big wooden cocktail cabinet with the circuitry in a plastic “cage” protruding from the back presumable to allow air flow ). The back was often too hot to touch . We would need a visit several times a year to have tubes changed.

[@michvod]

@@albinklein7680 There was a PL519 tube that was designed specifically for color TV sets. But it came late and few years later there were solid state solutions (like thyristors)

[@teslakovalaborator]

Those sensor select ICs are not TTL, they are bipolar SAS560 or similar

[@flipkibblez]

Tube based sets are cool as heck. i found a 1965 23 inch black and white admiral tv that's been out in the weather for a long time. went to the local packrat's house and found replacement tubes for the ones that were missing and off it went. lots of rust and the wood was warped and falling apart but the set worked well for it's age.

[@wimwiddershins]

This reminds me of when I was a kid, we used to raid my Dad's vacuum tube parts bin and use them as "really cool" space craft. :)

[@tony359]

I have a "light bulb" current limiter which I made myself. Glad I am not the only one testing 100 times, starting very low and then increasing a bit at a time! I made mine with 6-7 bulbs of increasing power and some rocker switches which enable me to select the max wattage I want, along with a bypass switch.

[@enricoself2256]

Panasonic stuff is quite reliable; i have some tape players still working with their original belts after 40 years. Also they used good quality plastic, it remains strong and does not get brittle.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

Even my 2003 Panasonic crt is very well made. The picture is good and crisp, the color is vibrant, the contrast is very good, the sound is good with no distortion, and the case it well made.

[@McPanasonicOsu]

I have a true reliable Panasonics. No, it ain't LN7WKJ or YN7WKJ, but this was my 2015 F-EQ405, 2015 FV-30RUN5, 2016 FV-20TGU3 and of course my 2010 TH-L32C3G TV. These old Panasonic are ABSOLUTELY reliable than the current 2021 Panasonic which turned badly into Chinese thing. I really missed of old Panasonics before 2017, a company making the beautiful high-quality electronics.

[@McPanasonicOsu]

@@EvilTurkeySlices That's true. Panasonic back then before 2017 are somewhat reliable and not damaged easily. Your 2003 Panasonic CRT TV is still working normally after 18 years!

[@stevesstuff1450]

@ Enrico Stuff: I think this video proves that very old - almost 50 years old - Panasonic stuff is EXTREMELY reliable!! :-D The fact that those valves (tubes) are still working after all this time says a lot - the valves are the least reliable part, but the circuitry used may have been more 'kind' to them than some other brands and equipment:- -I had an old Philips record player back in the mid 70s that used valves for the amplification, and it would blow the same two valves roughly every six months!! Probably a defect on the main board, but that's what I mean about the Panasonic being 'kinder', or, more reliable!! It's a real shame that modern day Panasonic is a mere shadow of it's former self, and uses the same cheaper 'disposable' parts... In the 70s and 80s they were, along Sony, one of the best....

[@kc4cvh]

A Matsushita (Panasonic) radio that malfunctioned at a critical moment was part of the reason the IJN lost so badly in the Battle of Midway.

[@davidfarrell7318]

nice little tv thank goodness you saved it it deserves to live on.

[@VernesMisadventures]

My dad bought a Panasonic TV in the mid 70s that was similar to this. It had the tubes with the heater so it didn't need to warm up before it worked. I remember it being either red or orange. Fun fact: It worked long after mom's console TV quit working amd we used the console for a TV stand for the little Panasonic. Thanks for the memories. . .

[@ahobimo732]

It's really amazing how far technology has advanced. We have devices like this, which are now antiques and considered completely obsolete, and yet... this old tv is really a technological marvel, when you think about what it's actually doing to create the audiovisual feed. Most people living today couldn't begin to understand how this tv works.

[@squirlmy]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -A.Clark

[@kaitlyn__L]

Yes indeed, analogue engineering magic is a heck of a thing, and thermionic magic even moreso. It always impresses me to think about the people who invented new valve/tube configurations.

