Zayre ZM288-S3 TV
 

I almost drove past this little roadside find. It was sitting there all by itself face down. It's a Zayre 12 inch B&W set. Appears to be a GE chassis from the 70's. It was filthy as it appeared to have been stored in a shed for a long time. Date code 7235. No rust. No bugs. The CRT and circuit board appear intact. No cracks in the cabinet either. All compactron design. Hadn't seen a portable tube set in a l-o-n-g time. Haven't powered it up yet.

GE for sure. Probably has the 2 ( numbers and or letters ) GE chassis number on the tube chart.
Zeno
LFOD !

A great little find! I don't recall ever seeing a Zayre-branded TV, or any electronics for that matter. They didn't have a store locally until just before they sold out to Ames.

Zayre? Never heard of them. Is that a US brand?

I grew up in California, so if they never marketed those to the West Coast that would probably explain it. We had plenty of GE TVs and radios out here.

One major problem with that genre of GE and Admiral el cheapo sets was somebody jamming the back on without lining up the hole for the H hold shaft, ripping the coil halfway out of the board.

Another was the H oscillator failing to start since it runs off B Boost. If there's not enough juice there to start it, then Boost never comes up. The fix was to run a diode from B+ up to the Boost source, so the osc. starts on B+. When Boost comes up, the diode is reverse-biased so it's essentially out of circuit. Dunno if this particular set would have that quirk or not.

Zayres was mostly a north east department store chain. Bigger than
Woolworths but smaller than Sears. K-Mart is the closest thing. After the war
they were popping up like undead at the morgue. Must have been 20 different
ones within 15 miles of my house over the yrs.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

We had Zayre stores in Atlanta in the 1970s. Very similar to KMart. That definitely looks like a GE 11" TV from the 70s. Worked on a bunch of them.

We had many Zayres in the Pittsburgh area too.

Dogs have masters and cats have staff. Believe me. I got 2 Maine Coons !
Zeno
LFOD !

If it worked before...
 

it can work again! An old CE told me that once. Found an open 5 ohm 5W resistor and an open diode in the low voltage power supply. I was really surprised when I first powered it up, that all the filaments glowed. I expected the 33GY7 to be blown. It was sort of magical watching the CRT come up for the first time in maybe 25-30 years.
Its a mess of a set, wires everywhere. Had some help from the GE book. It covered the S2 which is very close to the S3. The only thing running off the B+ boost is the sound IF.
There was a Zayre in my township but it is long gone. There was also a KMart and Richway, also long gone. The very first Home Depot was nearby but it has relocated across town.
Quite a few Zayre items on Ebay. I vaguely remember buying tires at the one on S. Cobb Parkway (in Smyrna, GA.) I remember going into the local Zayre and there was no air conditioning. That must have been the beginning of the end. Welcome to all the Zayre community viewing this thread!

The resistor is a FUSABLE, usually 5.6 ohm. If you are gonna run it
its best to upgrade it.
Zeno