Samsung Televisions Dirty Little Secret

[Judge]

Think we might be both arrogant or curious instead, I also attempted a fix of my original VCR It was a nightmare, with five heads for a perfect freeze frame, whatever I did beyond checking connections and looking for connector breaks it worked. Taking it apart and putting it back together fixed the problem. Whatever it was.

Found it funny that you wrote about this today, as I had just taken apart my car's remote starter as it wasn't working and my spouse had a meltdown Likely because he'd broken the last two, and the dealership charges $150.00 an hour to repair them. The remote still isn't working to start the car, but I've fixed it before, more of a programming issue maybe.

Good to hear more of people like us.

Curious, arrogant and just plain stubborn.

Forgot to mention. Have you ever put together a Heathkit product? I once built one of their shortwave radios from scratch as a kid. It was fun! Yoda would have probably told me that "The Geek in me is strong!"

I guess being a Baby-Boomer keeps us from adopting the notion that everything has a short shelf life and is disposable. We just weren't raised to accept such things.

 

[Nitro]

I had to laugh when I read about two of you tearing apart VCRs. I used to run an exchange program for unwed mothers where I would take their goobered up one in exchange for one I had already doctored up. Nothing said baby sitter back then better than a VCR. Like many single guys ,I was always looking for a chick magnet,and this one was a dandy

Most of the time,they either needed a good cleaning or a new drive belt and most of them had the same guts inside,so it went well for me as I grabbed them out of the trash or fixed the trade ins.

One girl brought me one her son had emptied her junk drawer and stuffed many of the contents of it inside including a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I tore it apart just to see what I could salvage from it and after a little clean up,I determined that it would live to see another day. There was one plastic part the lil guy broke during his loading of the contents.

Easy enough,a little dab of Super Glue and back in business,so I thought. It was about 3 am when I grabbed my tube and went to twist the cap off. No dice,it was glued on. Simple enough,use your teeth to grab the lid.Oops,bad move,now I had glue inside my mouth. The next thing that happened was gluing my tongue to my lower incisors. Not wanting to go to the E room and be ridiculed by the local crew there,I set out for Walmart searching for fingernail polish remover that was non-toxic. Nope,none available that I could find,so I asked an associate. It didn't go well and I almost got arrested that night

I ended up getting polish remover with acetone in it that didn't do a damned thing except give me chemical burns and I still had to shred my tongue off my teeth. Yep,it hurt

 

[Mia]

Forgot to mention. Have you ever put together a Heathkit product? I once built one of their shortwave radios from scratch as a kid. It was fun! Yoda would have probably told me that "The Geek in me is strong!"

No, I've never even seen one. But they sound pretty neat! I would have been given a sewing machine or a doll or a tea set, but nothing like that. It was frowned upon and not permitted that females fix or build things.

I watched my Father quite a bit, who even repaired and made parts for things like the washing machine and dryer. Think I inherited some of his abilities. And on the sly I carefully took apart and put back together every small appliance in the house.

 

[Nitro]

Good to hear more of people like us.

Curious, arrogant and just plain stubborn.

Forgot to mention. Have you ever put together a Heathkit product? I once built one of their shortwave radios from scratch as a kid. It was fun! Yoda would have probably told me that "The Geek in me is strong!"

I guess being a Baby-Boomer keeps us from adopting the notion that everything has a short shelf life and is disposable. We just weren't raised to accept such things.

I built a Radio Shack AM radio as a kid and a xenon tube strobe light. I remember the warning in the instruction manual for the strobe kit with the possibility of it bringing on seizures at a certain frequency.Cool toy for a kid huh?

Our first colored TV was a Heathkit my dad built. Not only did he have to build the TV,he had to build the tuning equipment to set it up. It was actually a RCA TV.

Judge... Remember the smoke test?

I have a buddy that insists all electronic components have smoke built into them so you know when they are finished

 

[Judge]

Who followed Dad to the grocery store to test tv tubes?

That was me. I loved it. I was the only one my father wanted to tag along.

Forget conversation to bond. Just be prepared to test those tubes!

 

[Nitro]

Who followed Dad to the grocery store to test tv tubes?

That was me. I loved it. I was the only one my father wanted to tag along.

Forget conversation to bond. Just be prepared to test those tubes!

The site won't let me link to my blog...go see
Zenith and the Dark Side of the Rainbow

 

[Judge]

The site won't let me link to my blog...go see
Zenith and the Dark Side of the Rainbow

That's all we had in the 50s and 60s. Zeniths.

Then came Sony in the 70s. Aloha Zenith.

 

[Nitro]

That's all we had in the 50s and 60s. Zeniths.

Then came Sony in the 70s. Aloha Zenith.

I try to keep my blog interesting

 

[Mia]

I guess being a Baby-Boomer keeps us from adopting the notion that everything has a short shelf life and is disposable. We just weren't raised to accept such things.

Agree with that, the throwing away of stuff and buying a replacement offends me. Beyond the idea of creating more trash to pile up and leave behind for the next generation.

My spouse once walked in the door with a Harman Kardon citation amplifier that he found in the trash. Plugged it in and it didn't work, he replaced the plug and it's functioned ever since.

I would have never done that, thrown something away without first understanding how it functioned. Although some things are perhaps too complex, few things are such a mystery that they can't be considered and repaired.

 

[Judge]

Agree with that, the throwing away of stuff and buying a replacement offends me. Beyond the idea of creating more trash to pile up and leave behind for the next generation.

My spouse once walked in the door with a Harman Kardon citation amplifier that he found in the trash. Plugged it in and it didn't work, he replaced the plug and it's functioned ever since.

I would have never done that, thrown something away without first understanding how it functioned. Although some things are perhaps too complex, few things are such a mystery that they can't be considered and repaired.

Yeah, I've managed to salvage some pretty expensive components by taking a closer look at them to determine something wrong with them that was very simple- and fixable.

 

[Nitro]

Yeah, I've managed to salvage some pretty expensive components by taking a closer look at them to determine something wrong with them that was very simple- and fixable.

I got a two year old 32 inch RCA flatscreen out of the trash a few years ago. I dragged it home just to rip it apart to see what it looked like inside. I plugged it in and it made raster,so I hooked up a VCR to it and it worked fine. One morning,we had a power interuption and it went dead. I was going to drag it out to my garage and rip it apart,so I disconnected it. As a last ditch,I plugged it in again and it worked. As it turns out,it has a circuit in it that can only be reset by removing it from the power source.My guess is that the people who owned it had the same issue with it and sent it to the curb. That set ran as my computer monitor for over four years,day in and day out until last winter when I moved into another room where my bigger one is.

You are talking to the king of repurpose and salvage here

 

[Judge]

Success! Almost a year later I finally went online to check to see if Samsung has updated their firmware for my widescreen television. They did...and so I opened up my tv, reconnected the network adapter and then turned it back on with my wireless Internet on. Luckily I was able to download the updated firmware (version 2225) in about seven minutes before it could begin to shut on and off as it used to do.

Now it no longer suddenly shuts off or turns on in a recursive loop. And the picture has been improved as well. So I have my "Smart TV" back again. And of course I turned off the automatic update feature. If it ain't broke, don't try to "fix" it!

Nice. Would I buy another Samsung TV? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

While all the online features work again, they are all different now. Changed with the passage of time. Ugh.