Sony Trinitrons From The 70s And 80s

Let's take a look at these two Sony Trinitron TVs from 1976 and 1986. Will they work? If not, can they be repaired? Smoke and sparks result.
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:32 - 80s TV First Look
04:29 - 80s TV Testing
08:59 - 70s TV First Look
13:24 - 70s TV Testing
15:10 - Inside Layout
19:34 - Repair Attempt
32:06 - Smoke
41:14 - Wrap Up
‪@shango066‬ Deep dive repair video 2hrs • Sony Trinitron KV1541 ...
Music used by permission:
“Fakebit World” by Malmen
/ malmen
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#Retro #Computers #Sony #Television

[@CotyRiddle]

Shango is a wizard when it comes to these old tv's

[@ct92404]

He's also a conspiracy theorist nut though.

[@DJRatAttack]

​@@ct92404makes him all the more entertaining

[@CDJF1]

@@ct92404 Prove him wrong then?

[@r3tr0nic]

I've been in many TVs in my younger years, due to living on military bases and so many people moving in/out (and free bulk waste pick up). I'd grab then from the curbs. Some of the older sets, especially the high ends, were so interesting with so many boards and complicated circuits. I was so young though, I really didn't know what I was doing besides basic things. I believe PIN is a pin cushion adjustment (something quite rare on a TV set), but not sure.

[@bsanchez3563]

Particularly the noughties have a complex number of service menu "pages" ie on screen adjustments but for the entire service manual maybe several hundred pages for up to like 12 or 16 different but simmilar class of tv model numbers ie varying in screen size but probable fo have slight appearance variance in trim etc but not as much but still also some in performance or in other words resolution input capability

[@DavisMakesGames]

Great TVs, love the old trinitrons! Beatutiful design and great picture.

[@clifffton]

You never had to work on the 70's ones. Great picture but hellish to repair.

[@Streetsupra88]

I picked up a mint condition KV-1215 yesterday for $50. It's gorgeous and is working amazingly. I hate you couldn't get yours going. I just love the way it looks

[@kingforaday8725]

I saw one of these at an estate sale (summer 2022). Sign said it didnt work but I plugged it in and it came on! I was gonna go back on the last day when they mark things 50% off but I forgot about it. Kinda reminds me of the red Sony Betamax SL-2300 !

[@CygnusTM]

Always great to see good old Trinitrons. At first, I was thinking the pink tinge was from the neon. 😁

[@RetroHackShack]

That was a good guess

[@mresturk9336]

13:26 Wow, my Grandmother's house had that exact model of Atari. I would never have suspected it was a launch model. Makes me wish I had asked for it before one of my other relatives got it.

[@drdozer3297]

This is very cool my friend, i love anything and everything retro ;-)

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks

[@ruthlessadmin]

I never heard of trinitrons until the late 90s when I bought my first high-end monitor. It was so amazing, I assumed they were new tech at the time. It wasn't until a few weeks before this comment, that I realized it was such old tech!!

[@ryandevan2793]

Well the Trinitron was not new in the 90s or even the 70s as Sony first introduced the Trinitron back in 1968! Well introduced in Japan in 1968 it came out here in the US sometime in 1969.

[@StuartJ]

70's Sony TV's were miles better than the competition. Even as a kid back then I appreciated the difference. You paid a premium for them too. The Toshiba FST range was probably the first real challenger in the mid 80s, due to their flat tubes, but Sony was still king for another decade.

[@coryengel]

Regarding putting in an LCD: it is possible to breach the tube’s vacuum by breaking off the stem, then cut the curved glass off the front. This can then be used in the bezel (epoxy maybe), and viewing the LCD through the original tube front would look more authentic. Of course it would mean destroying a CRT that probably is a good part in limited supply…

[@CotyRiddle]

@Trinitron Productions if the tube is weak/bad/dead then really it wouldn't matter.

[@CotyRiddle]

@Trinitron Productions That would not work in this case. different tubes. Could be done though as it is possible. Just not in his case.

[@ComputerTechnic217]

@JelliedCranberrySauce ikr

[@jeromecabral192]

A friend of mine had a Sony Trinitron tv that was a console. At one time i owned a 27 inch Sony tv manufactured in 1980. They also released the Sony FD Trinitron wega

[@andydurbin8309]

Hello, I was watching your attempt to fix your television and noticed you had a t-slim insulin pump and I have one of those also nice to see another type 1 in the wild 😁 A very good video and a really good attempt at fixing your TV.

[@RetroHackShack]

We have to stick together 😅

[@andydurbin8309]

@@RetroHackShack yup, sure do 😃

[@mowingcowboy]

Watched Lawrence Welc as a kid. Wanted that Bubble Machine. Great Video.

[@RetroHackShack]

Me too. Thanks!

