CTV 1986 20" Panasonic TX-2122 TeleText

Introduction

Another collection caper today, here we have the 8th addition this month to the collection, and another Teletext TV for my 80s section.

This cropped up on eBay and not an unreasonable travelling distance. However, I was in two minds about this set mainly due to the remote being missing, after all I want to be able to use teletext.

One essential & two nice to have

A search of eBay for TX-2122 turned up the user operating instruction manual as a 'buy it now'. As luck would have it, the seller had taken a photo of the front and rear covers, the rear photo detailing specifications and the all important remote controller ID, EUR51143. Putting this ID into eBay returned one vendor selling the exact remote, and that was also 'buy it now', result! The final icing on the cake would be the original manufacturer's service manual, yep, another search on eBay turned up two, one at £9.99 the other at £1.99, no-brainer there! So three 'buy it now's' later, I had the missing remote, the operating/user manual and the manufacturer's service manual.

With that, I bought the TV and collected it today.

The Television

The TV has a date stamp inside, 29th November 1986 and a postcode engraved on the underside of the plastic, DN21 1YY placing it to a street in Gainsborough. Amazing what detective work you can accomplish nowadays with eBay & Google.

The chap I bought it from does house clearances, I already have two other sets (Grundig 5011 & ECKO CT252) that he's saved. This one he powered up in his yard prior to sale, and it appears to be working, albeit a raster with no signal applied.

Here are some photos, after I had given the cabinet a thorough clean, it was grotty. Upon opening it up, it is fairly mucky inside, too. Despite it being briefly powered up by the vendor, I shall not venture to do so until I've given the cct boards a thorough clean and visual inspection for any suspect parts, only then reintroducing it to power.

As you can see from the front photo, this employs an FST CRT and states "Computer Text" the latter in reference to the fact this set employs CITAC, OH, and uses the U5W chassis.

CITAC

This acronym stands for, Computer Interface for Tuning And Control.  I believe developed by Philips and or Rediffusion, I'm not that up on it to be honest.

This Panasonic's implementation of CITAC uses the MAB, SAB and SAA of ICs, I believe that suggests it is Philips CITAC system?

MAB8441PT003 - Microprocessor, timing, drive, input & output buffers.
SAB3035 - Programmable counter, 3x band switching, 1x audio/view switching, control data decoder tuning amp & AFC
SAA5230 - Data slice, Sync sep, phase detect and clocks.
SAA5240 - Data acquis, timing chain, character gen, RC interface & ctrl
TVSM58725P - Ram/logic control

I also believe there is 1.2v back-up rechargeable battery, though I've not spotted it yet, no doubt that will be top of the list in case it's leaking/leaked.

Here is Rediffusion's implementation of CITAC, I've not been able to find anything yet on Philips, anyone?

https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/rediffusion-citac-mk4a/

A few interesting other observations

1. You will note that this TV is also an ex Granada rental set, yet, the TV still has its Panasonic identity badge on the front, not a Granadacolour badge.
2. The Granada label on the rear is also curious in a couple of ways, it's not Blue as you normally find, but cream.
3. Finally, following Granada's labelling standards, I would expect the Granada model number to be C51CN5, but it's shown as a D51DR5 which makes no sense (see below).

Granada Decode guide:- https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/vintage-electronics-blog-forum/granada-rental-tv-vcr-equivalents/

A model code of C51CN5, would be more logical, based on what I know about the TV :-

C   - Colour
51 -  Screen size
C   - 1986
N   - Panasonic
5   - Teletext

The Granada model number used does not make any sense D51DR5, that would decode to :-

D   - (no idea what D means)
51  - Screen size
D   - 1987
R    - Rank
5    - Teletext

It has been suggested to me that this is a TV that Granada took over from a chain they took over, hence the cream label. What we need is an ex Granada TV engineer, who might recall what the 'D' designation meant.