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ICC5 Service training video.

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Till Eulenspiegel
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Now I'm sure a certain type VRAT member would like the item I found today. The Ferguson ICC5 service training video. VHS format.
First come, first served. But hurry there will be many TV enthusiasts out there wishing to own this piece of TV history.

Till Eulensiegel.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 5:43 pm
Marc
 Marc
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Hi Till,

How about running a few DVD copies of it first so a few VRATers could have a copy ?
I have the facility to do it if you haven't.

Marc.

Marc
BVWS member
RSGB call sign 2E0VTN

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 5:47 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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Hi Marc,
That's a good idea. Let's spread the misery of the infamous ICC5. Seriously through folks, it wasn't that bad really.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 6:40 pm
Red_to_Black
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I am sure I still have a copy of that video somewhere :qq1 , along with the Pana G and K mech , Pace PRD 800 and Tosh V3 mechanism ones. :aaj

I actually had 2 of the ICC5 ones, the original one with a strange French accented narrator, and a later one without the inspector Clouseau/'Allo 'Allo accent. (no disrespect meant to any French members btw), I don't know what happened to the earliest original one though. :aab

Ps. I have a couple of power point type presentation ones on CD for various Sanyo TVs and VCR mechs as well, but these wouldn't play properly or at all on Win XP machines onwards, I think they were for W98/ME OSes. :bba

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 6:59 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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The example I have here is the early one with the narrative done by the Frenchman. Well after all the original chassis was designed in France, or, was it a Nordmende design? ICC5 was first introduced into Continental markets in 1986. Ferguson did modifications to the original design to suit UK tastes. You've got to admit there was some nice features about the set. 59K7 and 59P7 cabinets were designed in the UK.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 7:28 pm
Red_to_Black
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Yes the "continental" ICC5 bore little resemblance except the layout of the PCB superficially to the Thorn versions, IIRC Thorn designed the text/OSG board (built in the UK I believe with Thorn PCXXX numbering) the micro was customised too for Thorn, Ferg 07 versions etc.

Incidentally I came across both an Hitachi badged ICC5 and ICC7 variants, they were very different to the Ferguson variants, the operation of the tuning more akin to a Salora IIRC.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 7:34 pm
Red_to_Black
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Another Thought,
Speaking of European ICC5 versions, I saw both Nordmende and Telefunken versions as well as the odd Thomson badged ones, they did not have the on screen graphics and reasonably straight forward Tuning as our version, nor were they IMO as nice looking as the Thorn versions, in fact I would say they looked positively "dated" in comparison, and even operated and tuned via the keypad on the front of the set which also seemed dated compared to the nice on screen operation of the Thorn versions, they were remote control still of course, but instead of the on screen indication the two digit 7 segment display changed to indicate the current function, similar to some Salora and Lowe opta sets of the day, this must have been current continental practice at the time.

The chipsets used, micro etc. were completely different, and looked a tad more complex, having two battery back ups, one for the main micro and another for the text board, very much along the lines of the later IKC2 (41p3) chassis.

The exception to this was of course the French built and vastly more complex IMC versions, these were the most complex of all the ICC5 versions.
I thought they looked really nice and modern, they certainly sold well, they were much more advanced than the usual K,L and P Thorn sets, with superior sound capabilities, extra scart socket and a far more advanced interactive on screen menu, and super planar tubes (of which I think only the model 68K4 used out of the Thorn stable).
The downside of course was they were much more difficult to work on, access being particularly awkward for fault finding etc.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 8:14 pm
Jayceebee
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Hmm, I'm probably going to have nightmares when I go to bed this evening. The ICC5 started off just plain bad, I got on quite well with it but became steadily worse throughout its evolution. My hearing became finely tuned to the noises it produced and just by listening to strangled squeal the line stage made under fault conditions I could differentiate between a faulty LOPT or a fault in the E-W pincushion circuit. With every subsequent ICC chassis it just went from bad to worse, the ICC9 was an absolute abomination, only the ICC6 seemed reasonably reliable apart from arcing LOPTs.

We also had the Nordmende versions of the ICC5 with 29" Super Planar CRTs, I always remeber unboxing one of the first delivered, switched on and the CRT emission was as flat as a proverbial. As for purity and geometry with SP CRTs, god help you if there was a metal radiator within 5 feet.

RtoB there were other Ferguson models fitted with the IMC version, these were the 59 and 68M5, the Micro version Ferg09 for these I think. Ferg05 and Freg07 were for non IMC versions with and without NICAM respectively. Quiz for tonight, does anyone who serviced the Ferguson versions remember the "Childlock" button sequence? Childlock, that's a laugh, it was always the adults that were foxed by this one. Once set, on powering the set on you were greeted with "LOCKED" on the screen for 10 seconds and then the set reverted to standby

If the are any Sado Masochists out there in VRAT land I think I might still have the ultimate Video Nasty in the loft, the Philips Charley Deck training tape. For anyone who is not aware of these have a look at the link below, marvel at the antics of the pinch roller. Again, I got on quite well with these but the most of my work colleagues hated them. They did have pretty decent picture quality, something that the grainy Turbo deck machines lacked.

