There are many different 19" TVs that you can swap tubes with.
It's a cheap source of burn free tubes.
Yeah, I had found some tutorials on this a few months ago when I first looked into it, and asked around on KLOV. Finding 19" CRT TVs is surprisingly difficult around here, and the one time I found a few TVs that might be the right size (at a Goodwill) they were too expensive to just blindly purchase a bunch and hope for the best. It's a significant time investment, and I don't have much time or space for hobbies like this right now, unfortunately.
Here's the KLOV thread I asked about doing a tube replacement a while back, looks like it's had a lot of replies since the last time I remembered to check it
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=151726&page=2
I came back here to ask because I realized I hadn't been active on these forums in a while and this is a cool place so I figured I would post again, and I'm leaning more and more towards just scrapping the cab and getting a new one. Here's kind of my thought process of my options:
1-New, functional cab off Craigslist: $150 - $300 (this cab was $80).
2-New / used monitor. Not sure on price, or how to get one. Seems easier than trying to scrounge out parts from random TVs.
3-This tube swap with a 19" TV strategy. Seems cool on paper, but here's my breakdown of time and costs:
--Read the information available on tube swapping enough to get an idea of what I am looking for, and maximize my chances of purchasing a TV that will be tube swappable. I'm thinking 2 hours of reading some websites here, as well as printing out the information to have with me.
--Find a 19" TV to tube swap. This is surprisingly difficult. When I first asked about this a few months ago, I went to a couple thrift shops to see what was up. Not a lot of TVs in thrift shops in the area, and 19" is a really odd size, so I think I found one Goodwill that had some. The TVs seemed to be $30 - $50 used, which is too expensive to just blindly buy some and hope they work. I'm thinking this will end up with about 5 shopping sessions at 4 hours each, just troweling through thrift shops until I find a 19" TV that will work. I can do maybe one of these a week, if I'm lucky.
--Do the actual work of swapping the tube. Besides the obvious technical challenges, I moved last summer and no longer have room to do this kind of work anymore in my apartment.
I'm willing to try this, doing it for $50 after parts and stuff would be great, but it's a hell of a lot of work.