[@laustinspeiss]

We used more 9/14/21-inch Trinitrons than I can remember - in broadcast & post production… Never saw any smoke or sparks from 1974-1987, then worked for SONY around 1991. That was in PAL markets, so there may have been US power supply issues.

[@RetroHackShack]

Good to know. I really think the flyback just went bad with age.

[@arinc.545]

Hello from the FLOSS audience. Great series.

[@RetroHackShack]

Yea! FLOSS!

[@PoohBear7747]

Their was a church that used to have these on the front of the pull pit. Their was 2 of them under a glass podium, they were black and white and one of them had purple carpet on the with part. The back was exposed. It was a unique set up. 📺

[@jerryspann8713]

The add and erase buttons are adding and deleting channels. Sometimes when auto programming weaker channels are missed and not added to the lineup. If this happens, just randomly enter the missing channel number and hit the add button. If a channel is picked up that you don't watch, you can delete it with the erase buttons.

[@toofusnook]

Blowing in the carts doesn’t help, but it can hurt. It’s the reinserting that made it work. I use deoxit to clean the cartridge slots on the console.

[@maniatore2006]

Yes thats are Sony TVs from the 70s. My Philips TV from 1976 works fine so far, just some Noise from a winding. Thank you for that Video.

[@andershammer9307]

I have a bunch of 70's vintage Sony's and I got them all working.

[@RetroHackShack]

Nice

[@tomj4506]

Older set probably has shorted SG horz out SCR on the shield. Also shorted 2SC867 pass regulator & a burned resistor in the hoz drive. Then you need to find what blew it all. Trust me, dont put a penny into it. Pink one looks good. A much better set & easy to fix. Also came in blue, black, tan & maybe a few other colors...... LFOD !

[@RetroHackShack]

Exactly, I discovered that later on in the video. Good call.

[@AgentMan666]

Always the flyback on older trinitrons

[@loganjorgensen]

Miami Vice crossed your mind too, I was just thinking you'd see that one the desk of some sinister executive or dealer of yayo. Nice pairing with the NES, I'm guessing that was the peak AV for the time, still amazes me how long stereo TV/gaming took to arrive. RF, oh I thought you'd try Composite, that was high tech bitd heh. Nice headphone jacks on the 70s set, just recently I was thinking I only imagined those in TVs, always thought that was a good compromise for one speaker electronics. Clean AV connection point system too, my first family TV got pretty scratched with screw & fork swaps during the VCR rental years. Coaxial connectors took a while to be standard too, Cable-TV push I guess, wish I could have tried UHF but Weird Al is my only reference to that world. ;) Thanks for the feature, I was curious about high end TVs from those decades. There is progress in AV connectors but slow and in several steps adding Composite, then S-Video, then Component, and eventually RGB/VGA. They each have cost variances but too bad in NA we never saw an uber connector like SCART. Anyways you tried and like you said about X amount of dollars rising to repair, there's always salvage parts. Speaking of LCD replacements, I've seen some interesting tube approximation by using a lens on the outside. hackaday.com/2021/06/16/fit-your-lcds-with-lenses-for-that-vintage-crt-look/

[@RetroHackShack]

Cool. Thanks for that link. I will check it out.

[@probnotstech]

This was a fun video, thanks for sharing. Shame the older TV was beyond fixing, as you said that definitely seems like something is shorted, . I'm happy you're keeping the TV, it's really quite aesthetically pleasing. Regarding the newer TV - I had the nearly identical model to your KV-1397R (except mine was grey) and it was a great little TV. Wish I had kept it. 9:55 The 2 earphone jacks were pretty common on older Sony TVs. One of them would mute the speaker, and the other wouldn't. They are usually marked with one dot and two dots to show this. I think the idea was you could record audio off a TV channel to a tape recorder while listening through the TV speaker, use headphones and mute the TV speaker, or as you said - use 2 different headphones for 2 people. 18:17 PIN is the pincushion adjustment, it adjusts the vertical straightness of the sides of the picture.

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks for that helpful info. I was hoping to test those audio jacks out if it was working, but this will potentially help me in my resurrection 🙂

[@Not-Only-Reaper-Tutorials]

02:14 if the memory is good, the black is due the grid that was black coated to increase contrast

[@jo-maritumanda4370]

Please also make a video from 90s or Early 2000s trinitron or wega crt tv comparison

[@baershaag]

Great Video. It's kinda fascinating (a little bit strange, too... ;-) ) to see this old tech, if it's working perfectly or not. You're really one of channels that I watch regularly. You and Adrian Black have another thing in common... you're both having the same insulin pump. Are you satisfied with it? I'm using a Medtronic 640G, but I'm "on the hunt" for a new one. So, if it is OK for you I'm very interested in your opinion 'bout it. So, back to the CRTs again... ;-) The pink one is really cute... Best regards and keep up the good work!

