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Repair of a 1993 RCA Colortrak 26" cabinet model color TV using the CTC177 chassis

Ajouté le sam. 11 mai 2013 Science et technologie Rectangular SD

Just for the record, this is NOT the type of TV that I collect. At one time, I used to sell such TV's for good money; but, they are hard to get rid of today. Recently, I repaired a '60's console stereo for an older gentleman and he asked me if I wanted an old RCA TV that had been struck by lightning. I said "yes", with hopes that the TV would be as old as the stereo; but, it turned out to be a '93 RCA colortrak that uses the CTC177 chassis. This set is probably what replaced the '60's era RCA console TV, LOL.

The CTC17x series of RCA/GE (Thomson Consumer Electronics) were the first that used the dreaded "tuner on board" design. All other brands used a seperate tuner module that either soldered to the chassis or plugged into the chassis via cables; but, Thomson thought it would be best to make the tuner as part of the main chassis. The result of this blunder were tuner shield ground connections that developed poor solder connections and the result was a TV that either had a snowy picture, no reception at all, vertical deflection issues, no power, and audio issues. These problems can be intermittent and failure to fix the problems will result in corruption of the EEPROM IC that can cause many problems; but, the most common problems are a dead set and a set where the horizontal oscillator is thrown so far off frequency that it won't allow the set to start. The replacement EEPROM IC's are not fully programmed and must be aligned for the particular TV that they are used in; which, can be a challenge. It wasn't until later production CTC203's came along (around 2000 or so) that Thomson finally realized what a bad idea the "tuner on board" was and they went back to a seperate tuner module. After the CTC203, the quality of RCA TV's really went to crap when they started marketing Chinese built TV's that were total junk.

Another disadvantage of the "tuner on board" is servicing. With a plug in or solder in module, it's only a simple matter of replacing the tuner module. In these Thomson sets, it is necessary to repair the tuner to the component level. Given the amount of small surface mounted parts inside the tuner and given how small the tuner space is, it can be very difficult to service these tuners.

This TV was totally dead; which, was caused by an open 1.5megohm resistor in the power supply. Another problem was a degaussing thermistor that had crumbled and fell apart; which, was another common problem with these sets. Of course, I also had to resolder some connections inside the tuner shield.

These sets produce nice pictures and I still consider them decent sets; but, they would have been a whole lot better had Thomson used a conventional tuner. It's hard to believe that this set is 20 years old. Heck, I remember when they were new and it doesn't seem that long ago.

Now, comes the task of finding a home for this set.