Early 90's LCD portable TVs: Tour and test
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ค. 2024
- Color LCD technology was quite new in the early 90s and these Casio TVs were some of the first of their kind. Let's take a look at them and see if these still work and what their image quality looks like today.
-- Video Links
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-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
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O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
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Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
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Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
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Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
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Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
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TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
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TS100 Soldering Iron:
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EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
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DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
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Magnetic Screw Holder:
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Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
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RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
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Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
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Heat Sinks:
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Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
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--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
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--- Music
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The hacky setup with all the clip leads from the RF modulator and bench power supply remind me of the scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown hooks up Marty's JVC camcorder to his 1955 era TV
I had one of those smaller Casio TV's when I was in the Army (I forget which model). Then the N64 came out. Luckily it had external video input. For the first year I had the N64 I played it on that tiny little Casio. Good times!
Think I had the same one... but with an RCA label on it. 2.2" screen, right?
@@pancudowny Found my old Army box. I was wrong about it being Casio. It was a Memorex Pocketvision 26. 2.7" screen.
Headache city
A friend of mine, who did maintenance on at an arcade, got one of these in a trade back in the early 90s. We played the smallest game of SNES-SFII on it. Why? Because we could.
Was it the smaller screen or the larger screen version? 🤔
@@richardhead8264 small
@@johnsouthern6089 Impressive lol
I had the smaller Casio back in the 90s... I used it on family holidays when the rest of the family wanted to watch some crap on the big screen. I always used an external power supply because it was so hungry for batteries.
Could of used rechargeable aa batteries
I used one of the TV-430s to watch TV on in my bedroom after fabricobbling an AC adapter for it. It was great for watching stuff on PAX on Channel 31 here, which had old reruns of shows at that point. Kept me sane while I was doing homework or for background noise. The 430 was a very good TV and I made sure we took it with us when we went on our vacation trip to Cape May, NJ in 2005. I was right in doing so because the cable hookup at our site was busted, so we needed that little TV so my father didn't miss his weekly binge of Smallville, which was still running at that point. I can remember him saying it was a terrible TV, but after that emergency usage to get some TV in our lives during the trip, he had nothing but praise for it... until we got home and he was able to re-watch the scheduled taping on our VCR.
Still remember back in middle school some kid got their mini tv like one of these stolen lol always love these mini TV's just for their sheer cool factor
I had a radio shack version and I NEVER took it to school, as much as I wanted to show it off. I just knew it would get stolen.
I still have it too.
These TVs can be somewhat improved in screen and power consumption departments by swapping the backlight with white LEDs. benheck style.
Not that it matters nowadays.
Woah, i have one of those Casio LCD TV's that looks like a real mini-television, unfortunately its absolutely past it so im gonna mod it with a new LCD screen, driver and a Raspi!
I used to have one of these in the early 2k's. I would watch TV on the bus ride home from school. It was terrible, but I loved it. Think I paid like $35 from a pawn shop for it in 2001.
I remember choosing a handheld LCD TV around 1994, and one of my primary tests was to see if I could read the score of a sporting event. Most of them were crap, but there was one good one. It wasn't the biggest screen, but it was the sharpest, and also highest contrast. It cost three times the cheap units, too, but I bought it because I could actually stand to watch it for hours at a time. It was still working, although not seeing much use, when it got stolen seven or eight years later.
Do you live in Detroit?
These are quite thirsty in the power department because in those days they used a Cold Cathode / Fluorescent tube to illuminate the display.
Thanks, I was immediately wondering that
Yes, I once had one of those models (or a similar Later Casio model) and it ate through batteries like nobodies business.
So do clamshell Macbooks, but they had a bit more power budget to play with. Two of the four monitors on my desk are fluorescent backlight and the other two are LED, and the much older, TN-panel fluorescent displays have much better black levels. I have to admit that they also run quite a lot warmer though, which of course is a bad thing on battery power unless heating is the whole point, like a vape or a soldering iron.
@@mal2ksc these have half inch diameter sized ccfl
@@Charlesb88 Same here & on top of that, you couldn't skimp on the batteries- they had to be the high dollar alkalines or it wouldn't even turn on...
@7:36 Not two LEDs but a single U-shaped CFL tube if it's like my similar PAL model (be careful what you touch if you power it up whilst dismantled)
Yeah, they can give you a funny belting if you touch the wrong parts inside.
True, old-fashioned fluorescent tubes with heated cathodes, no wonder why they are so power-hungry :)
Good fun :) But we need to see a vintage computer displayed on these.