This one is a bit noisy on FF/REW but the deck I believe inside Philips was known as the coffee grinder.

John

John.

 
Posted : 29/05/2016 11:11 pm
Red_to_Black
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RtoB there were other Ferguson models fitted with the IMC version, these were the 59 and 68M5, the Micro version Ferg09 for these I think. Ferg05 and Freg07 were for non IMC versions with and without NICAM respectively. Quiz for tonight, does anyone who serviced the Ferguson versions remember the "Childlock" button sequence? Childlock, that's a laugh, it was always the adults that were foxed by this one. Once set, on powering the set on you were greeted with "LOCKED" on the screen for 10 seconds and then the set reverted to standby

If the are any Sado Masochists out there in VRAT land I think I might still have the ultimate Video Nasty in the loft, the Philips Charley Deck training tape. For anyone who is not aware of these have a look at the link below, marvel at the antics of the pinch roller. Again, I got on quite well with these but the most of my work colleagues hated them. They did have pretty decent picture quality, something that the grainy Turbo deck machines lacked.

This one is a bit noisy on FF/REW but the deck I believe inside Philips was known as the coffee grinder.

John

It was the Ferguson "M" versions I was talking about earlier wrt the IMC Jaycee.

Child lock sequence was key R, G, B and hold Y for 5 seconds using the Fastext keys :) , you could also put that sequence in as the old pin number to reset said pin number.
Anyone put the hidden POS (point of sale message) up on these ? :aag

By pressing the red fastext key while a particular graphic was still on screen (volume. contrast etc.. etc.) would store that value as a "normal" or personal preference.
You could also adjust the contrast in text mode (I think you could also adjust the colour in this mode too on some versions), this was due to the way the colour processing was carried out between the chips on this chassis.
Another trick on some versions was to enter text mode while in AV mode to enable RGB input*.
Edit: * on some (later ?) versions this allowed S-Video input instead.

As far as I can remember the micros were Ferg 05 for mono sets, and Ferg 07 for Nicam models, the French built IMC (59M5 and 68M5) used an Hitachi micro with said back up battery and I am not sure if it had the Ferg designation.
These Ferguson "badged" IMC sets had by this time the Thomson logo as well, they were built by Thomson and were stamped "made in France", I think by this time Thorn had little (if any) input on these, they did not even resemble any of the previous sets in fact if anything they were visually to look more like the later ICC7 , 8 and 9 stable.
These IMC sets also had a simple service mode, something which none of the earlier ICC5 ever had, at least the Thorn type ones never did.

In fact comparing the Thorn sets to the IMC, the Thorn sets looked completely Spartan by comparison.

The Philips "charley" deck I had/have the video for that too somewhere, again these were an acquired taste, I found them to be ok for the most part, they were one of those decks that you either knew how to do, or you didn't, if you didn't then you ended up in a right old mess :aai

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 9:01 am
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Looking through a few bits of French Thomson documentation for the ICC5 IMC Continental versions (as you do :bba ) There are options for built in satellite receivers and D2MAC decoding as well as picture in picture modules and full multi-standard operation, these versions must have been truly scary beasts of sets :aah making our common garden Thorn versions look positively tame by comparison.

Even our Ferguson ICC5 IMC were fairly well packed compared to the more basic sets, it really was a "core chassis".
I am truly in awe at the complexity of some of these later versions.
Servicing these much more complex animals must have been a nightmare, I wonder if it got out of hand with all of these bolt-on additions ?

Having said that the ICC5 was just a logical and technological extension of the ICC4 and the ICC3 before it, the Thyristor frame output stage being inherited from both, and a lot of other basic similarity between the ICC4 in particular.
There were no Thorn versions of the earlier ICC chassis as far as I am aware, however we did buy some ex-rental Nordmende versions of both the ICC3 and ICC4 sets, so Thorn must have bought some of these in at some point. most of these sets were bigger than a portable but smaller than say 20" (probably 19" sets) I suppose they were so called table top models.
I think we did get some larger Telefunken and/or Saba versions of the ICC4 though IIRC.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 12:17 pm
slidertogrid
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The ICC5 was a abomination, unreliable, not very nice to work on nasty cheap plastic, fragile remote handsets that looked grotty and worn after a few years use and if you could keep one going long enough the tube went soft and poor focus. ISTR they used Videocolour tubes which were never brilliant after a few years even in a half decent chassis.

A poor effort when you compare it to the Tx10 which on the whole was very reliable and went on for 10 years or more. We had some fault guide books to help field engineers they listed common faults on popular chassis with suggested checks/cures. There would be a page or sometimes two on most chassis. but the ICC5 took up page after page with faults in just about every stage. It was then we realised it wasn't just us that had lots of problems.

Luckily we didn't sell or rent many (if any) as we pretty much had stopped buying from Thorn during the production of the first TX100 sets. We fell out with them over the deal they did with Dixons to supply them with Logic branded TX100 sets. Dixons could sell a Logic for about the same price as we could buy Fergusons for trade when you took the VAT into consideration. We went over to Toshiba and Pye/Philips. We tried a few Sharp sets but they were also unreliable badly made junk at the time!