[@wendellporter4875]

indeed now we just have chinese made junk, all my tv's are 50 - 70 years old

[@ahobimo732]

@@wendellporter4875 I was talking more specifically about the complexity of our technology, but I completely agree with you. The quality of consumer electronics has undoubtedly gone downhill in the past half century. I think the fundamental reason for that is the nature of the modern economy. Businesses have evolved to constantly produce and sell new products every single year, year after year. So the idea of making a product that somebody will own for multiple years would be totally counter-productive for them. They have to make things that people will use for a short time, and then replace with a new model. It has created a culture of disposable junk and I honestly hate it.

[@Yordleton]

I wonder if leaving the tube filaments running in "standby mode" might actually decrease wear on them since they are not going through as much thermal contraction whenever the TV is turned on and off. I've seen in multiple videos about vacuum tube based computers that they are far more reliable if they are left hot continuously. Very entertaining video, though!

[@StevenSmyth]

You don’t have to wonder. Tube TVs took a while to warm up, so manufacturers created instant on sets which would keep the tube filaments energized at a low level when a set was plugged in. We had an Emerson color console that had instant on and I was down to the tube tester at Thrifty Drugs every six months or so with a paper bag full of tubes I had to test. It’s what got me interested in TV repair.

[@michvod]

Depends if you have them hot enough so they have emission or just have them barely warm that there is no or very little emission happening. If you have heaters on, but without the B+ (or anode voltage), the emission will very slowly drop, but the real problem is cathode poisoning that occurs if there is no anode current - this will happen in about 1000 hours.

[@Yordleton]

@@michvod cathode poisoning! I totally forgot about that being a thing. I bet you're totally right, it would take much more current draw to keep them emitting than what is supplied in "standby" mode. Also thanks for the insight Steven, sounds like a real pain to have to do that so often!

[@IgnacyG1998]

Maybe turning on the instant on feature a couple minutes before turning on the TV would be healthier for the tubes, as a form of soft start to get them slowly heated and prevent filament flashing. But keeping them heated 24 hours a day just to use the TV for 2 would kill the cathodes much faster IMO. One of my sets has an NTC thermistor in series with the filaments and it takes a long time to warm up, but AFAIK it took over 50 years for the first tube in it to die.

[@paulkocyla1343]

If there is no preheat circuit, the tubes will draw much more power at cold start than in steady state. Some tubes experience a filament flash which significantly decreases their lifetime.

[@ikke1981]

I was born in '81. This reminds me of a small black and white set my dad still had from his bachelor days. Awesome to see analog tubes on this channel.

[@frazzleface753]

That avocado green was clearly meant to match with kitchen appliances of the time 😎 What a time to be alive the 70s were! Adrian, please get working on that time machine so we can all go back!

[@worstuserever]

No, it was to blend with the standard decor while watching in the bathtub, precariously balanced over the middle on one of those flimsy pressed plastic accessory trays.

[@frazzleface753]

🤣😎

[@olradguy]

These were great little B&W sets, I have an AN-109 similar if not identical chassis from about 1968-69, and an identical looking set to this one only all solid state, all still working, in have serviced very few over the years, mainly dirty controls and or bad horiz or vert output tubes

[@mrjsv4935]

Nice, retro looking little TV with the green coloured case. As a kid (born in 1974), I first had in the mid 80's about 20" black & white old TV in my room, maybe from the 60's, as it had some wood trim on the case, but usually watched TV with my parents in the living room, where was more (then) modern colour TV :) Then the B&W TV was replaced with 15" colourTV (Salora 15 L 30) in 1986, which served also as a display for computers and then enjoyed more watching TV & playing with computers in my room. I don't remember the old tube TV having any technical problems, but it had some old weird connections so plugging in even a Pong TV-game wasn't easy or even possible, can't remember. The new Salora had normal connections, even a Scart connector. (I'm in Europe, PAL area).

[@MattMcIrvin]

The standby feature reminds me of a conversation I had with my father when I was a little kid, in which he mentioned that "instant-on" TVs could sometimes cause house fires even when turned off. I remember that terrifying me. We'd switched to a transistorized TV when I was very young, but I certainly remember when drug stores all had tube testers in them. The incongruity here is that the case design aesthetics look far too modern for the age of tubes, but of course, these things coexisted in the Seventies.

[@TheMechanator]

I remember seeing tube tester in a kiosk stand at the local grocery store where they went by the honor system and you marked the cans and packages with a grease pencil for the prices on everything.