I'm afraid it would have to be a VIC-20 or something similar with huge chunky characters, or else you would have a hard time trying to read any text on those.
@@BilisNegra Hooked a 360 up to one of these. Can confirm, text is unreadable
The Japanese is hard to read at that distance, but it pretty much says to avoid deforming the device or its display capabilities by squeezing it, or leaving it in direct sunlight or a hot car. And also cautions the user not to use in a bathtub
I like the all dressed chips that my granddad used to get when we went to Niagara Falls, Canada. The falls always looked better from the Canadian side, and when I was a kid before 9/11 it was easy to cross the border and come back
Keep up the great content Adrian
I still have the pal version of the smaller tv, i had it when i was in college so between 1989-1991. It was great for watching tv in the library, i had a leaver arch file with the pages cut out so i could watch my favourite tv show mid morning.
I remember having one of those small screen ones when I was in the army between 1988 and 1990. Only differences, the screen was a bit wider and it worked in PAL system (Italy). Believe me, four AA batteries didn't give you not even a hour of continuous working, more like between 30 to 40 minutes depending on the batteries' quality.
I got the TV400 for Christmas around 1988-89, Iv still got it and it still works.... Well I say it works, it switches on and tries to search for channels.....
I used to watch it at bedtime and remember watching the complete series of V in bed on that little TV. I thought it was the best thing ever....
I've been buying and experimenting on these vintage Casio TV's recently and yes I admit the LCD is quite tricky to see and the contrast is quite bad. But you can adjust the brightness and contrast when you open up the case and flip underside the circuit board. The pot trimmers usually aren't marked but they're there along with color alignment, sensitivity, agc adjustments, etc. you just have to experiment which is which (I marked the original setting with a marker pen to restore to default when something goes wrong). The most recent one I got is the TV1400 and the sound is really LOUD! The viewing might be bad but I'm having fun with these old TV's because they works like wonders! We still have analog TV stations here in the Philippines so these old Casio TVs are still usable here. I remember as a child in the 80's I lusted over having my own Sony Watchman because my dad won't allow me watching TV during schooldays he would lock the wooden door of that CRT TV of ours. Then when these Casio LCD TV's first came out in the 90's I even lusted more haha!
Had the Casio TV-400 when they first came out (1987?) and used it regularly on the train when going to university. Perfectly adequate for purpose for longish late-night journeys (~3-4 hours battery life sounds about right), thank you!
Best not to judge by 2021 standards... : )
I had a Casio similar to the smaller model,. I remember taking mine with me to work to watch Batman: The Animated Series while I was on my break. In a darkened room the picture quality was adequate but the UHF tuning on mine was very touchy.
@Adrian's Digital Basement ][
I had one of those, a model similar to the 8500. It came with the AV cable adapter and ac pack. I used it for playing NES games at a point when I didn't have a proper TV. Made a permanent AC adapter pack for it(made with parts from Radio Shack where I bought the unit) as it was rarely used on the go. I loved it! The screen quality was a lot better than the one you've got, so I think the one you have might have a problem. Of course that could be a fun video too! Diagnosing and repairing it, heck yes! I'd watch that!
The watchman does indeed have a antenna input. I had one as a kid and use to play NES on it as it was the only tv I had when my mom wanted the house tv.
I remember watching color tv in high school on a little handheld Casio. Resolution stunk, but the thrill of watching tv in class was pretty cool!
Great video! Boy, big-time flashbacks for me... I had the TV-400... bought it in the Phillippines when I was stationed a Clark AB. I hated the vinyl slipcase - no real protection. On base, there was a place that made fanny-packs (yes, it was the late 80s) and they would also make custom bags, etc. So, brought my TV in and they made a padded case, with a zipper that went 3/4ths around, and a handle on the side that didn't have the zipper - all for $10. Worked out awesome. Unfortunately, when the NTSC digital switch happened in the late 2000s, I decided that I didn't need the TV anymore and got rid of it.
