Larry,
This bound to have been in the early 70's or so. I had a GTE/Philco
19" TV I took in as a trade in and I played it myself for about a
year before I sold it. I can't remember if it was all solid state or
if it was a hybrid. Seems to me they had an old paper type light
green colored PC board in them. I think they was about the first to
own the Philco name after Ford, maybe bought it from them? North
American Phillips ended up with all three names. As far as I know,
N.A.P. no longer is selling new Philcos, only Magnavox and Sylvania.
Philco was the set for a private dealer to get a franchise on as
Sylvania and Magnavox was being pushed by the large chain stores. It
was all that was available over Lowes and a few other large stores
starting to sell them in the early 80's. Lowes was who hurt me. Now,
I don't think Lowes even handles TV sets. RCA was bad to not protect
a teritory and set someone else up a mile away so I never looked at
them. I had the Quasar sales for a while also, but they got just too
hard to work with. Now they're all chain store items.
Best,
Will
--- In ham_amplifiers@..., Larry Anderson
<larryw6lar@...> wrote:
craxd wrote:
Bill,
That is exactly the truth. When I started in repair (radio and
TV),
tube sets were still around. There, you replaced parts in a
chassis
with point to point wiring. Next came addition of PC boards with
tubes, and then the hybrid sets came having both tubes and solid
state devices. After that came the modules. That was easy fixes,
however the power supplies power components like resistors, etc
were
still mounted on tie strips, etc. Zenith modular sets were my
favorite with the upright chassis. Magnavox had one similar.
Motorola, soon to be Quasar had the "works in a drawer". Next came
the replacable chassis. No more modules, they wanted you to change
the whole chassis out. Then it was only one large flimsy PC
board. I
repaired most of these anyhow and only changed a chassis after
lightning damage. First you had a chassis and a tuner. Finally,
the
one board included both. I forgot to mention that hot chassis
started
about this time or a little earlier. I was selling and servicing
Philco TV's at the time for North American Phillips. Phillips
bought
Philco from GTE. Then, all Phillips did was run the same TV set
down
the line and put 1 of 3 name tags on them, Philco, Magnavox, or
Sylvania. About this time is when the mass marketing of TV's
began by
Lowes, K-Mart, and others large chain stores. They could sell a
set
at the same price as what a private dealer could buy one for. That
closed a lot of repair shops including mine. Eventually, sets got
so
cheap that you could throw them away as the cost of repair was at
least 50-76% of a new set. This especially true for 19 inch TV's
on
down. VCR's did the same thing too. Now you can buy a new VCR for
about $50.
All that's taught for service anymore is replacing a chassis, and
most of it is building PC's. Vacuum tube technology is not taught
anywhere I know of. After some of us older folks are gone, I
wonder
who will actually be able to do real repair work anymore?
Best,
Will
--- In ham_amplifiers@...
<mailto:ham_amplifiers%40yahoogroups.com>, Bill Turner <dezrat@>
wrote:
We seem to be casting a lot of blame on individuals, but I
believe
the
underlying problem isn't people, it is the nature of electronic
equipment these days.
A lot of us got our start by being repairmen, and to do that
kind of
work well, one must understand the fundamentals of electronics.
These
days, you either change a PC board (if it is an expensive piece
of
gear), or you just throw it out and buy another. So-called
"technicians" anymore are mostly just parts changers, not real
repairmen. I don't see that changing any time in the near
future.
Of course there are some real technicians around, but any more
they
are working mostly at the engineering level, not the field
repair
level, and there are not a lot of them because not a lot are
needed.
Once the bugs are worked out of a design, you just make 'em by
the
millions and toss the bad ones.
Sad but true.
Bill, W6WRT
Will,
Question? When did GTE own Philco? I've been with them (GTE/
Verizon) for
43 years and I only know that they owned Sylvania.Was that before
my
time there. Just wondering.
Larry, W6LAR