[@fluffycritter]

That green is usually called "avocado green" these days, although I don't know if that was a common name for it back in the 70s when it was ubiquitous. Also I count 11 tubes - you forgot the big one with the phosphor coating at the front :)

[@danmenes3143]

Yes, "avocado" is what it was called.

[@TheGreatAtario]

It very much was called avocado green. The other option, of course, being harvest gold.

[@nxx99]

The 11 tubes thing, hehe

[@richfiles]

I have always been into electronics, and almost all the sets I ended up taking apart as a kid were pre 1980s. One thing I noticed about countless mid to late 1970s sets, was that the tuners, and sometimes the high voltage rectifier and-or horizontal circuit would still use tubes, but _everything_ else had switched to transistors and diodes. A few sets even combined valves, transistors, diodes, AND integrated circuits!!! All the major techs, under one chassis. The reason for this odd juxtaposition of technologies, is a mix of three primary factors. The first, and simplest factor, was many companies simply possessed massive stocks of older parts that they wanted to use up before making the switch (Panasonic, for one, used tubes all the way into the 1980s, for this very reason). The second reason, was early semiconductors were not very fast or high frequency, so it cost more to source high frequency transistors or ICs to use in the tuner. I continued seeing valves on TV tuners, particularly the UHF portion, into even the early 1980s. The third major reason was high voltage. early semiconductors could not handle high voltages or currents, and even into the later part of the 1970s, when higher voltage semiconductors did begin to appear, they had a tendency to cost more, hence the continued use of valves for high voltage rectification and horizontal circuits. In the case of the horizontal, high voltage combined with relatively higher frequencies (not as high as the tuner though) resulted in some sets retaining valves for horizontal. As for ICs, some sets had IF and detector chips for sound and-or image, some had color decoding on a chip, and others had automatic gain control circuits. These and other core functions saw early integration, even as far back as the early 70s... 1968 if you count the bleeding edge of electronics, but that wasn't common in any consumer devices back then. As was seen with the continued use of valves, sometimes it was a mater of cost. a board could have a discrete IF circuit, and a footprint for an IF chip... Populate whatever is cheaper or more available at the time. can't tell you how many devices I encountered with alternate part populations on the board. This could also be utilized to offer alternative features using the same board.

[@MrDuncl]

I'm surprised he missed the two transistor shown in the UHF tuner on the schematic. Although ultra high frequency, those didn't need to handle high power or volatge.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@MrDuncl indeed!

[@andrewsanches3816]

@@MrDuncl How much of the uhf tuner is being done by vaccuum tubes?

[@tw11tube]

The dim bulb tester is a poor man's self-resetting fuse. A light bulb is in fact an element with a quite strong PTC effect, although dedicated PTCs in self-resetting fuse applications still exhibit an even stronger resistance change and have a steeper jump point. A light-bulb has approximately 10 times the resistance when it is hot compared to the resistance when it is cold. PTCs for use as fused get warm-to-cold resistance ratios of more than 1000.

[@jasonbass2973]

I honestly love the color. Awesome little piece of retro tech!

[@mikesradios]

FWIW, the video and audio detector diodes wouldn't typically constitute a hybrid tube/transistor set, video diodes were used well back into the '50s. However you do have transistors in the tuner as shown on the tube chart.

[@silvermica]

In 1976 my parents bought a color TV - it was all tubes. This TV had a feature where the heaters remained on at all times so that your TV would turn on instantly. I guess that's the same as a standby mode for tube guitar amplifiers (which they all have). So, yeah, tubes were still a thing - even in the 70s. The reason for the lag was all the tooling and training on the manufacturing lines as well as parts distribution (plus existing stock). Also, a lot of TVs of that era were a mix of transistors and tubes.

[@mikedo6]

Wow... the test patterns triggered some bursts right to the nostalgia centre of my brain!!! Awesome! I'm a kid freezing on the hardwood floor on a Saturday morning ..... waiting for the furnace to kick in and the tubes to warm up!