This makes me nostalgic for my Casio TV-980 from around 2003/2004. I got it for my birthday and it was the first TV I got to have in my bedroom. Kept it on my desk and fond memories of putting afternoon/evening TV on (News, simpsons reruns, Kids WB etc) while I did homework. You aren't kidding about these things eating batteries, I very quickly got a 6v DC power adapter to use with it. Luckily I still have the little Casio back at my parent's house in my desk drawer
Missed opportunity to hook a C64 up to it
I had a similar model with a 2.2 inch screen. Subtitles were impossible to read on that tiny low resolution screen. And here in Sweden, all foreign shows are subtitled. :( I used it on an airplane once (probably not allowed) and were able to pick up stations from several hundreds of miles away. Great fun! :)
I still have my boxed Australian PAL model Casio TV-470 from 1993 from when I was a kid. Got is as a Christmas present, though it is dead now. I'll have to get it working again. I repair old computers like you but have too many other projects ATM. Will get around to it soon as I'd like to see it live again.
Very fun! What eats the battery is surely the CFL backlight.
I was expecting you to play Doom or something on those
I remember this guy from school had a monochrome TV100... It was fantastic because we could watch the olympic games during intervals!
If only there was a LCD upgrade for these devices, especially the larger one as it could be useful to save some desk/workbench space when working with an Apple //c.
If you don't care about the aesthetics, then a chinese backup camera display is in order. They're pretty cheap, have composite input, can be found in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and don't have completely terrible looking panels.
Wow been ages since i saw those casio one . I had one then had a tuner for the game gear later . I loved it at the time .
I once had one of those Casio TV 430 models and I believe they first came out in 1991 or so. It indeed ate through batteries. I never really thought about the screen quality back then because I was just so happy to have a portable TV of that size. Wouldn’t be so happy nowadays given how much even cheap mini LCD screens have improved since then.
Some of my models have the TFT LCD which is so nice and clear to watch.
When I was a kid and these things were coming out, I wanted one so bad!
i have one of those casio tv430s, had it as a 18th birthday present in 1990 !
I had a few of those portable TV's back in the early 90's. If you think those had hard to see screens, In the mid 80's My father had a Casio B&W LCD pocket TV (Casio TV-30) that you had to flip up the LCD and there was a mirror under that you would actually look at to see the program. The LCD was mounted in a window that light had to pass through. It was not backlit. It relied on the sun (had to sit by a sunny window) or if the room was bright enough you could watch it indoors in theory. there was an additional AA battery powered clip on light that you could put on it to provide light It was not great because it used CCFL tubes. The cool thing about the TV was that it was only about 5.5" x 3" an inch thick. He would bring it out with him on Sundays so he could watch the Viking's (NFL) games... lol I still have the TV-30
I have 10 of those Sony Watchmans. I loooove those old flat CRTs. The picture looks great for black and white.
i remember being so facinated with those as a kid. they could fit a tv in something so small, i wanted one but couldn't afford it. then once i actually saw the picture quality i wasn't so impressed anymore
I have one of those tvs today 2023 its very good condition.
I remember when the Sony Watchman debut, and wanting one so-badly...!
In '98: I went to a Radio Shack and bought a relabeled Casio 2.2" color pocket television for $50.00. I hardly used it over the years, but was so glad to have it, I've kept it to this day. :)
I have similar models too, 2 crt watchman, and a casio Multi System color LCD (takes all systems Secam/Pal/NTSC etc), and quite a few others, plus a modern pocket tv with DVB-T.
Tandy here in Australia sold TVs like this in the early 90s, I remember them. I remember one model they had which had a folding screen and also an AM/FM radio in it. I never owned an LCD TV like this, though I did want one.
I realy enjoy your TV Videos. Thank you so much. I have slyo som Old CRTs The Newest is from 1976 the oldest 1960
I remember getting the Radio Shack / Realistic branded Casio TV-430 in 91/92 and still have it. The Radio Shack red batteries would last maybe 20min. Was at Boy Scouts summer camp watching the season finale of STNG.
I had a TV-430 in December 1990 (PAL version). I remember being impressed with the color and contrast, even if the resolution was so poor. When I took it to school and let people borrow it, I struggled to get the thing back!
@Linus Das: The colours and it was completely flicker-free! I think today´s kids / teens cannot fathom how bad screen flicker was back in the times of CRT´s. Even more so over here in europe when we had 25fps instead of 30fps :)
@@SharkoonBln Teens nowadays most likely still had parents or relatives with CRTs when growing up. Kids much less however. Glad they have the technology at their hand they have today to save a bunch of headaches
But what was in the sandwich! Clint has LGRfoods, where is Adrian's Digital Kitchen?? Great videos, really enjoying all the relaxed 2nd channel vids.
