Hi, it was 1989. My thoughts were short, my hair was long. sorry I'll spare you my singing, but it's 1989 and you wanted to view a video signal from like a security camera out in the field or something like that. What did you use? Well, they didn't have LCDs back then.

so you used this. Sony Watch cam video in and it uses one of these fantastic flat screen CRTs I Can see it actually curved inside like that and there's an electron gardener right down in there. We'll take a look and it actually projected. You took your video signal in and actually projected it onto that curved phosphor screen and this was absolutely remarkable.

back in the day and I've done a separate video tearing down Sony weren't the only ones to invent this flat screen CRT technology Sinclair did it as well and have done an extensive art teardown video of the Sinclair one. Ian Just ran on some double-a batteries or an external wire video. We've got power and volume here and they could display a video image and that was fantastic. For 1989, it was absolutely remarkable.

This one's actually made in 1992, so that's probably towards the end of I'm not sure the product lifetime, but I would be guessing that was probably towards the end of the usefulness of this sort of flat-screen CRT technology. But it's very interesting how they actually are designed and manufactured a CRT flat screen in something you could almost fit in large pocket. Fantastic! And this particular one is not a consumer one. It was really designed for, you know, plugging because of the BNC connector and as I for like ass you know CCTV installers and other types of art.

you know security type personnel for setting up systems and monitoring systems. Go along, plug in your BNC video from your security camera and field on your little pocket monitor. Ah, state-of-the-art stuff in the late 80s. So although this thing might have found its use in We Phil's security texts and things like that too for doing remote monitoring, it's actually effectively a consumer market item cuz Sony got into the well, wanted to get into the home security market.

so you know you buy your home security camera and then you can just sit this thing on the wall or whatever and you can have your coax coming in. and there is a version of this that doesn't have the BNC input on it. so that was you know that might have differentiated this one possibly for the industrial type market and the other one without the BNC for the home market which I think you know they sold as a bundle and it came with a little lob lack and white because this is a black and white only yeah system. little black and white does security camera for home security monitoring and things like that.

but you know this one's very handy with the external B and C for a fueled tech use and it was made in Japan and all the best stuffs made in Japan and it's the FDM o 300 Dru 2.3 watts. You know it a bit of a power hog, but hey this is like a full-on CRT television monitor so thank you very much. Joe Hartley from Oregon for us sending this one in and by the way, yes, it uses the evil Center negative pin. Let's pair it on and see if it still works.

All I've got is a power generator. so fingers crossed, we know. Winner chicken dinner. Look at that.

I've got my right ear? Well no, that's my color bar generator. Of course it's a black and white only denaun this color rubbish. The color bar pattern is the best are there. so there's checkerboard.

There you go. There's no, it's a bit fuzzy wuzzy. but no. like mate, you know the distortions.

Not too, not too bad at all. Check out the crosshatch pattern there. We can see that the distortions not too shabby. I Mean it's there.

but jeez, you know, not going to complain. Leave that. Not going to complain too much about that. Jeez, especially when you've got a con packed CRT in this sort of form factor because that's just brilliant.

Whip this thing open. There were some tiny little La Philips there, make sure there's nothing attached to the bottom and tada typical. We're in like Flynn and typical Sony construction there. Oh wow, that is not electrostatic.

The Sinkler I assume this one was electrostatic, but just like the Sinclair one this is a tree Electromagnetic entirely different. The Tsing span the Sinclair one I think is a bit narrower than this one, but that's a full-on electro magnetic deflection. CRT Look at that. Wow Well you know if you can tell because of the UH coil wires whereas the electrostatic ones would have just plates either side of this arm which then deflect the beam, there's your electron gun there electron shootout and then it would deflect them that way and then you'd have ones on the top and on the bottom which would then deflect your beam that way and that way and then you could sweep across the screen and you'd have to have a final one and in there to actually do the deflection to actually do the bending.

I'm wondering if they've got like a final one up there. Maybe just to do some bending because there's no art lens in this. This Sinclair one used like a Fresnel lens in there. It actually produced a smaller image in the center like that and then used a Fresnel lens to stretch the aspect ratio out.

but this one Sony's one is just a magnetic CRT deflection. It's beautiful anyway. I'm a typical Sony are construction of the time. double-sided load with the surface mount stuff on the bottom.

these it all be our Sony parts. If you go in and have a look and yep there you go Sony Sony upside down all the electrons are going to fall out, but you can actually see I'm gonna explain these large pads on the end. These are solder thievin' pads because this is all wave sold it. All these components are glued down to the base of the board and you might be able to see some glue oozing out of a couple of the components in there.

so they glue them down first. Yeah, there we go. And then they put the whole thing through a wave, saw a bubbling wave, our solder bath, and the direction of travel of the board. You need this extra large pad on the end to actually catch to catch all the solder coming off.

so then it doesn't are short pins or other nearby pads and that's called solder feeding and you can see that on that chip as well. Yeah, you can see the red glue under those parts. They're very obvious in the way. they've got away with the double-sided board.

These are all zero ohm jumper links so they're jumping all over the place. Look how many of them there are Wow But that's how you get away with us. So much density on a double sided compact layout board like that. And the people who laid out these boards.

they're just, you know, brilliant. It is a tough ask to lay out one of these boards on double sided with double sided load like that. None of this modern computer-aided rubbish said. That's all you know.

tape-based start layout or manually done Beautiful. What's going on there? cuz that's going off to the main board over here, so that's interesting. Not sure what's doing there. there's actually are nothing but a resistor on the underside of that.

So what? They had to physically mount those inductors off the board. They couldn't fit them on the main board so it's amount of separately. Hmm. Okay, upon closer inspection here, take a look at this inductor.