[@JordanPier]

By 1973, solid state was becoming the norm for TV's. It was really a transitional year. High voltage solid state systems were very expensive, so many companies made hybrid sets where solid state was used for everything but sweep and high voltage. This kept costs down and still made the set reliable - as tube technology had hit its peak by 1970. To see a mostly tube or all tube set in the 70s meant it was definitely budgeted. General Electric had budget color portable sets under the portacolor line that were all tube based until 1978! Cheapest color tv you could buy at the time. The "instant on" feature was used to help make tube sets sell by having them come up as fast as their solid state counterparts. It does shorten the life of the cathodes. I'll usually disable the instant on circuits. The UHF tuner your set has is known as a continuous tuner, vs. a "click" or turret tuner. Again, lower cost item As far as DC restoration - most sets even into the solid state era had no DC restoration or partial. Most of the cathode of the crt was AC coupled to save money. However, sets that had full DC restoration often had a unique identifier - which was instead of the control being labeled "brightness" - it was labeled "black level." Zenith was fond of using this to distinguish their average set, from a set that had full DC restoration.

[@jastervoid]

Adrian - be careful using an antistatic mat with high voltage electronics. You may think you’re isolated through your transformer but the mat can provide the ground reference and increase your chances of getting shocked.

[@dagglock7615]

I'm a bit older then you but I remember replacing the tubes of these old TV's. Thank you for brining me back to the better days. I had some radios that had tubes and I had to goto K-Mart to get new tubes. Those where the days. I now might have to hunt down a tube TV, but the wife won't like it but I don't care..lol

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

A fascinating little tube TV! Nice demonstration and explanations! Great video for vintage tech lovers! Thanks for doing this. ~

[@JRiesen]

When I first saw the woodgrain water bottle, I thought it was a spray can- I suddenly got very excited for Spray-On LGR.

[@projectartichoke]

Our family had a Panasonic B&W portable from the late 60s that we used all the time through the late 80s. I used to haul that set everywhere and it got banged around quite a bit. Properly engineered tube equipment is extremely reliable.

[@JaapGinder]

Here in The Netherlands my parents bought a portable TV of Philips, somewhere around the early 70's. After some years of use on their little boat, I got to use it on my room. It kept working, but receiving with an antenna was difficult. After I got married and having a job, I had a Spectrum Sinclair 48K, and guess what I used as a 'monitor'? Yes, that same old Philips portable TV. But that was nog enough, I got a unit to the Spectrum, providing it with a diskdrive (3.5") and a parallel centronics port and (tadaaa) a video output! So I found out how to change the TV to receive direct video input. I installed a switch, so it was still usable as a TV, but also as a monitor. It was some kind of coax. But today I really don't remember how I did it, but it worked! And the picture was stable and very sharp. Later on I tried the same with a simular little TV, owned by my father in law. Well... guess what, it did work... for a while. Never knew what happend after that 'while'.

[@brianschiff7371]

This brings back memory's, I had a working at a TV repair shop after school doing just that. I remember working on one of these that was blue. Cool.

[@solarbirdyz]

This thing is _super_ groovy and a lovely little mid-century artefact. I'm really glad it actually works. xD

[@coyote_den]

That color was called "Avocado" and it was an option for *everything* in the 70s. That and an awful shade of burnt orange.

[@MrPatdeeee]

You Sir, have brought tears of nostalgia to me; because I am 89; and I spent 45 yrs repairing and instructing technicians on tube (and later digital) TV's. "Yuz wont find any transistors and/or digital items in that baby!" No Sir-ree Bobweiser! Wow! Needless to say; that when you removed the back off that TV; me said, "I have fixed 1,000's of those, over many years. Wow!" Thank you kind Sir. I still own some of the test equipment we used to diagnose the problems in those "gems". Wow!

[@sickboy703]

I had one just like this when I was a kid in my room. Thousands of hours of Looney Toons, Speed Racer, Ultraman, HR PuffnStuff, Batman, Brady Bunch and Land of the Lost were viewed on that little screen.

[@TralfazConstruction]

A 12" B&W Panasonic was the first TV my wife and I owned as newlyweds; March 1976. We bought the TV and other necessary items with gift money our relatives and friends so thoughtfully gave us. That little TV lasted with us for over twenty years and was useful even after it was no longer our primary TV. Thank you, loved ones and friends for giving my wife and I such a headstart in our married life.

