Jason D. ) writes:
I remember one tech worked to save a very old RCA 20" tv that had
VIPUR IC die and got bypassed with STR30xxx regulator and isolator
transformer, add external standby power supply.

I don't think you're going far enough back.

People were probably making tv sets as soon as there were tv signals.
This would date to the days of various experimental schemes, who can
forget the neon bulb and rotating wheel?, but of course would become
less experimental once regular broadcasting started.

Since there were few or no commerically made TV sets circa 1939,
the only way the average person could see the broadcasts from the World's
Fair that year was by building a TV set.

I've heard that the hobby magazines carried construction articles then
or a bit later.

And it's immortalized in Robert Heinlein's "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel",
where the main character, Kip, gets out the tv set that he built himself
in order to see if he'd won the contest he'd entered. Decades later,
probably people reading it for the first time may puzzle over that passage.

Michael