TV Repairman hat today

[gkainz]

It's been 30 years since I've wielded a soldering pencil in earnest

My son bought a used Panasonic rear projection TV last year with his lawn mowing money so he can host Halo parties in the basement. Last week the convergence went out the window on it - he found this link http://cmpalmer.blogspot.com/2006/11/fixing-my-own-tv-part-ii.html that looks the same as his symptoms. He ordered the convergence amps, handed them to me when they arrived and said "Hey Dad? You used to fix stuff in the Navy, right?"

Man, I cannot believe how tiny stuff has gotten lately! (and how bad my eyes have gotten) Good thing my wife has some of those cheater glasses laying around the house! Could have used another 20x magnification but got the chips replaced and only burned 3 fingers in the process.

Fired it up and still has issues but hey, I was completely impressed when all the magic smoke stayed in place when I plugged it in!

Anyway, looks like I have to pull the board and take a closer look at everything with bigger glasses and start metering out the resisters around the amps. I visually inspected everything and all "looked" good - no obvious burned parts, but I didn't meter anything else out.

Kind of a fun diversion for a post-turkey afternoon, especially with such low expectations on my part. My son's expectations, on the other hand? I've got to fix this!

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Wow, and the original guy, from the blog, did his over Thanksgiving too!

 

[mikea]

...Kind of a fun diversion for a post-turkey afternoon, especially with such low expectations on my part. My son's expectations, on the other hand? I've got to fix this!

Your idea of fun differs from mine. I don't think I'd have associated the word "fun" with that task within the last 10 years or so.

I bought a reading lamp with a magnifying glass that has proved useful for such a few times, not the kind you're thinking of. For whatever reason my glasses often fail at reading really small text sometimes no matter how long my arms get.

 

[ScottM]

Greg I hate 10x20 resistors. I cannot see the darned things and soldering them is a PIA. Reminds me of beam lead diodes that I used to have to deal with. To attach those I needed a sharpened toothpick, conductive epoxy, and a microscope. And that was when my eye were good!

Thank goodness I am a management weeny now!

 

[rottydaddy]

Good luck with that...


As much annoying ditzy stuff as my (technical) job has me doing with A/V gear, I'm glad I rarely have to crack anything open and work inside... especially nowadays.


With a nice clean bench, good light, and all the right tools, it might be fun, but I rarely have all of the above, even at home.

 

[timwinters]

The only thing that's good about being quite nearsighted is that I TAKE MY GLASSES OFF to see fine detail up close (even as I approach 50 yo).

Of course, I can only see clearly for about 12" but...

All of my friends just shake their heads because the concept of being able to see up close without glasses is quite foreign to them.

Lasik is in my near future so all this will abruptly end within the next year.

 

[gkainz]

With a nice clean bench...

Yeah, like THAT will ever happen here!!! That means I finish the cleanup from the engine swap in the kid's Saturn, which means that the snowmobile rebuild - untouched since June - has to get shuffled back to the back shelves, which means that the Christmas lights have to get moved off the shelves and unpacked - hey wait a minute - it IS time for that! Maybe it IS possible!!!

 

[docmirror]

Soldering. Yeah, baby. I used to have a NASA qual for soldering when I was young and cool. After that, I would fix high freq sampling probes that had gone tango uniform. The caps and resistors looked like little specs of glitter, and I had to solder them into the probe handle. To set the RC time constant, you actually had to add tiny drops of wax to the caps! I'm not kidding!

As for the TV, it's prolly toast. If the convergence is whacked, the IF stages may be messed up too. Hope you have an NTSC gen and an alignment print.

 

[gkainz]

Well, all the resistors clustered around the convergence amps, listed on the sites I found as common failures read good. Anyway, the TV is pronounced "good as it was when I got it" by my son tonight, so I'm turning in my tv repairman hat once again.

Nope, I got nothin' but an old soldering pencil, solder sucker and an old Simpson 260 ... oh yeah, my newest piece of old stuff is a Fluke 75 - so I do have something digital!

Haven't touched an o'scope or signal generator in over 25 years, and I don't think I'm about to start again.

The convergence alignment set up has completely overwhelmed me - the "user mode" was simple - the maintenance mode leaves me bewildered.

The red and blue top and bottom lines have a slight wave to the outer edges that I can't figure out how to straighten completely - but like I said - the "owner" pronounced it "acceptable" and he's happy with it and playing Halo once again.