https://hackaday.com/2023/08/16/new-motherboard-improves-old-crt-television/ Skip to content Logo Hackaday Primary Menu * Home * Blog * Hackaday.io * Tindie * Hackaday Prize * Submit * About * Search for: [ ] [Search] August 19, 2023 New Motherboard Improves Old CRT Television 29 Comments * by: Chris Lott August 16, 2023 * * * * * Title: [New Motherboard Impr] Copy Short Link: [https://hackaday.com] Copy [crt-featur] While browsing AliExpress from his digital basement, [Adrian Black] stumbled upon what seemed like a brand-new mainboard for a CRT television set. He decided to take a gamble and ordered one. It finally arrived, and was indeed a brand new product from 2023. DIGITAL MAIN BOARD OF TV, Work ath [sic] HONGXUN products with the care and precision of a sculptor in each step, wonderful have no limits [crt-transplant-in-progress]CRT Mainboard Transplant in Progress Dubious marketing descriptions like "High Definition Digital Color TV Driver Board" aside, this turned out to be a fairly well-designed analog TV board. [Adrian] pulls a 20-year-old Magnavox ( Philips ) color television set from storage and begins the transplant operation. One interesting observation is the Magnavox board has almost the same layout as the new board, except for the orientation of the sections. The new CRT neck board had a different connector than the Magnavox set, but was designed to accept multiple sized sockets. [Adrian] just removed the new socket and replaced it with one from the old set. The mechanical issues were a bit more complicated, but nothing that a Dremel tool and a bit of hot glue can't fix. The 220 VAC power supply was eventually modified to accept 110 VAC, which also enabled him to reconnect the degaussing coil. [Adrian] has collected some relevant documentation in this GitHub repository, including schematics. Why bother with this at all? Well, until now, he didn't have any way to test / view PAL RF signals in his lab. He was gambling on the new mainboard having a PAL tuner. It does, but as an unadvertised bonus, it supports NTSC and SECAM as well -- but still not "HD digital color TV", as far as we know. If you want a multi-standard TV in your lab, this solution may be worth considering. It appears there is still a market somewhere for new CRT televisions. If you have any background on this, please let us know down below in the comments. * [share_face] * [share_twit] * [share_in] * [share_mail] Posted in Repair Hacks, Video HacksTagged crt, mainboard, multi standard, ntsc, pal, SECAM, television Post navigation - A DeLorean With An Electrifying Secret A Nifty Tool For Counting Neopixels - 29 thoughts on "New Motherboard Improves Old CRT Television" 1. Brock says: August 16, 2023 at 1:23 pm These exist due to the hobby arcade market. Enthusiasts/ collectors want original CRT displays and sometimes you've got a perfectly good tube with a burned out main board that can be brought back to life with one of these. Report comment Reply 2. PWalsh says: August 16, 2023 at 2:22 pm What if you have a set with a tube that requires a different HV? Do all modern tubes use 20KV, or is the board somehow detecting the voltage, or do you need a different board for a (hypothetical) bigger tube that requires 25KV? Anyone know? Report comment Reply 1. frenchbruce says: August 16, 2023 at 3:38 pm Hi...this Chinese made CRT Utility board will obviously drive up to a screen size of 21'' . I can't speak from practical experience, but it would still work on a larger tube i.e. the very common old standard 23'' except that it won't scan to the full screen size.. not really a problem. The neck diameter of many CRT's around the 21/23 " size most likely would be close if not identical...I never bothered to check! Report comment Reply 2. John Collins says: August 16, 2023 at 6:30 pm I watched this video a few days ago. I think there was multiple connections for different voltages, but I'm not super familiar with CRTs. Report comment Reply 1. frenchbruce says: August 16, 2023 at 10:22 pm hi john...no the eht voltage for the pix tube is fixed. Report comment Reply 3. Hirudinea says: August 16, 2023 at 2:23 pm The multi standard ability is worth the trouble alone. Report comment Reply 4. Tim McNerney says: August 16, 2023 at 2:35 pm Given this "new-new stock" find of a TV analog board, one might wonder if there is still some manufacturer of CRT TVs lurking somewhere in East Asia, or is this just for repair, on the premise that there still enough broken CRT TVs floating around the developing world? Or perhaps there are still enough video gamers who thrive on low-latency? Meanwhile my old Sony CRT sits in the basement revered but unvisited, probably with slowly failing electrolytics and an Apple //c monitor in my attic suffering the same fate. Report comment Reply 1. PWalsh says: August 16, 2023 at 2:37 pm I just checked on AliExpress. The boards are replacements for video arcade games. If you have an old Space Invaders game that's no longer working, one of these boards would bring it back to life. Report comment Reply 1. mrpeach2 says: August 16, 2023 at 4:49 pm Arcade boards had integrated RGB video driver circuitry, not composite. They also ran at 15khz. This board is NOT for arcade machines. Report comment Reply 1. Joshua says: August 16, 2023 at 11:49 pm Except in East Germany. They had the Poly-play cab, which used a TV set (Colormat 4506). