On Mon, 21 May 2012 09:47:47 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
wrote:
Not many, if any, I think. I think the HV rectifier and horizontal
output stages were still served by tubes fairly late, but those sets
were mostly "transistorized", I think. Cross-posted to
sci.electronics.repair- I'm sure someone remembers the whole range, if
MT here doesn't.
Oh yes, I remember those nightmares. The Quasar was all transistor
except for the CRT. The HOT was a transistor.
http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/675639cb67609e5d7fbb84213fbd31f8_1M.png
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=348&dat=19680317&id=BdgvAAAAIBAJ&sj id=qDEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4320,2022192
http://www.ebay.com/itm/200739657009
http://photobucket.com/images/Motorola%20Works%20in%20a%20Drawer/
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19671120&id=EXtIAAAAIBAJ&s jid=JxEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6696,4321696
"The works in the drawer" or "The junk in the trunk"?
The problem was not so much that the design was marginal, convergence
was hell, the connectors didn't quite work, or the boards would blow
up if inserted with the power turn on. There were also multiple
versions and mutations, some of which were mututally incompatible.
Despite the clever construction, it was difficult to probe some of the
boards. There were allegedly extender cards, but we never were able
to obtain any.
The problem was that Motorola was trying to follow the RCA example of
forcing the independent service shops out of business by controlling
their access to parts. At first, one had to be "authorized" which
simply meant going through an ordeal process and purchasing an
unreasonable amount of spare parts. The problem was that many shops
were cannibalizing old TV's for parts, or using non-factory
replacements. So, Motorola figured that they could eliminate the
practice by only selling board level replacements. Of course,
Motorola would also control refurbished boards and demanded all
defective board be returned for repair. I don't recall exactly, but
we also had to report our inventory of replacement Quasar boards to
Motorola. In California at the time, the "fair trade" laws were fully
functional, allowing Motorola to set a MINIMUM price for selling
replacement boards. Nobody thought to clone the cards at the time.
Nothing worked as planned. At the time all of the repairs we did were
under warranty, which were flat rate, and rarely made a profit. Only
out of warranty repairs made money. Motorola would seperately handle
warranty and out of warranty board replacements, charging different
amounts for each. Their out of warrany charges were sufficient that
the shop didn't make any money and that the customers had a bad case
of sticker shock. Motorola hyped the Quasar as somehow reducing
repair costs, but that didn't last long.
Note that one of the above advertisement suggest that it could be
fixed in the home and would not require a trip to the shop. That was
true because the chassis and the receiver were in seperate sections of
the cabinet, and the interconnecting cables were nailed to the
cabinet. This meant the entire cabinet had to go into the shop for
repair. It also meant that all field repairs required two trips to
the home, as none of the vans carried a full collection of boards and
their multiple mutations.
We didn't do much with Quasar, prefering other brands that offered
better margins and more available parts. One of the competitors
complained that they had to cannibalize boards out of new display TV
sets in order to fix other sets.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558