[@Andy-lh9bc]

Adrian's analog basement. Very enjoyable video, thanks for sharing

[@binkman853]

Back in the mid to late 70s I had a similar set that was red and white. Loved watching this. Big thanks!

[@dfpolitowski2]

For a modern digital tech and your first time you did very well.

[@markevans2294]

The irony of the recent E27 lamp holder being less reliable than a nearly half a century old TV.

[@alexabadi7458]

Wonderful restoration work, thank you for showing us that old but nice TV.

[@martinwhitaker5096]

So glad this was saved from ewaste! Hard to believe something from 72 had tubes in it - so nice!

[@TexasEngineer]

In 1971, around December, I bought a 9” Panasonic similar to yours. I paid $89 for it and I was in the Army at Ft. Sill, OK. I could stash it in my wall locker during the day. The front was slightly different with a removable tinted shield. The shield was useful for brightly lighted areas. The workings were very similar only a different style. It used a bowtie UHF antenna that was missing wth yours. The owner’s manual came with a circuit diagram and it referenced ociliscope setting for some of the adjustments. Look online for the owner’s manual. It will also mark tell you about the quick on. When I was in the Army I was trained in electronics and tubes. The B+ voltage is very high and will reach out and grab you. We were trained how you use your hands around tubes and I was about to cringe when I saw you pointing at some of the parts. And yes I would open mine up and adjust some of the pots. As a tubes wear the voltages and signals can come out of adjustment. Your set seems almost like new. I wanted to see it with the smoke screen off. Now the big question is what are you going to do with that door stop. All of the channels have changed. If you want to really watch it you will need a converter. If you need a digital converter just reply Need Converter and your name and mailing address.

[@anthonytidey2005]

I repaired a lot of tv's, radios and other electronic in this era whilst working at Marconi Instruments in St Albans, UK. I don't remember any valved equipment that had a stand by like moden equipment. We in the UK had a lot of fires from tv's without that so I think the BS British Standard for these household equipment was written not to allow this through BSI. Companies in the UK quickly converted to transistors, there was a stage where hybrid equipment was sold, it was not long before ic's were fitted. If you equate the way valves operste to fet's thay are very similar. In fact a US company made Fetrons in meny types to replace valves. They were very good making valve equipment more reliable and less hummy 60 or 50hz, so the filling wires were usually removed. We used to put our lunch in some of our big bits of test equipment to heat them for lunch. Thanks for another great video.

[@MrDuncl]

Those were the days. I watched the first Space Shuttle launch on a TV with a massive kink on the picture that someone had brought into work to repair but not got around to fixing. At Christmas it was the environmental chamber that got used for heating mince pies :-)

[@n2rj]

Really cool set! I’m a fan of Zenith Trans-Oceanic radios which are relatively compact tube radios. Nice to see this philosophy applied to TVs.

[@GlennLittleford]

Vacuum tubes were still used way into the 70's. They are abundant, well understood, and usually more reliable than transistors of the era.

[@thearchitect4726]

Thankyou for saving another piece of electronic history...

[@button-puncher]

Looks Avocado on my screen. ;) Thanks for the great video. What a awesome little set. That horizontal output TUBE is super cool looking. This would look so neat at night with a clear back.

[@erichkohl9317]

This kind of reminds me of the sort of TV you'd have next to your bed watching cartoons because you're out sick from school with the flu.

[@meatpockets]

Oh man, I that brings back some memories, like watching The Price is Right on a school day.

[@SlightlyMiscalculated]

This thing is beautifully designed! I adore the styling

[@ry491]

Love your enthusiasm as the set came to life. I had a big smile on my face too . Japanese gear of that era was superbly made . I have a few large multiband Japanese transistor radios from that time . All probably high hours but work perfectly and never been touched . That kind of quality will never be repeated sadly . Nice video . I enjoyed it . Best wishes from the UK .

[@shmehfleh3115]

Tubes were still common in the early 70s in budget gear like this little B&W TV. I own a little 9" RCA "salesman sample" mini console TV made in 1972. It uses four or five tubes, and the rest is transistors.

[@audiodood]

That sounds super cool lol

[@willhouse]

DANG, *Panasonic!* Their 60's and 70's cases were just as great as *any* other manufacturers out there. Love these things to *death.* 🥰☠️🥰♾️

[@damianrieger4354]

Thanks for the flashback. I owned the same model with the same color case. There wasn't much choice at the Penney's in downtown Anchorage AK. The set cost $160 which is equivalent to about $800 today. Reception was good but there were only three TV stations. Two went off the air at midnight.

[@needfortweed8734]

I love old Panasonic stuff, and I especially love the look of this CRT. There is just something about the 70s design that resonates with me...

[@macorourke2222]

Neat'O Brother. Brings back a lot of memories. I found a little 1971 black n white Toshiba TV. I have to investigate it. Thanks so much for sharing 😊 👍 ♥️ 🇨🇦🇺🇸🎉🎉🎉🎉👏👏👏👏🎉🎉🎉🎉💯💯

[@interactii]

What a cool little TV! A very nice look at it!

[@X5Industries]

I’d bet money that was a kitchen TV. A few things to note: 300ohm twin lead is the best for low-loss per unit distance (far superior to coax), however it’s highly susceptible to external interference. Also, a well-aligned (black and white) set should show crystal clear sharpness across the full multi-burst test pattern (the full original 4MHz NTSC video bandwidth) over RF with no distortion/snow. Color sets generally can’t get higher than the color burst carrier of 3.58MHz (the second from the right bar).

[@mal2ksc]

I don't think this set was ever that sharp. No point in making the circuitry much sharper than the CRT itself. A little sharper is good, just to minimize the impact of other components that may soften the image in a cost-driven piece of gear like this, especially after nearly 50 years of use.

[@JamesPotts]

OMG!! Those antenna clips! I had completely forgot about them.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Me too until I found those in a box. I was completely shocked and had to show them on video.

[@jacqueschouette7474]

Wow! A blast from the past. I took a TV repair class when I was in high school and everything that we worked on had tubes since solid-state TV's were just a few years old. My parents had an old black-and-white Zenith portable TV that they got in 1975 or 1976 (it's got the Declaration of Independence on the casework) and it's all transistors so the switch from tubes to transistors was already underway. It's connected to my old Apple II+ computer (another blast from the past) and I turned them both on about a year ago and it they still both worked.

[@stefanopaganini7503]

Nice small TV tubes set. Beatiful,compliments!!!!!

[@DerekWitt]

Wow. A fully functional 50 year old TV set! And a '70s green color to boot! And to think it's a few years older than me. :)

[@HeyBirt]

One of the most damaging things for tubes is to turn them off and on. The thermal cycling is destructive. They figured this out on one of the early tube type computers (the Whirlwind maybe). By keeping the filaments continuously on at a lower current, when the computer was not working, they would be a few orders of magnitude more hours of operation from the tube.

[@MrHBSoftware]

tell that to everyone who either owned or serviced vacuum tube tvs...and if you buy a vintage set with instant on its almost guarateed it will have a bad crt and a bunch of bad tubes....this set has had little use because its a small portable, maybe it was a kitchen set and was always powered off or something

[@kilwala2242]

The number one cause of death of CRTs is loss of cathode emissions which instant on features accelerates. Theoretically you might have less chance of heater/cathode or grid shorts with fewer thermal cycles. That failure mode would be more likely to happen with a machine that has thousands of tubes vs a TV.

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

@@MrHBSoftware I wonder if later picture/receiving tubes were designed to better tolerate this kind of use, something that was not designed into earlier picture/receiving tubes. This one looks like it's cool as a cucumber.

[@andygozzo72]

yep, thermal cycling is bad, but so is keeping heaters on continuously, can cause 'cathode poisoning' with no anode current flowing, making the emission drop prematurely

[@MrHBSoftware]

@@kilwala2242 i agree

[@michaelturner4457]

Definately early 70s. In 974 we had a brand-new bathroom suite in exactly the same shade of putrid snot green....NICE!!

[@audiodood]

Avocado green is the official term ;) Nice little set, interesting to see tubes in something of its class

[@MillwalltheCat]

Learned a bit about stuff from this vid. Thanks.

[@sa3270]

What a cute little TV. Glad it still works.

