A month or so ago, I checked out a video from the 8-Bit Guy when he modded his old Samsung TV with RGB. Of course, I'm always impressed with his videos. If you want to see what he did, check the video here:
I should mention that he did a follow-up video fixing an issue some of his viewers pointed out.
I also read on some stuff from Bob of RetroRGB, which is a great source for all tech stuff and getting the best picture quality from your retro games. Both he and David (8-Bit-Guy) said that taking apart an old CRT TV is very dangerous because you could potentially kill yourself if you don't know what you're doing. It got me thinking of an old TV my family had laying around and never bothered taking to Best Buy to recycle it. I came up with an idea of seeing about possibly modding the old thing to output RGB since it's not easy to find an old Sony PVM monitor in New England, much to my disappointment and whenever I do find one, they're not cheap as people are now aware of their potential with retro games. Before my uncle Frank passed away in 2017, he always told me about various places to find a monitor and I never doubted him since he loved being an electrition along with his amazing carpentry skills. However, going to such places, I just come up with little to nothing. Not even the junkyards are much help. So until I find a PVM monitor, I might as well give this mod a shot. Since I'm not an electrician expert and my uncle would've been the man to definitely help me, I'll rely on whatever reliable expertise possible.
So the TV I'm working on is a 19" Emerson EWC1902 which has a VHS player/recorder or a VCR.
From what I have been able to gather, it was manufactured in February 2002. So my family has had this thing for almost two decades and it still powers on. However, there are two main issues I currently have with it:
1) The original remote is nowhere to be found. I tried searching endlessly for it around the house, but no luck. This is a huge issue for me because some of the face buttons on the TV are unresponsive even when I press them down so hard. There's just no response to them. With that, I can't navigate well through the menus. Sometimes, I can change channels, but other times, it will scan through channels on its own and then it will let me change channels. It does work as it should. It's just that I need the damn remote. I figured that finding an original replacement would be cheap since they're like a dime a dozen. At least that's what we believe, but finding the specific remote for the TV is a pain in the ass because of how much it costs. The type of remote I need is an N9278UD, but I also read that it's a N0162UD. They look the same either way. These types of remotes are listed with prices between $15 to $30 which is pretty ridiculous. Judging from a few reviews I found on the TV model itself, a lot of people loved it. I even checked my local indoor flea market where they have a section with more than a hundred TV remotes and none of them had the Emerson name, let alone the one I need. I found a few generic remotes with no brand names that looked similar to the one I need, but I'm not sure they would work. I also looked into the possibility of a universal remote, but like the original remote, they're pretty expensive, especially the ones that support my TV.
So until that problem is aleviated, let's get back to the TV itself. Being 17 years old, it's in really good condition. Of course, it had a lot of dust on the outside itself, which only made me wonder how dirty it was on the inside. So following the procedures of Bob and the 8-Bit-Guy, I was very careful in how I took it apart. Once I got the back cover off, I could see how filthy it was inside. Everything was covered with nearly two decades worth of dust, dirt and debris. There was some form of dust wherever I looked, especially the air vents, which of curse, is expected. So I washed the hell out of the back case with soap and water twice and I'll have to do it a couple more times. Now as for the TV tube, I did what David did with his video along with other electricians by taking a flathead as well as using alligator clips and placed one to the metal spring and to the flathead. The TV has been off for a few days, so I wouldn't expect any pop sounds and upon digging into the suction cup, no pop. So I was good to remove it. After removing a few wires, I was able to get the motherboard and VHS player out with ease since they're connected together and that's where I am right now since I need to look at the schematics for the board. Since I couldn't find any information on anyone modding this specific TV model with RGB, I'll have to rely on others here that know these things better than I do. I also want to remove the VCR piece so I can get a better look at the motherboard. I'm currently looking at the schematics of the board as well, but I would also love to get some help here as well on how I would implement RGB on this type of board. I'll edit this post later when I have more images of the inside of the TV available on my iCloud. So whatever you would like to contribute to help out would be much appreciated as I would love to see a clear picture on this TV.
UPDATE: I have since went further with disassembling the TV as it was extremely dusty and dirty. I did the best I could to remove as much as possible from the motherboard as well as the case pieces without damaging anything. From the photos I have taken, it was pretty built up for nearly two decades. After cleaning the board and the cases, I wanted to determine where the points were in order to keep notes for the actual mod job in the future. I'm still not sure as the VHS player is in the way of probably the main components I have to get to. I took the liberty of printing out the schematics, but it's not going to do me any good right now since I'm not the best at this. Thus resorting to others for a helping hand. The only thing I did fix on the board was a button for the front panel that wasn't clicking anymore. All I did was desolder the broken button off and installed a new one since these buttons are extremely common if you can find cheap devices with the same click feel to it. There's also the issue of the CHANNEL UP button not hitting its mark at all. It also collided a bit with the overlay plastic of the front face. So I carved a bit of it out of the way, but that didn't help. I thought I'd use epoxy, but that didn't work. So I reassembled the TV not being able to fix it. Despite not making much progress, the TV still powers on, but I still need to get the remote that went with it and like I said, they're not cheap.
I attached a PDF of the schematics of the TV I have if anyone is interesed in helping me mark where I would have to make the modifications to get RGB on this when the time comes.