Late but man I see what you did with those chips at the beginning.... I see a fellow fan here
I remember camping out with a couple of my friends when we were about 9 and one of them had a little Casio TV. All three of us huddled around the puny screen watching Terminator 2 thinking we were living in the future 😂
I still have my Radio Shack 1.6" diagonal color LCD TV. That was the biggest purchase I ever made as a kid because it was so expensive (on a kid's budget). It has no auxiliary input, so I took a female coax end with a wire on it and wrapped the wire around the antenna so I could connect a VCR or my Commodore 64. With the C64 I could get a good picture, and could just barely see a single pixel if the color contrast was distinct enough. Now that all broadcast TV is digital I don't have much use of it any more.
I remember my LCD TV from near the end of the portable-analog LCD TV market and... not much better!
I had a portable TV setup for a monitor when I was messing around on a Tandy CoCo II once. I got signal on the TV without the cables plugged in. RF was RFing.
lol
I had a Sinclair pocket TV back in the day which was quite similar to the Sony, i.e. it used a CRT with 0 contrast. The image was effectivly dark white on light grey. It also used a proprietary battery that you couldn't get anywhere for neither love nor money.
I have the Radio Shack version of that small one. It’s a Pocketvision 34. It wasn’t the worse. I remember watching Home Improvement on it on trips to Nashville.
I got a Casio handheld color LCD TV from Radio Shack in 2000 or 2001. It was an open box and I believe it was about 70 bucks. I got a lot of use out of it by connecting it to my hidden cable box in my room. It came in handy when my family and I would go on a trip somewhere. It was customary for me to see a city limits sign and start trying to see what stations would come in while we were driving. Ahhhh good old analogue broadcasting, it may not have been HD but you had the luxury or tuning into a station and being able to watch it even if the reception was bad. Unlike Digital broadcasts where you either get the signal or you don't lol.
In the mid-1990s they gave me a Watchman from North America where I live and it had some sort of ray tube that would cast is image upon an inclined plane of phosphorus or something. It was monochromatic. I don't know where along the line I lost that thing but it was the length of two decks of cards and perhaps the thickness of two of them. I believe it took about 6 double a batteries to operate it. Do me as just the dishwasher in that time frame that was a pretty cool gift of unclaimed materials that have been there for several years
I got an Casio one before the winter Olympic in 1994. Sadly it got lost around 2000. But I found the picture quality on mine was quite a bit better than what you show here. I used it a lot at work when tuning in satellite 📡 actually. And I don’t think it was an very expensive model I had. Was a gift from my mom. I do however remember they were an absolute power hog when running on battery. :)
I still have a Radio Shack Pocket Vision 34 which I keep as a backup analog TV -- don't have a basement like you :-) -- in case I ever need to plug old equipment into it (though it would be hard to see anything useful). I remember around 2007 I asked the FCC about these small portable units since manufactures were still selling a ton of them during the imminent crossover to digital and their response was "well, you'll get a coupon for a free converter box so no problem" and I was like "they are handheld ?!?!?" My favorite portable TV (CRT) is the Radio Shack Portavision 16-119A TV AM/FM Cassette Radio. I used to have one sitting in my office in the 90's so I could watch TV if I had to stay late-night and my bosses couldn't complain I brought a TV to work :-/
I've since replaced my Pocket Vision with a digital version...an early iView one that takes actual AA batteries which is also pretty rare today as most now have built-in rechargeables that I hate since once they go you have to either scrap the unit or open it up and replace them whereas I just stick rechargeable AA's into mine.
I remember my first LCD tv, got it at radio shack, it was black and white and the LCD was on the lid, you opened it up and looked at the image reflected off a mirror. the nice thing was the brighter the light the better the image, even outside in sun light. but to watch in a dark room you needed a back-light accessory that really drained the batteries.
I have a few of those little LCD TVs. I have a Citizen P422 from around 1991 and a Casio TV-880 from 2000. Both have equally horrible picture, just as yours do. What's pretty amazing is I also have a Sony portable LCD TV from 1995 - the FDL-370 Color Watchman - and it has absolutely amazing picture quality, despite being 5 years older than the Casio. I think the Casios were definitely built down to a price vs the Sony.