[@RetroHackShack]

I'm so glad you are enjoying the content. Thanks for that feedback!! I would highly recommend the Tandem/Dexcom combination of pump/sensor. Adrian and I talk about it quite often. My levels have gotten about 20% better since switching from Medtronic. Also, it was announced that they will start letting users bolus from their phone and generally have more control that way. So, now is a good time to switch I think.

[@tonymanzo3766]

These TVs needed to have voltage slowly increase to reform caps a variac would do that but an incandescent light bulb in series with the tv would be useable. I found the Sony TVs to be money pits, throwing good money after bad, usually more than one component with take out several others, usually expensive horizontal output and voltage regulator parts that were Sony only made parts, you have to be damn sure the parts are all changed at one time or else you will have a pile of original and replaced parts making a nice pile. I considered it tuition paid to learn to work with these sets. But I think I would have cut my losses once you blew out the second regulator transistor.

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah. I definitely need a Variac.

[@aggelosk3013]

Hello great informative video,I have a really newbie question … is it possible to connect an old NES to the Sony Trinitron KV-203ME?

[@RetroHackShack]

Yes

[@TotallyRadTV]

In my experience most 1970's Trinitrons are broken (or close to it) while the '80s ones are usually still going strong.

[@infinitecanadian]

This is the sort of thing that even my dad - a lifelong electronics expert - probably couldn't repair unless he got the right part. Were it struck by lightning, the whole kit-and-kaboodle would probably be charred black!

[@RetroHackShack]

Tough one for sure. I may come across a similar set sometime, but I don't have infinite time or money to sink into this one.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@RetroHackShack That's understandable, although it still sucks.

[@tonymanzo3766]

The two headphone jacks were for tv audio on and one muting the speaker on the tv

[@TheRealJohnHooper]

Some CRTs seem to have some kind of black tint coating.. For example the TV on the right appears darker then the one on the left, that completely washes out in a bright room..

[@UHF43]

Yes, they do. And the reason was exactly that: to improve contrast in brighter ambients. Sony marketed it as 'Black Trinitron'.

[@gavincurtis]

Could be incompatible wood grain between the 2600 and the 70's Trinitron? One was walnut and the other some kind of burled wood finish..

[@RetroHackShack]

LOL

[@deanagoes2791]

Always using isolation transformer for safety work in repairing live chassis tvs..

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah I need to get one.

[@acoresbrasil]

You can make a 3D printed piece to fill the gap between the bezel and the LCD.😉 Good video! I enjoyed it a lot!

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks and yeah that's what I'm thinking.

[@WillOnSomething]

Wait, that TV is pink? It looks white to me. Oh god, here we go again... the dress color is Yanny!

[@VSigma725]

I have basically the same Trinitron as your 70s model, except with no fake wood. It is completely dead, no signs of life when powered on.

[@RetroHackShack]

I think whatever causes this must be related. That's why I brought up that theory about the shorted bypass capacitors.

[@marka1986]

Shango 066 has a video or 2 on repairing older Sony TV with horizontal and power supply problems.

[@RetroHackShack]

Maybe you haven't gotten to that part of the episode where I mention him yet 🙂

[@StevenSmyth]

I worked at Circuit City in 1986. The pink set is part of Sony's designer series from 86-87, and you can get the user's manual at Sony's website. They had pink, red, blue and gray. Thy also had Betamax VCRs in the same colors. On the older set (too bad you can’t get it working) the Auto setting is to set the picture automatically (color. intensity, brightness and contrast). AFT is automatic fine tuning so you wouldn’t have to set the fine tuning yourself. Those controls on the back are for TV techs. When I went to my grandma’s house and watched TV, it was Star Trek.

[@RetroHackShack]

Fantastic! Circuit City! Loved that place. Thanks for the info.

[@svenbenglen7599]

hah, have a 77 tv of that model, works good but need to change caps due to slight vertical issue

[@RetroHackShack]

Nice

[@jph290]

Hello from a #FLOSSWeekly fan!

[@RetroHackShack]

FLOSS!

[@jph290]

Can't wait until they have you back on! Loved that episode.

[@shoraz]

Do the capacitors in this go bad if they were regularly used until recently?

[@RetroHackShack]

No. Probably not. Of course all electrolytic caps can dry out or leak over time. That's why it's good to test them with an ESR meter.

[@shoraz]

@@RetroHackShack That's great I got a Trinitron from the mid 90s that was in use till 2018 or so and is in storage might just take it out and see if it still works. Also just found your channel a lot of great videos to catch up on.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@shoraz a 3-4 year idle time is kind of on the edge of capacitors drying out depending on how high-quality they are. 6-12 months is about as far as I’d go for a definite. But I’d also probably just chance it and see if it works after 4 years. Then fix it if there’s any magic smoke released lol. 2018 is definitely way better than say 2010 for the last-used time.

