SONY 5-303M

The french model of SONY's first generation of micro TVs, dating from 1962/3. While looking almost identical to other regions' models, it has 4 buttons at the back. This allowed to choose between regions so it knew to which channels to tune to, as well as wether you wanted 625 or 819 lines sync (15.7 or 20.4 khz). You were supposed to press a combination of two buttons to get the wanted picture. As the name "micro TV" implies, the TV is small (5inch diagonal). This doesn't mean it's light however, ass the entire thing is made of thick steel.

These sets are very compact inside but otherwise fairly easy to service. From my observation on this one and conversation with other people, they usually need a full recap, which isn't surprising for 60 year old sets. It's been done and it now works fine, though the audio seems to not work anymore. It sometimes comes back for just a second, so I expect a bad joint somewhere, though I haven't been able to find it.

I got this set for 12 euros a while back, unfortunately without any of its accessories, which is a shame. While not having the leather case for it is sad, it's not much of a deal. What was more annoying was the lack of power cable for the proprietary 4-pin connector. Fortunately, it was easy to find which of the two pins where for 220V (the other two being for 12V DC), and hack together a makeshift cable by destroying a standard 8-shaped one. Secondly, I am missing the little addon you could put on the side. This allowed you to tune to uhf channels, which you otherwise cannot. This was a big deal, since I do not own anything that can modulate a signal to the first european vhf channels (in case you are wondering, VCRs do not do so in France). Fortunately, the schematics for the set are available on Radiomuseum and Electrotanya. With help from a french forum post about exactly that issue (which unfortunately doesn't seem to exist anymore...), I managed to find where to cut the video signal from the tuner and add instead a composite port ; or rather luma, I guess. Since I do not want to drill a hole inside the metal casing, that means a pig's tail coming out of the back, but what can you do...

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