The making of RCA Victor televisions

[CZroe]

I use a wrap tool all the time. Radio Shack stopped selling them so I just bought two more off eBay a few weeks ago. I do all my prototyping with pin headers and perf board because it is so much easier to re-route a trace.

Most recently I used one to repair a pager system at work without soldering to equipment that didn't belong to me. A few keys on the rubber membrane keypad wore out and stopped working. Silver paint/glue fixes were extremely temporary and caused even more problems. I noticed that the keypad PCB connected with a pin header so I used a multitester to see what pins to connect switches to so that I could make secondary buttons for each worn out key. I just lifted the ribbon cable connector off, wrapped a couple wraps of wire on the posts, and slipped the connector back down on the pin header. It worked like a charm and is completely reversible.

 

[IronWing]

Plus the tubes provided a warmer sound.

And a warmer picture too! Watching a It's a Wonderful Life with that gentle pink cast made the heart glow.

 

[Belegost]

TV sets of today have much less component's then of decades ago, the advent of LSI chips (large scale integration) where color, video processing, and scan were all done by a single chip. This was still in the days of CRT display's mind you. My Dad had a TV shop back in the '60's and '70's, people expected quality because those sets cost so much, a typical "25 color set was $500-650 and that's in 1970's dollars. Many of his customers just kept watching black and white TV's because they didn't have the $$ to afford a color set. My Dad realized they were not having a lot of extra dough and would repair those sets for parts and a minimal labor fee.

Exactly, the base price for a color set in the 60s/70s was around $300, or an inflation adjusted amount ~$2500.

Today I can go and pickup a basic LCD for $250 or less.

So for the same inflation adjusted cost I could buy 10 modern TVs and swap out as each goes bad. Assuming say 3 years per set, that's 30 years of TVs - basically the same as one old set (which to be honest would need repairs during that 30 years.)