They've added a magnet on the end of it. In this case, it's got like a number six or a number nine and it's epoxy Don the end and it's actually offset to one side. So obviously the reason that they've done this is for some sort of almost certainly geometry correction correction. There's probably CRT dependent or you know, system, and they've probably adjusted this in combination with the CRT or the completed CRT assembly maybe on an external jig and then they've adjusted this and gone right.

This one matches this particular CRT to correct for the geometry need. and I'm not sure electrically how they're actually doing that. You'd have to do extensive probing to see what's going on there, but it seems like that's why they've done this external board so that they can match this to the particular CRT inside the unit. Not so short the second inductor there is doing, but obviously that one.

it's got some special magnet put on the end of it, or a Farah or a piece of ferrite or whatever it is. It doesn't necessarily have to be a magnet, could be like a ferrite on the end and it's it. I Think it's offset there for a reason, or they could have different numbers with different properties for example. and maybe the offset is not.

You know, a huge deal. Maybe someone was just sloppy assembling this one, but I think that's probably what it's doing. There is some sort of a CRT geometry career in correction for each one. I Thought maybe they were doing it.

You can actually see just above the board there. There's some black wheels, cogged wheels on the CRT tube and they seem to have been white epoxy dye in place. and they're like our teeth paste one, so they may be. You know that could be like a focus type thing because that seems to be too far back there, but they're adjustable and locked in place with that our white epoxy there.

But that's very interesting. So they could be electrically adjusting the geometry of the CRT just to correct it and you know it's it's gonna be near enough and it'd be interesting to have a play around with that to break off the epoxy? Or did you know you'd have to physically break it off and play around with that as the CRT is live and see that it actually makes a difference if I might possibly do that on a second channel video. Anyway, that's fascinating. I'm just taking off a single screw there because they're held in by you.

Just bend the plastic back a little bit and we can get flip that board out kinda sorta. Oh, look at that fuse protection on the board there and oh well. sorry, silly me assume that was a double-sided board. It's actually a single sided job.

Had to save every cent. Got quite a lot of little carbon trimmers in there, but oh, there's a Toshiba chipset Jrc Japan Radio Corp that'd be like the audio driver and stuff like that. But yeah there. That's why they needed all those zero own links on the bottom.

And they've also got your regular route links on the top too. To get that layout on a single sided. that is extra extra hard. Okay, now we can see the meat of the action in the deflection system here.

Look at these extra coils, one top and one bottom there. so that's to actually get the extra curvature that they need at the end to go on to the well they're made in Japan There you go. Oh, that's the part number for those playing along at home. That is a really remarkable is simply I'm I'm surprised that they can, you know, get that work in.

but they've engineered the magnetics deflection system in this well enough to you know make that work without a huge amount of distortion. you know it's not perfect, but it's more than good enough for like a compact and it enables a compact product like this. Otherwise, it's not possible. If you had that screen, it would have to be you know, the twice or three times as thick if you had a regular flat CRT display in there.

Anyway, we've got some high voltage our generation here and there's not much else doing. really. Check out the B and C coming over here. None of this coaxial rubbish, just just the flying lead going over.

It's all pretty how you're doing. but this was, you know, typical of us Sony Japanese, our products designed back in the day. you know, Now it's all you know, computer-aided design and everything else you know, But back they didn't think of like just you know anything of just doing, you know, messy point-to-point wiring like that, so you know every. It's just par for the course back in the day.

But that is there you go that is remarkably remarkably simple. and I'm I'm stunned that this used a RCA magnetic deflection, which isn't nearly as interesting as the Sinclair one. So I'll link in the Sinclair teardown at the end of this video because it uses a completely different deflection system. electrostatic deflection versus this is basically just a CRT but was just some extra deflection on the end.

Perhaps that you know could bend the beam you know right at the end as as required for the geometry of that particular curved screen. But anyway. I'm sure there was a lot of engineering that went into that magnetic deflection, but once they nailed that of course, then well, it's just a, you know, it's just a Joe Bloggs are implementation of a video into our CRT driver and that's it. you know, powered from a couple of batteries.

Now it doesn't look like there's actually anything past that, like an extra anode or anything up the top, or any any sort of you know, grid mesh or anything anything doing there at the topside. So I think that is the last we get right there. so it must must do the bending at that point. Yeah, I don't know I can't like unless it's like gone internal to all the plastic molding or something like that.

There's nothing further than that coil at the end there and on the bottom side as well. There we go. we can see the glass plate on top and that keeps the vacuum seal inside of course. so that's rather it's not rather nifty.

look at that. Wow Wonder hell they? oh did they? Yeah, they just stuck that glass on top as a last process, but looks like that's all that's all she wrote. Really? Hmm. fascinating though that? so yep, that's confirmed.

There's absolutely nothing further up. It doesn't have your traditional a node cap up the top there there. Yeah, hope you found that interesting. It's certainly fascinating what they had to do back in the day to enable a product like a portable portable monitor.

We just take LCDs for granted these days, but back then this was like the late eighties. Even into the early 90s, this was still the way to do it. So there you go. If you had one of these our Sony watch cams please let us side know or if you had one of the Sinclair over our flat screen with her other I think there might have been another manufacturer of these flat screen CRT technologies as well.

But anyway, thank you very much Joe for sending that one in. That's absolutely fascinating. Look at a bit of retro consumer technology which was just made obsolete once you know LCDs and digital you know stuff came along, but this was the only way to do it back then. Fantastic.

Anyway, if you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up because that always helps a lot. And as always discuss in the comments or on the eevblog for catch you next time. And yes, it still works after I reassemble it and it still works after 25 years. Winner winner chicken dinner You.