Color Classic CRT replacement ?

[MinerAl]

A box fell on my back-caseless Color Classic's CRT and snapped its neck. I have no reason to believe anything else is wrong with the little guy, so I've been looking for a donor machine to steal a CRT from.

Color Classics are expensive, even broken ones.

10" Sony CRT TVs are not particularly expensive.

Should a 10" Trinitron CRT from a TV swap into a Color Classic pretty easily, or should I just keep getting outbid on "for parts" CCs on eBay?

 

[olePigeon]

I looked into this at one point, possibly replacing the CRT with a 10" SVGA CRT. To me, anyway, it looked like a LOT of complicated work. Unless there's a way to hack the monitor's existing VGA directly to the motherboard? Solder on a VGA connector somehow.

 

[MinerAl]

I want to use the stock video setup, just unplug the tube from the chassis and plug in a TV tube the same size.

If it doesn't work I will look into getting the video signal out of the big-wide-logic-board-plug-into-thinggy to a VGA connector, and hooking up a tiny VGA screen in there. Although honestly, at that point, I might as well go with a MacMini inside instead.

 

[TylerEss]

My uneducated guess is "if it fits, it'll work to at least some extent". My Takky used a 575 Analogue board, deflector assembly, and neck PCB (from the 15" 575 CRT) with the stock Color Classic tube and it was fine. Getting it aligned was a bit of a pain.

I highly doubt that Apple commissioned a custom CRT from Sony. The real question is "How many variations did Sony make and how compatible are they with each other?"

TV tubes are usually lower quality than those intended for computer monitors, but I don't know if that's the case with tiny little 10" ones.

If you can get a donor TV cheaply enough, it seems like a reasonable thing to try.

 

[James1095]

The stripe pitch of a TV CRT will be FAR lower than that of a computer monitor. TV tubes are optimized for high brightness while data displays are optimized for high resolution. Also most computer monitor tubes have two focus pins while TV tubes have only one, although I don't know about that particular tube. While I've had good luck substituting CRTs, this is one case where you'll have a lot of trouble finding something else that will work. That little high-res Trinitron tube is a rare bird, I can't think offhand of any other applications I've seen one used in.

Best bet is probably to find a beat up ColorClassic with a good tube. You could also see if Richardson Electronics has one in stock but it won't be cheap. Careful with those CRTs, they aren't made anymore and CRT rebuilding is a dying art. For the most part what's out there is what's out there and when they're gone, they're gone. I hate that sickening hiss as air rushes into one.

 

[techknight]

last rebuilder in the states, hawkeye is gone. no more CRT rebuilding, Maybe overseas? not here in the USA though.

Also when you snap the neck you cant rebuild it anyway as it blows the phosphors off the screen. Rebuilds are only doable if the tube slowly goes to air, or you have a dud electron gun. Rebuilding is definitely an ART.

 

[Bunsen]

Perfect time for an LCD mod.

 

[James1095]

To each his own, but I don't see the point personally. That cool little Trinitron color CRT is pretty much the whole point of a color classic. Stuff an LCD in there and you've just got an oversized slow Powerbook with no battery.

 

[MinerAl]

Yeah. If I go to the trouble of finding a 10" 4:3 LCD I'll stuff a Mac Mini in there or something. Which would be cool... :cc:

 

[MinerAl]

Hypothesis disproved.

Bought a $10 Sony TV with a 10" CRT. TV's tube had 8 pins and the CC's has 11.

Oh well.

I'll have to find a CC, or just be happy with the other Macs, I guess.

 

[techknight]

I "think" I have a spare CRT for the CC.

I bought one from here awhile back to replace the one I had, but the old one needs the yoke replaced and total convergence realignment.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

EH! } Just hack that TV into the freakin' turd, widen the FDD opening and then stick a tray loader DVD Player behind the hole with that Mac Mini running a real display on the side and The Pirates of Silicon Valley repeating on the DVD/TV, over, and over, and over, and over . . .

 

[MinerAl]

I'm starting to lose enthusiasm for this idea. The only reason I'm considering it is nostalgia for the nerdiest thing I've ever done.

