eldofever
Member
As a guy with some CRT experience, here's my 2-cents. Given the number of Macs with irrepairable cap and batt-bombed logic boards, there's no shortage of decent CRTs out there, and they remain "shelf stable" virtually forever, so I don't foresee a shortage*. The wear-out mechanism isn't necessarily bombardment of the phosphor, it's depletion of the cathode material from the heater, and it takes many 10's of thousands of hours to reach the point of an unacceptable image. Unless you're operating your compact Mac 10+ hours a day, everyday, you would be hard pressed to ever wear it out.
Now the flyback issue is a bigger problem; has anyone looked into why they fail?
*CRT rebuilding leaves the original phosphor intact and replaces only the electron gun. The last US CRT rebuilder closed in 2010, leaving only one other company, in Europe. They closed in 2013. The vintage TV collectors got together, sent a couple folks over to learn the trade, and purchased some of the equipment which was then shipped back to the US. Nothing fruitful has yet to come of this as there's still a dearth of 1940's-60's CRTs floating around out there.
Now the flyback issue is a bigger problem; has anyone looked into why they fail?
*CRT rebuilding leaves the original phosphor intact and replaces only the electron gun. The last US CRT rebuilder closed in 2010, leaving only one other company, in Europe. They closed in 2013. The vintage TV collectors got together, sent a couple folks over to learn the trade, and purchased some of the equipment which was then shipped back to the US. Nothing fruitful has yet to come of this as there's still a dearth of 1940's-60's CRTs floating around out there.