[@OscarSommerbo]

The 34 watt draw in standby/off mode really puts the 5-10 watt standby on modern TVs in perspective

[@BilisNegra]

Yes, specially considering this thing is tiny. In addition, we're now perfectly aware of when a set is on standby whereas with this CRT that would be concealed to any but the most technically knowledgeable. You common dude would never imagine it was drawing any current at all. Maybe the manual mentioned it somewhere, but most people would not know.

[@westelaudio943]

@@BilisNegra You see the light glowing inside in the dark. Not every set had that "InstaBake" feature and it was frowned upon back in the day because of the wasted power and fire hazard. It was useful to pre-heat the tubes for a few minutes though, to lower the thermal shock.

[@focus82grothm.84]

What a lovely tv set and a solid performer 😃👍

[@keithstudly6071]

If I remember correctly they half rectified the heater power when off so that the tube heaters would have half power. Then when the switch was on the diode was bypassed and the full power went to the heaters. Some of the big color consoles had a vacation switch so you could turn it off if you were going away for an extended period.

[@chrisa2735-h3z]

The fact that a tube TV was still being made in 1973 is amazing to me!

[@gabrieluruguay1]

I love old TV i dont know why, but i love old stuff, great vid! Greets!!

[@TheLawrenceWade]

Gorgeous little TV! Good job saving it! Thank you for this warm and fuzzy video - and, in the case of this set, it is literally both warm AND fuzzy. :) Your "Instant Play" (or a million other brand-specific names ) are generally just a diode across the power switch, reverse-biased relative to the half-wave rectifier these sets used. Power switch off allows power to the tube filaments for half the AC sinewave and since the B+ rectifier was reversed, there was no plate current. Some TV sets also had a Vacation Mode switch which just turned off the filament diode - because, you know, unplugging the TV when you go to Florida for two weeks was such an arduous task. :) When the power switch was turned on, the tubes got filament heat on both sides of the sinewave, and the B+ rectifier got to be forward-biased. To disable the Instant Play, look for a large silicon diode near the power switch, sometimes literally soldered across it, and disconnect one lead so you can put it back to original if the set ever ends up in the Smithsonian or something. I do not know whether baking the tubes with no cathode load is worse for their longevity than thermally cycling their filaments from cold starts, and a lot of people are going to have a lot of different opinions. You will rarely see that Instant Play feature in a set with parallel tube filaments, for one thing it would be hell on the power transformer. But I have seen it in at least one set which had a separate filament transformer just to keep the output tubes and damper lit all the time - maybe also in high end sets with a separate remote control receiver chassis which kept the remote control receiver ""listening". I was born in 1974 and by the time I was 10, I was well accomplished at picking up old TV sets from the curb and fixing them. 26" delta-gun tube color TV sets - scary scary stuff to work on, my parents had no idea the risks but I always had tremendous respect for the hazards of electricity. "There are old technicians and there are bold technicians, but there are no old bold technicians." - early 1960s Popular Electronics magazine. To everyone reading: please learn the hazards before you try repairing a tube radio/TV/amplifier/whatever. I shuddered when he put his hand on the bottom of that circuit board - one capacitor holding a charge can ruin your afternoon. This ain't a motherboard running at 5V which is more afraid of you shocking it with ESD! Everything related to repairing All-American-Five radios applies to a series-filament TV and more. And picture tubes are fragile glass objects under tremendous pressure. Oh, and build this. You will blow through any circuit and any capacitor over about 0.1uF that doesn't peg the meter needs to be changed. For daily repairs to anything with capacitors, you will find that you check a few voltages with your DMM, then you go through it with this and find the problem as fast as you can tap the probes across capacitors: kripton2035.free.fr/Resources/poptronix%20ESR%20Capacitor%20Tester.pdf As a kid, I got "voluntold" into fixing a lot of TV sets for teachers and parents of classmates and stuff like that. Reversing two leads on the deflection yoke ended that. Suddenly, the door to enter Cheers was on the right side of the bar.... and I got to work on my own projects again... just saying. :) I like to let things bake on the Variac or dim-bulb tester for days at a time if the current draw is stable. I have a 1938 RCA 88-T radio with the original cloth power cord, electrodynamic speaker, all original tubes and Aerovox electrolytic capacitors. Not a trace of hum. I'd never leave it running unattended, and for normal use it would need a full re-cap for safety and performance. But to keep an original set as original as possible for very limited use, this is my tactic. When I replace a part, I also put the original in a little baggie with service notes that I attach somewhere inside the chassis. You've got good instincts on servicing the tube stuff. Mr Carlson's Lab and Shango have taught you well. Heads up: nobody but Shango calls them "vacuum bulbs". LOL. Good job preserving our technological history. Lawrence