I still have a Citizen pocket TV somewhere I got for christmas back in the 90s, and I remember that thing chewing through batteries like they were free, and the picture quality was just as poor, but that's what they were like in them days, as for the hacky RF connection, I used to just sellotape a chopped up RF cable onto the built-in aerial (no ext. connector, just that cheapo!!) to hook it up to my VHS recorder at the time... :P
Bought a TV-480 and a 5" TV/radio a couple of months ago. Using the 300-75 ohm converter, got a lousy image from the converter box. When I used a 3.5mm 1/8" Mono Male plug to F-Type Female Jack Adapter Connector (for a Bose unit), the image came in very clear without any image degradation. Not only that, these were cheaper than the included adapter for the 300 ohm adapter.
I used to connect my Ps2 in the 8500 when i had night shift,it wasn't all that bad,i still have it,along with another similar bigger TV from another brand.That i used to replace it.
A small production improvement suggestion. Make a high res version of your logo. Like at 8k res. So when you zoom into the letter. It doesn't lose resolution.
0:45 The carbon footprint is even bigger; Svetlana was first shipped from Russia to Ireland.
These are so cool! Do you know of any vintage portable tvs that have av input?
(02:39) I have a radio shack branded version of that Casio TV-430. Still works great!
I'd love to see you try to play a commodore 64 or something on that little cube casio.
I still have the Radio Shack version of the TV-430, which is branded as the Realistic Pocketvision-22. It was a great little television...I should break it out sometime.
My dad bought a Casio LCD TV in 1997. One of its cool features was that it had a TFT active matrix LCD. Speaking of Kirkland batteries, by sheer coincidence, that TV had Kirkland batteries in it that leaked. :P
(don't worry, I cleaned out the leakage, and the TV worked fine)
Nice video. I have a CASIO TV-470 that is working perfectly but it has the worst backlight I have ever seen, I need to look at the screen at certain angle to be able to see someting.
Fun fact, I was able to receive image on it using, what i call, the McGyver Station : A simple Sony antenna connected to the output of my RF modulator that has a potentiometer to increase the signal's strengh. No external antenna connected. I was able to watch videos in my bed.
I still remember a Watchman I had won as a door prize at my graduation party from HS. Was an upside down teardrop shape with the antenna in the lanyard. The reception was kinda meh but it was neat. Wish I still had it.
I have the exact same opinion of crinkle cut chips as you Adrian, they can be like razor blades
Svetlana, such an Irish name. ;) I've never tried Keogh's crisps/chips, but their microwaveable potatoes are just sublime! Speaking of Ireland, I just remembered that I actually took my TV-430 to Ireland in March 1991. My relatives could not believe that you could fit a TV in your pocket (albeit a rather large pocket!) - they were so let down when I couldn't receive anything at their farm (unsure if that's because of weak reception being deep in the boonies, or the Irish TV system did not overlap with the British UHF system).
The Sega Game Gear, introduced in 1991 used an LCD display and it ate batteries super fast. I had one for a while and I almost always used it plugged in. 6 Batteries would last maybe 2 hours at best. The screen quality was comparable to that Casio TV-430, which wasn't terrible.
I had a seiko one with diagonal filter lines rather than the vertical one that casio used. You could plug in a ZX Spectrum into it and read the text. You could also read teletext on BBC when it was transmitting random pages when BBC2 was off the air.
🤔🤔🤔🤔
In the 80s I was buying reguarly a magazine about audio-video in which they presented similar devices. I remember how much fascinating it was for me then. Although then they presented rather small Tv sets of similar size (perhaps slightly bigger) with classic crt technology.
My first pocket tv (I forget the manufacturer) was black & white , had a flip up screen that was non backlit , so no watching it in darkened rooms, the light would come through a translucent panel and you had to watch it on a mirror on the base
I had the Casio TV-400 in the late 80´s, i think i actually may still have it somewhere, but as far as i remember it doesnt work since a number of years anyway. The TV400 was very similar to the TV-430 shown here and the picture size/quality/resolution was as awful. It was pretty high tech back then though with a color TV in pocket format when it was all CRTs (or maybe backprojection tv´s) and no one had seen a big LCD/LED/OLED/Plasma TV that we take for granted now.
It'd be interesting to see if you can find modern drop-in replacements for those screens.
Cool!👍 Venturing into Techmoan territory.. ..
I have a similar TV, a Casio TV-M420. Mine has CCFL backlight, not LEDs. I suppose at least your larger one has CCFL as well. Hence, the high-pitch noise from the inverter you can hear. Also has video input, I can play Gamecube on it.
I had a RadioShack clone of the smaller one when I was about 10 years old. Quality was about the same as you see here. Not decent by any standard but awesome to have for portability. Great for road trips into the city with headphones where you could tune into anything OTA. However mine did not have any sort of input for AV or even external antenna. I managed to connect my nintendo and VCR using wires crudely attached to the antenna. Even though I had a normal 12-inch CRT i would still use this "because I could".