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly-Play Report comment Reply 2. artdeell says: August 18, 2023 at 9:59 am Not always. The 8-Bit Guy has a Moonbase machine which uses what is basically a black and white television driven with a composite signal Report comment Reply 1. SpudDK says: August 19, 2023 at 1:03 pm I had a 4 player PONG table in the 80's I had picked up from some sale. It was a black and white TV type display. They just chopped the plastic up and stuck it in there. Report comment 2. Cricri says: August 16, 2023 at 2:47 pm Actually, if you watch the video, at 9 minutes 33, it does look like they are indeed making new TV in 2023, with (a priori from external appearances as per the pictures) what looks like a very similar (if not the same) board. Report comment Reply 3. Sean says: August 18, 2023 at 12:46 am Here in Vietnam, there are quite a few broken CRT TVs sitting around. However, they don't generally get repaired -- in the local industrial markets I've seen people painstakingly unwinding the copper wires. This is done for motors and speakers too. Depending on wire gauge/condition, they are either recycled as copper or sent to another vendor in the market that will re-wind the wire onto motor armatures or speaker coils for resale. These refurbished parts are of dubious efficiency but basically work well enough for horrifying your neighbors with your singing, etc. Report comment Reply 5. Tim Ward says: August 16, 2023 at 3:07 pm Actually if you look closely at the photo it's got a tuner so must be a domestic television receiver PCB rather than a monitor board for CRT arcade consoles. It also has phono sockets rather than a Scart socket so can't be destined for the European market. Interesting stuff!! Report comment Reply 1. Joshua says: August 17, 2023 at 12:11 am That reminds me of the 70s. Back then, some German TVs (and/or video monitors) had DIN connectors (diode plugs) for AV and RGB. The connectors looked similar to what the C64 had used for AV, if memory serves. This was so much better than SCART. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to be European. But SCART was a mess. It was awkward French engineering at its best. The connector was flimsy, not mechanical stable. It had no provisions for luma/chroma (S-Video), no true i/o for RGB (just an output). The pinout was confusing, leading easily to shorts. On the bright side, the 5v input pin for remotely switching to RGB mode was nice. If you lost your remote control, you could at least trigger RGV video mode and use the TV as a monitor. Still, DIN or a DB-25 computer plug would have been nice than SCART. Or an old school Centronics connector with clamps on the left and right. It would have had allowed for even more pins, so each pin had its corresponding ground pin. Report comment Reply 6. purplepeopleated says: August 16, 2023 at 3:14 pm weird that it has game built in... Report comment Reply 7. dudefromthenorth says: August 16, 2023 at 3:56 pm [I'm 33 min in] Does he ever figure out that his vertical deflection is too great? Report comment Reply 1. dudefromthenorth says: August 16, 2023 at 4:06 pm Ah, yes at 38minutes Report comment Reply 8. charles says: August 16, 2023 at 6:23 pm I had heard that in some markets, their was a cottage industry converting old CRT computer monitors into TV sets. (the monitors being sent as e-waste to third world places.) the video shows that board having Many languages used in Asia and Africa. and working with most analoge broadcast systems. It might even work with Some digital systems. I know when I got my first flat digital TV it was happy to pick up NTSC. Report comment Reply 9. John Jameson says: August 16, 2023 at 6:55 pm this post jumps a lot between past present and future tense... Report comment Reply 10. Mark Garton says: August 16, 2023 at 10:33 pm Tubeway days nowseem so unreal we are glass Report comment Reply 11. Adam Paul says: August 17, 2023 at 2:29 am I have a large collection of antique TVs, tho a number of them are non-functional or semi-functional. I'd love to get them fixed up with new electronics but I wouldn't know enough to do it safely. I've worked with mains voltage before building amplifiers and was comfortable with that, but CRTs are a bit of a mystery to me. Where do these engineers learn how do this safely in the modern world? Report comment Reply 1. Lee says: August 17, 2023 at 3:12 am These new engineers heed the warnings from others and have common sense to steer clear from the CRT high voltage and don't stick hands or tools in while it's on. I always tell people to learn more about repairing CRTs before attempting to repair. I've seen Adrian Black do some dumb things on his repairs and seen the comments blow up. Check out Arcade Jason, Mike's Amateur Arcade Monitor Repair and bandersentv on youtube. The first two covers arcade monitors but they work very similar to a TV. bandersentv covers a lot of antique TVs from the 40's and 50's. Report comment Reply 12. tony says: August 17, 2023 at 4:38 am Working on old TV sets, we always were careful working around the flyback. Once discharged, it was much safer to work on the circuitry. A long screwdriver was a mandatory tool to have! Report comment Reply 13. victor says: August 17, 2023 at 5:47 am Thanks for the replies and memories; used to work at: The Brick, a Canadian TV and appliance outlet from Western Canada. Many Tv's are world products; board gets populated for the country it's headed for, power supply too. Ali-express for the win. Report comment Reply 14. Twisty Plastic says: August 17, 2023 at 7:27 am Sounds like magic! Are CRTs that standard? Do they all use the same signals, same pinouts such that just changing the size of the connector means it works??? Report comment Reply 15. Arran McDonald says: August 17, 2023 at 2:56 pm not new they never stopped making them in Asia as been buying them for 10+ years so why you claim they new Report comment Reply 16. Christopher Lock says: August 18, 2023 at 11:12 pm Somewhere in the world you know there is some dude with a windows 3.1 Machine and NT on another partition with 85 CRT monitors reading this post laughing his ass off and just because it's funny won't sell so much as a power cord spare he has. LOL I would say to him I'll see you 3.1 and raise you a DOS6.2 LMFAO LOL Report comment Reply Leave a ReplyCancel reply Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy) This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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