I still have the chassis with the SCSI Zip100 in place and the mildly customized face plate, but the AB is in worse shape than I remembered.

I might look for a working CC to graft the mods onto, but it'll have to wait until Real Life allows.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

:O Cool, you're the first one I've heard to have done the FDD->Internal Zip mod! I never realized that it was a Zip Disk sticking out of the slot in your CC. [] ]'>

Props to you, comrade, I'm really impressed! :approve:

Can an IDE Zip drive really be used on that horrific single device IDE kluge of Apple's? I was under the impression that is was HDD only, no support for anything else because it doesn't support ATAPI. This re-arranges the ToHackList quite a bit if true.

Did you consider the possibility of doing a double lever Rube Goldberg for manual ejection with a paperclip inserted into the original? This hack is sooo going into my LCIII>G3 Hack and original Quadra 630 restoration projects!

 

[MinerAl]

It's a SCSI Zip100 internal. You'd have to do the P580/630 board hack (Takky hack) to use IDE, and if you've done the Takky hack, the Zip addition is pretty trivial. This one was an LC550 brained CC, so all SCSI.

The Takky hack was more than I wanted to tackle in 2000 when I was dinking with it, so I did this to make my CC useful. That and an Ethernet port made it a nice little kitchen Mac for a few years. I eventually tried to do the 640x480 AB hack and ruined my back-up CC, which I sold to somebody for change, and then for some reason I had the ZipCC apart during a move and it got its tube broken.

A sad tale of neglect and stupidity on my part.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I never had a CC and I don't really want one, I think it's in the acquired taste category in terms of its Tower of Babel Design Language.

When I moved 2.5 years ago, I chucked a pair of thrifted 575's into the dumpster in disgust without even thinking about scavenging parts. One was about 3/4 TAKKYfied and they were both fugly enough to put down for that reason alone. I thought a BigScreen TAKKY/TV would grow on me . . .

. . . I was wrong.

One nice thing about the TAKKY575 project though, one of the FDDs wound up in my pet IIfx and is still working like a champ, the black bezel and dust door are a really nice addition. I just can't bring myself to mod the other slot for ZipSpittin' next to it, but I'll certainly be putting one there for use in pop-top mode along with the side-saddle CD.

 

[uniserver]

massive amounts of respect to you if you could with Oxy/Acetylene torch, remelt the neck back on,( or epoxy) and then drill a hole in the tip, insert glass tube, melt (or epoxy) that , then hook up a vaccume pump, take it down to -40 check for leeks then melt the glass tube closed, fixed

 

[James1095]

massive amounts of respect to you if you could with Oxy/Acetylene torch, remelt the neck back on,( or epoxy) and then drill a hole in the tip, insert glass tube, melt (or epoxy) that , then hook up a vaccume pump, take it down to -40 check for leeks then melt the glass tube closed, fixed

It's not that simple. To start with, once the cathode has been exposed to air, it's shot and the electron gun would need to be replaced. You would also have to replace the getter, bake out the tube under vacuum to remove moisture from the glass, then fire the getter to absorb contaminates. Next, frequently the air blast and debris from a sudden break will blast some of the phosphor off the face of the tube. Oxy-acetylene is not good for glasswork, normally an air-natural gas or air-propane flame is used. Glass is a very unforgiving medium to work with, if you don't heat it just right it will crack, and if it doesn't crack when you heat it, often it will crack as it cools or cool with high stresses giving it a tendency to crack or even shatter violently later.

Rebuilding a CRT is a complex, delicate and dangerous art under the best of circumstances, requiring a lot of specialized equipment. A high vacuum setup incorporating a diffusion or turbomolecular pump is an absolute necessity on top of specialized fires, induction heater to bake out the gun assembly and fire the getter, jigs and replacement parts for the tube itself. Rebuilding a tube that had its neck broken off is for all practical purposes impossible.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Interesting! I'm up the creek in the same sort of paddle deprived boat, I had a 10" VGA Monitor's CRT installed in a classic with its neck sticking out the back. I lost the CRT down the Storage Whirlpool.

I'm wondering if I could install the rest of the Monitor's goodies on a CC's CRT? :?: