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Assembly: CRT Circuit (8)
New el. caps.
Transistors checked with multimeter (don’t own a working curve tracer until the said 7603 is repaired. So stupid!). Read that TO-3 are factory selected and must have low gain, right?u

Mainframe power supply restored. All voltage checked within tolerances.

Any ol’timer clue?

Christian

It isn't that they were selected, the 2N3055 devices at the time were all homotaxial and had low beta compared to more modern versions.

Even with this in play some HV circuits were cranky and wouldn't do well with very low and very high betas.

Look for a 150-0140-xx with a beta in the range of approx 20-50.

We fought this in the B Phase of the 611 and I'm familiar with the problem.

Rolynn
Tek Bvtn and Sunset 1966-1971

Thanks Rollyn for the trick. Will check that. As for your beta range, I suppose it is meant at its specific operation current within the 7603?

Christian

I peaked into this HV circuit and its push-pull oscillator. It seems quite simple, primitive,
It appears that before the negative HV appears there is plenty of current to the bases of the two transistors 2N3055 to motivate them to start oscillating.
If HV does not appear, it looks like Q1214 would be saturated, and the two transistors 2N3055 would be conducting plenty and getting hot.
If this is the case, something could be shorting the secondary of the transformer in its load of rectifiers/filters.

It seems strange that the beta of the 2N3055 is so critical. Why would a high value hurt the operation?
And if it is too low, lowering R1214 would inject more base current. A design issue?

Ernesto

It's been fifty years so I don't remember what current setting we used on the 575 to check the Hfe of the 0140's. This had to do with the HV osc in the 611 during B Phase in Plant 2 and Building 50.

My experience with the 7603 is limited to one cranky unit (out of a half dozen here) that I repaired.

I still have my stash of graded 0140's from 1970 and I found that low Beta examples in the 7603 cause a HV failure to start and high Beta examples caused it to take on a life of it's own and do silly things.

RP

Hi Christian,

Rollyn is absolutely right about the 2N3055. The original hometaxial process was switched to an epitaxial process. Unfortunately the side effects of this change were not considered important enough to include in the data sheets.
The most significant changes were the increase in Ft - the transition frequency - from 0.8MHz to 2.5MHz and greater risk from secondary breakdown.
I found this out the hard way when a 2N3055 (they were all hometaxial) used in one channel of the Dynaco Stereo 120 Amplifier I built from a kit in 1968 failed. It failed in the mid-1970s and by then the 2N3055s were epitaxial. A few months after I replaced it I noticed the high frequency hiss (noise from the input transistors in the Dynaco PAT-4 preamp) was gone in that channel. At first I thought this was an improvement. When I investigated further the hiss was still there at the output of the power amplifier on both channels. I didn't hear it because the tweeter was blown out. I got the tweeter repaired and a few weeks later the tweeter blew out again.
The gain of the hometaxial 2N3055s began rolling off around 10KHz which was fine for audio amplifiers. Because the Ft of the epitaxial 2N3055 was 3X greater the small inductor Dynaco used at the output of their Stereo 120 to prevent oscillations was no longer sufficient. That was what blew out my tweeters. I only found this out years later.

There is still one more thing and this may be something you need to be aware of: The Wikipedia article on the 2N3055 at

warns against erroneous readings you may get with a multi-meter when checking the gain of the epitaxial versions of the 2N3055. It says: "[Beta] may be 100 to 200 when testing using a multimeter."

Dennis Tillman W7pF