Dave Sergeant

Introduction

Over the years Dave Sergeant TV offered a repair service for TVs, VCRs and other items of consumer electronics. I have now retired from the trade. The information on this page, including the Television Index program, is kept for the benefit of others. Many thanks for your support over the years.

DISCLAIMER

The information given on these pages is intended for trade customers who are suitably qualified to repair electronic equipment. Consumer electronics contains hazardous voltages and Dave Sergeant TV accepts no responsibility for damage to persons or equipment by those using this information.  Although I am always willing to assist, I regret I am unable to answer technical queries from non trade personnel. It should be also be borne in mind that because of the wide variation of designs around the world

I am only able to help with equipment marketed in the United Kingdom.

Dave Sergeant TV owns the copyright to Television Index for Windows and the data files on this site.  Other information is reproduced with permission of the authors.  Please do not copy this information onto other sites - supply a link to my site instead.

Television Index for Windows

Television

I have developed an index program for Television magazine. This program allows you to search for references in the magazine for faults on specific models, or any other articles. You must have the original hard copies of the magazine to use it however as it does not contain any of the text.  It covers from 1985 through to the final issue of June 2008. If you download the package I would be grateful if you would .  The software is PC compatible and is free to use. This is a fully 32bit Windows compatible program for use on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and 7. Television Index for Windows is written in BBC Basic for Windows by R.T.Russell.  There is still life in the old BEEB!

March 2004 - the program has been updated with the latest version, version 3, of BBC Basic. The changes are minor and there is no need for existing users to upgrade at the moment.

February 2006 - in preparation for the launch of Technology@Home the program was completely rewritten with a full Windows GUI. It now can search in either Television or Technology@Home. Read the help file for full details.

March 2006 - With the publication of the April issue of Technology@Home the files have been updated to include index data for it. To search in Technology@Home select File/Technology@Home from the menu bar. Note that this does not work with the earlier versions of the program.

May 2006 - Program updated with small changes to the GUI. The search textbox is no longer cleared after a search. to allow a re-search on the same information. 'Clear' can be used to manually clear it instead.

December 2007 - Data files updated after the relaunch of Television.

June 2008 - Final version after magazine folds.

Click here to download Television Index for Windows (295k).
(Extract zipped files to a suitable folder (suggest c:\tvindexw) then create a new shortcut to tvindex.exe).

A short history of Television and my program

It seems a very long time since I have been producing and updating this index of The Mag. It started in the mid 1980's using my BBC Model B, long before there was any inkling of the internet. It has been available to all on this site since 1998.

The magazine also saw changes. Over recent years the amount of content for service engineers diminished, and there was an increasing number of articles that though interesting had little direct relevance to our bench work. To some extent this was inevitable, since with the increasing complexity of equipment and lower shop prices, there was less equipment to repair, which led to fewer fault reports and articles being sent to the publishers.

From the December 2005 issue The Mag had a new editor, who took over from John Reddihough who had been with The Mag for much of its life. The December issue clearly showed the pen of this new editorialship, and as well as a new appearance there was far less coverage to actual fault reports. It seemed clear that my index programme would no longer be the first port of call when looking for that magic cure.

Another new editor took over the pen of Television in September 2006. He promised that he would try and restore the magazine to its old glory and introduce more articles of relevance to the service trade. The following issues indeed showed progress in this direction. Unfortunately commercial pressures resulted in Nexus, the magazine publishers, withdrawing support for the mag and it closed. The final issue from Nexus was that of January 2007.

In late 2007 Tony Greville, a former editor at Nexus, bought the rights to the magazine and announced he would be relaunching it and restoring it to its former glory with much coverage of interest to the service trade. The first of these new issues was that of January 2008. Sadly with a declining subscriber base and changes in the servicing trade it failed to be a viable venture and ceased publication after six months.

Technology @ Home

A new magazine for those interested in TV servicing was launched with the first issue being published in April 2006. Many of the past contributors to Television wrote in this new mag, and it promised to take off where Television had left. My Index program was modified to provide an index for Technology@Home in addition to Television.

Sadly after a few months and poor sales the magazine folded, with the November/December issue being the final one.

NEI Service Data 

Download this file, nei.zip (50k), for useful information on several NEI chassis, including the Indiana 100 which was very common in various guises for many years.  This information was kindly provided by Dennis Mott, formerly of NEI, who wishes it to be freely available and was forwarded to me by Dave Hewitt. The files are a mixture of plain text and Word format. NEI have now ceased trading and technical support is no longer available from them.

EEPROM Data

I am building up a small database of EEPROM data for various TVs.  I was originally hoping that this would grow, but it has not. In general I find unlike some engineers that corrupted EEPROMs are not a common cause of faults in TVs, certainly not the first thing one looks for when confronted with a faulty set. By the same token it is very rare I need to access 'service mode' when repairing them. Hence there have been relatively few times when I have had resource to copy or re-write EEPROM data.

At present available here as a single zip file, it contains data in both binary .bin format and .e2p format compatible with the Pony programmer I use.  The Pony programmer is one of several available - it is driven from your PC serial port and can program most types of serial EEPROM and PICs.

Current data includes:  Amstrad 3028, Bush 2052T, 2866SM2, Ferguson 14M2 (TX89), TX91, Hitachi C28W440 (11AK33), Matsui TVR180, 20TN, Mitsubishi CT21M5 (EE4), Sharp DV5161, Tatung TVC563, Vestel 11AK19P5.

This file of assorted EEPROMs was kindly supplied by Pat Murtagh.

All the data was copied from EEPROMs in sets coming via my workshop or from new programmed devices. Dave Sergeant TV does not guarantee this is identical to that of the manufacturer's programmed devices and is not responsible in any way for problems caused by the use of this data.  But hopefully it will save some time and expense. 

Useful Links

Listing of a link here does not imply any specific recommendation, however they are all things I have found of use.
Please let me know if any site no longer works.

Bob Parker's Capacitance ESR Meter and LOPTX tester.  Both excellent tools.
Almost All Digital Electronics LC Meter
FreePDF 2 - generate PDF files for free*

*I have previously posted a link to the original version of FreePDF by The Zip Guy. That has not been developed for some time and the links no longer work. FreePDF2 is a similar package from Stefan Heinz with a different interface and a new version for Windows XP. It seems to work well. The site is in German, but the package includes an English manual. It is not clear whether it is a development of the original, perhaps somebody can answer that one!

Opera Breeze Skin

I have previously promoted the Opera browser on my website. However in Spring 2013 they moved from the original Presto based Opera that we have so loved to an Opera based on the Blink web engine and which is not that much different from Google Chrome. I can no longer recommend Opera in this version as it lacks so much of the customability of the original browser.

However for those of us who still use the old version of Opera (up to v12.17)...
One of the problems which arose when Opera 12 was released was that many of the old skins are broken, the main issue being toolbars appearing totally black. My favourite Breeze II was one of them affected. I have modified it myself to largely work - I cannot guarantee it is perfect, indeed there are still one or two glitches, but it works fine in my own configuration of Opera. Download it from here. Updated 30/12/12 to cure a couple of glitches with Opera 12.12

breeze (20K)

Other Service Information

Akai VCR Modifications - display modification and eject modification
Onwa chassis repair - useful tips on repairing the power supply in a common chassis.