[@shoraz]

@@kaitlyn__L I got it out of storage and it's dead, maybe not from the capacitor but it did get a bit wet everytime it rained so I'm guessing maybe the traces got corroded or something.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@shoraz oh yeah that can do sooo much harm, even just extended high humidity. Could be just one trace is corroded out or absolutely everything could be crusty.

[@TapesNstuffS]

I think the early 70s units didn't have those rube goldberg style failures.

[@mbertolijr]

I wonder if an iPad screen will fit in there. There’s a project to make an iPad screen into a CRT looking case

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah I think I saw that.

[@PP-xy9bg]

ICs are also solid state :) Did you mean descrete components va ICs?

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah.

[@infinitecanadian]

Transistors have three leads, yes? Then how is the regulator a transistor?

[@RetroHackShack]

Yes. It has three leads. Base, collector, and emitter.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@RetroHackShack But I only see two.

[@RetroHackShack]

There are two in the middle and one on the outside

[@infinitecanadian]

@@RetroHackShack Do you mean the metal base?

[@RetroHackShack]

Yes

[@Raul-yg5oz]

AFT Auto Fine Tuning

[@johnglielmi6428]

I'm confused as to why you wouldn't just recap the set. 70 year old electrolytic caps could still be leaking internally even if you don't see any physical leaking. They could be turning into resistors.

[@RetroHackShack]

I did change many of them. I just didn't show that. You will notice my parts pile grows over time. However, I did test all the caps out of circuit with an ESR meter. They were reading a bit high, but not out of spec.

[@tomj4506]

Shot gunning caps is not the way to go. TROUBLESHOOT the set. Even after 40 yrs at the bench I can mess up doing it. Wrong value, wrong polarity solder splashes etc. There are a few caps commonly go in modern sets but just a few. Others keep on going. And then theres the time & $$ to change out 50 little electrolytics...... LFOD !

[@RetroHackShack]

Yes. Exactly and 9.95 times out of 10 they aren't faulty.

[@johnglielmi6428]

@@RetroHackShack kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpnSp4V_gpqrd9E Check Out Mr. Carlson's video on Capacitor Leakage testing. I found it quite informative. ESR is not the only way to go to check for bad and leaking Capacitors. not that IO doubt your findings. it's just you only checked out the Capacitors for ESR and they require more thorough testing for leakage is all I'm saying.

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah. I did that too.

[@wblynch]

Why not just keep an eye out for a parts set or replacement board somewhere? Much better than gutting that beauty.

[@RetroHackShack]

Because if I find another set with a working flyback chances are it will work just fine. It's very unlikely I will find a set that has a good flyback but that can't be repaired for some reason.

[@groovengravy]

Bought one in the late 80s. It was expensive. Died after a year.

[@D.R.Pinball]

Is there a way I can private message you? I’m having issues with my kv13m10

[@hydroxan1508]

I know many people have (hopefully) pointed this out already, but... Please, do not blow in/at NES cartridges, or really any cartridges. It only has a negative effects on the connectors. It can cause corrosion, which can ruin the cartridge!

[@RetroHackShack]

I actually did that as a joke. I cleaned it with IPA.

[@technischemaschinenfabrik5882]

Unfortunately the 70s tv had only antenna input and no rca inputs.

[@RetroHackShack]

That was rare on sets of this vintage. That's why we all had to use those silver and black switch boxes on the back of the TV.

[@Kosakate]

me : having probs with a kv 2092 rifa caps

[@tomj4506]

AFT = Auto Fine Tuning. Same thing as AFC on an FM radio

[@PJBonoVox]

He knows. He even overlaid it on the video.

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah. I should have overlayed it again the second time I mentioned it. Whoops.

[@infinitecanadian]

I don't like shango666 because he destroys things.

[@ct92404]

He is also a conspiracy theorist nut.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@ct92404 Is he, now? Hmm. Well, he won't have the privilege of me watching him.

[@ct92404]

@@infinitecanadian During the pandemic, he was always rambling against vaccines and masks, and just in general he was starting to spout a lot of nutty conspiracy theories. I got tired of it and stopped watching him.

[@infinitecanadian]

@@ct92404 Weird...

[@Lierofox]

@@ct92404 Yeah...that's about the vibe I got from him after watching one video, so many random asides that had NOTHING to do with the video to just ramble on about caustic crap, that was enough for me. Also ended up dropping AvE when he began blindly supporting the trucker convoy.

[@DavidSusiloUnscripted]

That’s not “hot pink”, it’s “pastel pink”

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah. It faded a bit. Brighter in person though.

[@stefanegger]

that's a crappy monitor, just throw it away.