Yeah Paul,
The TV is working again, which is due more to good luck than fault-finding/repair skills on my part.
I opened the set up last Sunday and found 4 capacitors had ruptured (all in the PSU area of the PC board), luckily the cases were still intact, otherwise I would have been totally lost, in working out the size of the replacements.
While I had the set open, I noticed that the ultor cap on the back of the tube had been burnt at some time in the TV's life, as it looked like the silicon rubber had melted in places, I checked the connection to the tube and it was loose, I pulled it out and the pins had no "spring" left in them, so I welded a small spring between the pins and the TV works as good as gold now.
It's a tad worrying that a connection such as this (carries upwards of 15kV) could actually be loose and not be noticed.
One thing I must say though, we have certainly gone backwards fast in the methods of building TV's these days, to get the main PC board out to work on it, took about an hour of drawing a diagram on a bit of paper because all the plugs and sockets are the same on the board, get two of these connectors mixed up and it's all over!
Luckily I very rarely ever fix TV's, people that do it for a living must be on anti-depressants.
Paul,
I also like old gear, remember back when TV's had a wooden case and you opened the back and the boards (yes there was more than one) either hinged out or slid out with ample wire length to have a good look at things.
And all the metal parts that held the PC boards in place actually had all the sharp edges taken off!
Everything in an older TV seemed to be bigger too, like resistors and capacitors, the power transformer was always kept well away from everything else.
These days you get a super-thin PC board,
loaded with millions of tiny components, I've even seen SMD components in a few new TV's here.
One thing there Paul, line output transformers aren't what they used to be, I've seen a LOT of TV's and CRT monitors die because of the LOPT failing, as you said above, forget trying to get a replacement.
IMO we are being held to ransom by manufacturers that won't supply spare parts at reasonable cost, because it will affect their bottom line.
All TV manufacturers should have the motto "We sell TV's, that's all we do"
Having said that, I've had good results from Samsung here in NZ, you CAN get parts
and manuals for their TV's and other gear they make, trouble is, next to no-one buys Samsung stuff here and it also very rarely breaks down!
