Found! Pre-loved Blaupunkt

Check out this beauty:

My latest find! A vintage Blaupunkt

It's been a long time since I went on a hard rubbish scavenging mission. Mostly I just scour eBay and Gumtree for SCART televisions these days. Hard rubbish hunting is time consuming and can often lead to disappointment... you might find something good but it's damaged or wrecked.

That said, when something like this happens, and it makes me think I should be out there on the weekends while people still have CRTs to junk. I can't help but think some prized TVs must be sitting out on a suburban street right now. It eats at me. If people would only list their TVs for 99 cents on eBay I wouldn't have to face such mental anguish!

Anyway, here's how it happened: I was driving to band rehearsal last night and I spotted the distinct styling of a European television. I knew at a glance this was a Blaupunkt. The ubiquitous Samsung and Panasonic CRTs simply don't have these kind of lines:

Front

Back

I made a mental note about the location of the TV and kept an eye out for it at 11 pm when I was driving home. All the cars and garbage bins made it hard to see and I had to park the car and walk up the road before I finally found it again.

It was worth the effort though! A nice vintage 1990 model with trimpots inside! I plugged it in before work this morning and she fired up. Excellent!

Blaupunkt MS 70-109 VT M (chassis FM 500.70)

"Please take me home... In good order."

The TV has obviously been sitting on the side of the road for a while now. There are lawn clippings, dirt and water marks on it. However, the 30 degree heat yesterday probably did a good job of drying out whatever moisture this unit has endured.

We have snow!

SCART ports and S-Video

Audio outputs

This guy has serviced so many of my finds...

Can't wait to the weekend when I can get a chance to test this out with some actual RGB material! Could be a good candidate for some external pot modifications if the Service Manual is correct...

SOLD! Sony KV-C27 going REAL cheap!

SOLD!

I have a knocked about Sony KV-C27 sitting in my lounge room (in Melbourne, Australia) that I need to get rid of in a hurry. It was promised to another avid retrogamer but he can no longer collect it due to personal hardship.

If you're local and want to get your hands on a killer SCART television for retrogaming purposes, get in touch! I really need to move this sucker and want it to go to a good home.

The Gumtree ad is here.

For more on the Sony KV-C27, check out Rob's excellent video here.

The following screenshots show the actual unit in action:

Golden Axe

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Metal Slug

Street Fighter II

MAME menu

Windows desktop

Chassis

Chassis... again!

Case damage

Internal trim pots

More internal trim pots

Finally, a Loewe that will play R-Type!

Just picked up a Loewe Profil Plus 3472 that was offered as a freebie on Gumtree.

This TV seems to be something of a transition model for Loewe as it's not a 100 Hz chassis but it runs the same Super Flatline tube used in the later models. Also, the internals are very much like an E3000 but the menu system is closer to that of the later Q2500 and such.

Anyway, I was curious to see if this unit had the same issues as the E3000 when it comes to showing games with 256 lines. It was a nice surprise to see that it will display the full image for R-Type and, as a bonus, doesn't have the trapezium distortion issue of the E3000 when displaying refresh rates that aren't strictly PAL or NTSC. Very cool!

I suspect this chassis still has a few quirks that make it less than ideal (in terms of fast modeline switching) but the picture quality is great (vivid, focussed, stable, etc.) and it's nice to finally see R-Type on a Loewe after all my previous failed attempts.

All four borders visible? Check!

In game

Profil Plus 3472

Free Grundig and bag of nectarines!

Seeing as I'm on a mission to slim down my SCART TV collection I deleted all my saved eBay searches and told myself I'd have a 1 month moratorium on the acquisition of new TVs. Problem was that when I went to the Gumtree website to see if I could advertise some of my units there, I discovered someone giving away a vintage Grundig! I couldn't resist!

So, last night after work I went for a half hour drive down the coast and headed up into the hills. The countryside was really pretty and the weather was fantastic which made for a very enjoyable trip. When I arrived, I couldn't believe how scenic the place was:

Admiring the scenery

The folks giving away the TV where really sweet and insisted I take a few other things (keyboard, DVI cable, some brand new VHS tapes) and also a bag of home-grown, organic nectarines! Yum!

Fuel for alert gaming

Now, for the main attraction! The TV itself is a Grundig ST 70-460 S/text with a CUC 4635 chassis.

The small print

"I am Grundig."

The extremely dusty chassis

Street Fighter II up and running

The owner said that one of the speakers didn't work. When I pulled the back case off I found that the non-working speaker simply had a loose plug. Unfortunately, the so-called "working" speaker had a rubber surround that had completely perished. However, the speaker system is a 2-way (unusual) and there is also 4-ohm output for external speakers!

One minus is that the remote refuses to talk. Gonna have to see if my Logitech universal remote will drive this telly.

Most importantly, the image looks awesome! Great geometry, focus and color. The picture is really solid (no jitter or waviness) and the older Phillips screen has a lovely soft look that is probably more arcade authentic than the later model Phillips I'm used to.

Keen to clean this baby up and put it through its paces!