[jhalphen]

Hi to all,

Here's my first color TV, a 1967 30 tube job made by ITT-Oceanic. 1st generation Color in France for the intro of color TV in Oct 1967. Very complicated as dual standard 819 line B&W + 625 SECAM color. An unusual feature is an EM87 "Magic Eye" ribon tuning indicator. Price when new was 4500 French Francs, +/- the price of a cheap car.

I got the set in 1970 (i was 17) a gift from a well-healed person who was upgrading to a newer model. Back then, i new nothing about color TV repair, just theoretical stuff, so i purchased all the books i could find (5) and tackled the set from page 1, chapter 1.
No advice & no Internet forums back then.
Found out it had 3 faults (V Scan, Convergence board component failures and color decoder dead "permutator" diodes.
Once fixed, i then spent considerable time converging the set (19 controls in total) and a real PIA because of the dual line scan rates.
Also changed all the power tubes in the H/V sections & EHT power supply.
Because of the 450VA power consumption & 30 tubes, i left the back off for the rest of its life & posted a Danger! Warning! HV on my room's door to keep anyone from entering & "dusting".
The TV ran beautifully thereafter without one failure until i left home in 1977.
My father then used it until the early 80s when he purchased a new Sony 19" Trinitron. The Oceanic was given away.

I owe to this set a solid founding foundation in color TV circuitry, theory & practice. I took 4 months to cover everything & learn Scope waveforms via a Kyoritsu 3 MHz single trace tube oscilloscope with AC-only coupling.

Beware of tube sources !
Some of my power section tubes bore the RFT label. Now unknown to me, RFT tubes were DDR manufactured & had lousy/no quality control. A brand new EL519 H output tube red-plated instantly upon power on. Pulled the plug ASAP & saved my flyback.
The EL519 was supposedly a higher power rating replacement for the original EL509.
Needless to say, they all went back to the shop & traded against Philips/Telefunken tubes at much higher cost.

My 2 cents contribution to this memory lane thread...

PS : i have the complete DVD bookcase collection of the Flinstones.

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France