I believe we has the longer of the two Casio's, remember the tuning buttons and how it showed which channel on the display, screen was about the size of two British postage stamps and it would last ~1hr on Ni-Cd cells.
Still remember that one year the world cup was on and we had gone to our local Sea-Life centre and I had taken the TV with me as England were playing, naturally I was dipping in and out of the football (despite my dislike for it) and had people asking me what the score was!
I remember those passive color screens on contemporaneous laptops being gross too! We are spoiled now!
I remember buying my TV430 with my hard earned savings at Target, and getting busted by my dad watching Olympic Hockey on it at like 10pm one night. Great memories!
I used to have the small Casio TV and had my ZX Sinclair Spectrum hooked up to it, lol.
I did the same, and my Atari 2600!
@@dnorman2134 Ooh nice, the Atari 2600. I love the old computers and consoles. I used to have the BBC Archimedes and the Amiga 500 (both computers looked almost identical, I just needed the Atari ST to make it a trio lol) and I tried the A500 on the Casio TV too. It looked almost surreal seeing the "Hand holding floppy disk" boot screen on such a tiny colour TV screen, lol
On that Japanese Portable TV, the reason their is no mode switch for external composite video input is that the video Jack has a switch contact that is disconnected when the plug is pushed in, just like how some portable radios shut off the internal speaker when plugging in headphones. So it’s not really auto detecting the video signal but switching to composite audio/video input mode when the video Jack is plugged in.
That white label in Japanese on the back of the TV-8500 says it was manufactured in June 1991. So... exactly 30 years ago. :)
I had a backlit LCD pocket TV in 1989, riding Amtrak, loads of fun because it would lose its signal within 60 miles.
compared to the 12v 5 inch black and white portable tv I had as a kid, this would have been awesome!
I still have my Casio TV-1450, but it has gone bad long ago. I was able to get sound but the screen is green. I remember having this same problem fixed after a few years of use. Maybe just some capacitors that have gone bad.
1:04: I guess I don't mind the possible issues with crinkle cut or wavy cut chips....to each their own....
The TV-430 has the same 2" screen as the TV-400. In fact, the entire set is identical - Casio just did their usual thing of slightly changing the cosmetic appearance of something and calling it an entirely different model.
That TV-8500 is a sweetheart - the highest-end model of its time with a 4" screen - even bigger than that included on the VF-3000 portable TV/VCR.
The backlight on all of these is a fluorescent lamp, not LED :)
I'm surprised the picture from the A/V input looks that good. All Casio TVs with an A/V input, that I know of, require a stupid special cable that's impossible to get now, which has some unknown circuitry in it which reduces the video level. A normal cable just makes the picture washed out. But maybe the 8500 is an exception, because that picture looks decent.
I've also observed the smaller units to have a better picture than the larger ones. I think the bigger and higher-resolution those early HQM displays got, the harder it was to preserve the contrast and color quality. The STN displays Casio introduced in the mid-late 90s overcame this issue.
If you wanna preserve the functionality of these, a re-cap is pretty necessary. That's why the TV-430 is producing a whine from the speaker. At the very least, replace the one yellow Elna cap - that one leaks and destroys a lot of these.
Keogh's are super good. Aside from the fact that the best flavoured crisps have always come from Ireland, (cf. Tayto), we just have good varieties here. The most common is the Rooster, which is what you're eating. It's likely that the beef flavour is probably a vegan friendly flavour based off of dilsk, which is a particularly meaty seaweed grown off the Irish coast, which happens to be particularly good if you're cooking up stew or a chilli and want some umami.
I had (and still have) the TV-430, or its PAL equivalent. Definitely came out before 1991, as I got it for Xmas, in possibly 1990. I remember watching it on at least one coach trip in the summer of 1991. As you can imagine, the signal in a moving vehicle wasn't the greatest. I remember when the batteries used to die, the screen would flicker quickly, and eventually stick on an olive green screen (and distorted sound) before going off completely. Unfortunately, it only displays that olive screen these days, even with brand new batteries, so I'm guessing there's a dead capacitor inside or something.
I have quite alot of that Casio model. Usual problem is the back light failing and the LCD degrading. I do have 3 of them working nice though. I do also have the Casio CV-1 the worlds smallest ever made color TV :) works great.