We saw a lot as chargeable repairs once they were out of the original suppliers guarantee it seems a lot of places that sold them didn't want to repair them. We did our best but suffered a lot of repair returns often for a different fault.
In the end we applied the same plan as when the Amstrad "super wide" sh1te came in . Estimated high and hoped they scrapped it!

:bbeard
Rich.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 12:37 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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Well I still have the ICC5 set we used to have in the house. It's presently upstairs in the store room above the shop. The Ferguson set is a model 51K5, the one with NICAM. The CRT is a Mullard 21" 110degree type. Some sets were fitted with an equivalent Videocolor tube.
The Ferguson was reliable and was in use from 1989 to 1994, replaced by a Nokia 25" model. That was a very good set except for a few funny characteristics. Used to go into standby when a fluorescent light was switched on. The Nokia set is still in existence.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 12:48 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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Luckily we didn't sell or rent many (if any) as we pretty much had stopped buying from Thorn during the production of the first TX100 sets. We fell out with them over the deal they did with Dixons to supply them with Logic branded TX100 sets. Dixons could sell a Logic for about the same price as we could buy Fergusons for trade when you took the VAT into consideration. We went over to Toshiba and Pye/Philips. We tried a few Sharp sets but they were also unreliable badly made junk at the time!

:bbeard
Rich.

Ferguson Limited as they became after the Thomson takeover did themselves no favours when they did that deal with Currys-Dixons. You'll remember Ferguson hurriedly cobbled up that Ultra TX100 set to placate the independent dealers. I think we all knew by then there was a hidden agenda and the big outfits were buying in TV sets far cheaper than the independent retailers.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 1:00 pm
Red_to_Black
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Hi Rich,
Now I found the opposite, once the ICC5 were serviced thoroughly we had very few back, I found them to be fairly reliable and no worse and a lot better than most other sets of the time.

We bought loads of them (reasonably cheap) because no one else would take them, I must say though they must have not been very reliable from new! what I mean is most of our sets were bought in ex-rental and were faulty but extremely "low milage" they were mostly untouched so I suspect the Thorn engineers just released them for re-sale without trying to fix them.

Most suffered line output and EW failures due to poor soldering (lots of dry joints) from new, the EW circuit once modified with the new coil, chip and the Cap etc. replaced gave little further trouble.
True you could get some weird and tricky faults but these were comparatively rare until the sets were a lot older and by then the faults list had grown considerably, pretty much like any other set of comparable age.

They could be difficult to fault find on due to the compact nature of the chassis, the complexity/unusual circuitry and not helped by Thomson's diagrams as they were a bit of a challenge until you got used to them.

As I say I liked them, they did need a thorough solder up though, and then much later needed more than a few elec capacitors changing.

One thing that caught more than a few engineers out, was that once the sets were getting older the copper tracks/pads in the line output area could oxidise, they would solder though, and this led to bounce jobs, you had to thoroughly clean the pads with a fibre pencil back to shiny copper before soldering, but by this time the sets were almost finished anyway.

Edit: One thing that was peculiar to the IMC versions as the sets became end of life was the wiring harness plugs were starting to become intermittent and this was a real PITA.

I actually replaced very few LOPTS on this chassis, but I did have more than a few PSU blow ups due to line output faults particularly on the IMC models, most of the earlier models would trip and or shut down but on this version for some reason almost always took the chopper out with it.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 1:02 pm
slidertogrid
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Hi Rich,
We bought loads of them (reasonably cheap) because no one else would take them, I must say though they must have not been very reliable from new! what I mean is most of our sets were bought in ex-rental and were faulty but extremely "low milage" they were mostly untouched so I suspect the Thorn engineers just released them for re-sale without trying to fix them.

Yes they would have been "automatic disposal". Various rental firms did this with sets either based on age and / or reputation. That is probably why we saw a fair few when they were four or five years old. They were probably released onto the secondhand market by the rental firms.
A few had definitely been "The workshop pet" with loads of previous repairs and re-soldering.
I probably had the wrong attitude towards the chassis to a degree, I normally would be quite patient with repairs but some sets you just knew were going to be grief before you started...The Sony 1810 springs to mind oh and any Sharp 21" that came in having "gone bang"..
Rich.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 5:15 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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The ICC5: I probably had the wrong attitude towards the chassis to a degree, I normally would be quite patient with repairs but some sets you just knew were going to be grief before you started...The Sony 1810 springs to mind oh and any Sharp 21" that came in having "gone bang"..
Rich.

When it come to LCD TVs my attitude is the same, I just don't like the things, although the attitudes of customers asking about repairs to these sets doesn't help. They just don't like spending any money on these sets.
Getting back to the ICC5. I didn't mind these really. Sure the sets were a bit tricky but once mastered I could fix almost all of them. However, some +eight year old sets were in a bad state. Best ICC5 models were those fitted with the 90 degree CRT. An example, the Ferguson 51K4, strange looking cabinet.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 30/05/2016 7:14 pm
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