This TV boombox came home from e-waste with a built-in CRT, dual cassette decks, and a list of problems right away. The power LED lit, but one tape door wouldn’t eject, the case had plenty of scratches, and the front TV cover was damaged. I had been looking for one of these for a while, so I went ahead and gave it a closer look before deciding whether it was worth keeping.
The set turned out to be an AEC unit manufactured in April 1988, with detachable speakers on both sides and controls for TV, tape, and radio. It had VHF low, VHF high, and UHF band selection for the TV, plus headphone, mic, and 12-volt power connections on the back and side. I also found brightness and contrast controls for the TV, along with another rear adjustment.
Inside the battery compartment, there were still batteries installed. Two Energizers had leaked and left crust between the cells, but the terminals themselves were still in good shape. The Kodak Superlife batteries were cleaner, and when I checked a few of them with the meter they still showed a tiny bit of voltage, around 0.05 to 0.07 volts.
The radio worked, which was a good start, but it was rough. The controls were noisy and sticky, and FM stereo had a lot of interference until I switched it to mono. Both speakers produced sound, and the stereo indicator lit when appropriate, so I went ahead and treated the sliders and controls with DeoxIT. That cleaned up the crackling and got the faders working much better.
Tape operation was mixed. One deck opened normally, while the other had buttons that wouldn’t fully engage, although the mechanism did make noise when I pressed play. The working deck ran, fast forward and rewind functioned, and it played a tape without eating it. I found that the high-speed dubbing setting affected playback speed on that side, and once that was sorted out the tape played properly, though tape mode needed much more volume than radio mode.
The stuck deck loosened up a little with use. Play and reverse started working, but fast forward, stop, and eject still didn’t behave correctly. The buttons felt like something in the mechanism was blocking them from latching, so that side clearly still needed mechanical work.
The TV was the big question mark. I switched it into TV mode on VHF low and got no usable picture, just a little bit of faint static if I looked closely. Brightness, contrast, and tuning didn’t bring it to life, and the unit produced a ground-loop type hum through the speakers in TV mode.
By the end, the radio worked, one tape deck played, the controls responded much better after cleaning, and the TV still didn’t function. I was left deciding whether to restore it further or send it back to e-waste. What do you think I should do?
— Aaron
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Timestamps
00:00 – First Look
01:36 – Exploring Features
07:06 – PCBWay Ad
07:43 – Testing Functionality
15:24 – What Should I Do??
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