[@frankcedeno5206]

Love it, so fun. Thanks for this

[@Starter61]

Such an elegant design !

[@Northerncalwolf]

Our family TV was that same model for years, except the color was white for ours. Brings back many memories. =)

[@retrogamer33]

That little thing uses almost twice the power of my 50" TV

[@StevenSmyth]

This was probably an old chassis with a new case. The official color is avocado green. Panasonic also had an orange version of the set, so they more than likely had a harvest gold, a black and a white version too. Sam’s puts it around 1973-1974.

[@eversostrange6337]

That's baby poop green in my book lol.

[@AxelWerner]

The force is strong with this CRT!

[@roachtoasties]

My parents gave me a black and white TV when I was a kid. It was 1973, and the TV (a 12" plastic desk model that I think was a Zenith) was brand new. It had tubes with that quick start feature. I did, on my own, install a switch on the cord so it wouldn't use power all the time. I think later that year, with the energy crisis, manufacturers discontinued the quick start feature as an energy conservation measure. I had that set into the 1980's. I'm not sure what I did with it, but it never needed servicing.

[@kins749]

Amazing little set, much better picture than my 80s Hitachi transistor B&W set

[@ghramsey1681]

Cool TV. I love old electronics. Working on anything with tubes is a dying art. Nice to keep such things alive. I live in Houston and used to go to a shop in Bellaire, TX called Lightspeed computers. They had a display case full of old computers of various vintage. The owner sold his business in earlier 2010 or 2011 and the shop closed so I'm not sure what happened to his stuff. Your videos on restoring old computers and electronics are great.

[@ericpaul4575]

Avocado is the color you are looking for.

[@edgardovigo147]

Wow It looks so cool, love it!

[@nuclearmonster]

What a neat design for a TV. Love the two tone contrast, though I’d rather a different color.

[@RetroCaptain]

1973 was the final year of "full tube" sets. My grandfather bought the same year, totl Colour set, (yes Panasonic) It had twin Horizontal Output tubes, which were over twice the size of the one seen in this set. It was a 28" Colour iirc, and ran from 1973 and was still working ok, when it was traded in on a new 26" Panasonic console in 1985/86. I have the 1971 Sanyo version of this set (9" B&W). I used to use it in my kitchen to watch the news while having dinner. I DID have the 13" version of this very set! The HOT was whooped, I junked it to eWaste The lexan screen cover..was known as a "Sun shade" Our first family television, a wedding present to my parents, a Canadian built Admiral, had instant on iirc, and it didn't need constantly replacing tubes. The "real issue" was it consumed juice while off. The tubes lasted, capacitors going shorted over time caused tvs to go on the fritz. Your Isolation Transformer, looks like a Hammond, from Guelph Ontario Canada. Positive it's the same as mine.

[@ultrametric9317]

That was fantastic!! Thanks!

[@RobertNES816]

Panasonic always made awesome stuff! They always have very good engineering.

[@commodork]

Seeing that twin-lead clip reminded me of my childhood. My late grandfather had one connected to his big-box RCA tv.

[@EddieLeal]

I had a TV similar to this one when I was a kid back in the early 80s. Had to slam the top of the set with my hand or a nice thick phone book when the screen would go black. Worked for some time. Parents finally got us a new one. Pretty sure they did it because they thought I would kill myself one day trying to get the picture back on that set. 😳😆

[@caedmonv55]

Other people testing and old TV: *plugs it in* Adrian: I have a 21-step program for this.

[@waltschannel7465]

Tube sets were still being made as late as 1978. Only the US built GE portacolor sets at that point. The Japanese makes apparently stopped making tube sets in 1974. The tube sets were low end at that point.