Finally, the work on te packard bell has begun...

[jpdylon]

Almost one year ago, Eric H was kind enough to pick up a 1964 Packard Bell Roundie for me. Being swamped with work at the time, i basically went to his workplace to get it, took it home and put it in the workshop.


Where it has sat ever since....until today.

I was cleaning things out and thought...."It's time to get to that packard." I pulled numerous boxes of parts and junk out and underneath was the set just as I had left it. I cleared out the inside of the cabinet and dusted everything off. The chassis swings out like me heathkit, and boy is it packed!
This is an actual Packard Bell design, and not a clone of another company. I tried to variac it, but it started pulling two amps as soon as I got to 30 volts. The electrolytics in the PS have no shorts, however one of the main rectifiers was shorted.

The chassis has been serviced many times judging by the scores of different mis matching caps in various parts of the set. The tech also did a shotty job of replacing the diodes, not to mentioning only using .75 amp 250v diodes
The small .001 ceramic cap that shunts the diode is also bad. It measured 500 ohms out of circuit.

Further troubleshooting in the power supply is necessary due to the heater line being dragged down by a short somewhere. The heater line gets very hot and the voltage is getting pulled down to about 3.7 volts. Time to pull the tubes and track down the short.

The CRT was replaced with a ColorRama in 67 (?), however it was tired. 10 minutes on the beltron and all three guns came back to life with equal emission and a long interrupt test. This is the first RCA CRT I've seen that has the green Halo rather than the PVA cataract.

The cabinet is also trashed on top. I can probably resurrect the sides as they are, but the top will need to be refinished.

This set is probably one of the biggest challenges I have come up against in a long time. The condition of the patient is still unknown until i get its heart beating again. It may be some time before I get back to this thread with all the stuff going on right now, but I hope to get this set on its way to fully functional again and take some "after" pictures to show it off while I'm at it