School issued TV sets /monitors in mid 1980s

[Alex728]

In the 1980s when I was at high school age I lived in Reading, SE England and attended a suburban comprehensive school on the border of Reading and South Oxfordshire. For many years my family lived in the Caversham area though we came under the catchment are of Berkshire (I've included this info in case the sets were different across regions).

I distinctly remember that the school was well supplied with large television sets, many of which also worked as composite video monitors as well as having a UHF tuner (they were often co-deployed with VCRs of various types).

Some appeared to have a distribution amplifier built in the back which could be used to feed a further set by a long composite video cable, this arrangement of two screens being used for larger group). On the back they had a BNC connector, an SO239 and also a strange multipin one, not a SCART but something for Japanese(?) video equipment?

They appeared to be built to some sort of Council/Government specification for AV equipment. I don't recall seeing a makers name on them (or have long forgotten it)

Anyone got any idea what they are? Are they what folk refer to as "BRC schools sets?"

[llama]

The multiway socket is known as an EIAJ connector from Japan - 8 way I seem to remember.

Certainly the Decca 100 (26") schools monitor has them but not the SO239. I'd have to look-see re the BNC but no built-in distribution amp.
Graham

[Alex728]

the "distribution amp" might just have been a loop through - (though I remember it being used to feed very long runs of cable and the picture at the other end not look too shabby) I cannot remember 100% if it was presented on a BNC connector (like CCTV monitors for security industry) or SO239.

my school to be fair was very well equipped for AV kit and computers even in those days and what I do distinctly remember was this arrangement being used to show the entire school (or at least several year groups) the ill fated Challenger space shuttle flight in 1986, to show off "new technology" so one of the TV's picked up an off air feed but the other was a composite video input, I remember inspecting the arrangement myself out of curiosity and a science teacher being quite impressed I had worked out how it was done.

There was some sort of switch on the back I recall marked INT/EXT which I think switched out the local tuner and maybe fed its output to the rear sockets.

Classrooms facing the outside of the school tended to have UHF antenna sockets for off air reception as did some side rooms (presumably where VCRs were set to record a programme for later viewing) but not those further inside. On another note there appeared to have been some fairly sophisticated arrangements made for switching both audio and video to various parts of the school but they had sadly all fallen into disuse by the time I was there...

[AndiiT]

Hi,
It's possible that the receivers that you remember were supplied by Radio Rentals Contracts (not to be confused with Radio rentals domestic division) who were a division of Thorn BRC.

Monochrome sets were based on the 1400 and 1500 chassis and the colour sets were initially the 3700, based around the 3500 chassis and latterly the 9700 which was based around the 9600 chassis.

All these sets were fitted with a huge mains isolating transformer and three core mains lead and were also fitted with an extra panel for baseband audio and video with a combination of DIN and/or Jack sockets for audio and SO239 and BNC for video with an associated EIAJ socket for quick connection to a baseband video recorder which could be anything from Philips N1500 clone such as the Thorn 8201 shown around halfway down the page here or even a Sony U-Matic.

The sets didn't have any distribution amplifiers as such but did have extra sockets and switching to allow the video and audio signals to be "daisy-chained" between a number of sets.

Regards

Andrew

[Alex728]

Originally Posted by AndiiT

All these sets were fitted with a huge mains isolating transformer and three core mains lead and were also fitted with an extra panel for baseband audio and video with a combination of DIN and/or Jack sockets for audio and SO239 and BNC for video with an associated EIAJ socket for quick connection to a baseband video recorder which could be anything from Philips N1500 clone such as the Thorn 8201 shown around halfway down the page here or even a Sony U-Matic.

The sets didn't have any distribution amplifiers as such but did have extra sockets and switching to allow the video and audio signals to be "daisy-chained" between a number of sets.

Thanks - thats exactly the sort of thing that was on the back of these sets.

Some teachers (especially the liberal arts ones) would get confused by what all the sockets and switches did. I also remember some mention either on a label on the back or accompanying documents about the presence of the isolation transformer and a further warning on safety when using the external connections in case any live chassis kit had crept in at some point...

[Nickthedentist]

Our school used Decca 100-series sets from about 1977 until at least 1985.

Another upmarket option sometimes encountered were Sonys, specially modified with mains isolating transformers and the sockets you mention, e.g. the KV-2020 or the huge KV-2704: http://obsoletetellyemuseum.blogspot...year-1980.html

Nick

[crusher19860138]

The TV at our school in 1981 was on big castors,with round steel poles holding it around 6 foot off the ground,you opened the front doors,and connected to the doors at the top were metal light shields for the screen,one day,our teacher found UHF ITV off (from Sutton Coldfield),and he ran and got an old set top aerial for VHF (the type with the 2 extending rods),and tuned into ITV on VHF from Lichfield,it was in B&W of course,but very clear!

[AndiiT]

The stands were made by Unicol, and I believe that they are still available.

From memory, the sets had a switch on the front for 'Off Air' 'Vcr Off Line' or Vcr RF', the Vcr positions altering the line time constant switching, and the rear panel had two selector switches one marked 'Select Display' and one 'Marked Select Output' - the Select Display switch selected between Off Air or Off line and the Select output switched between Display and Input, the input position being the one used to loop the incoming baseband signal to the output socket.

I also seem to remember that the earlier 1400 type receiver had slightly different switching arrangements which allowed the video input socket to the terminated or unterminated.

Andrew

[G6Tanuki]

In my schooldays (1960s/1970s) the TV was a large, wooden-cased-with-folding-doors monochrome beastie on a metal-castored frame. I recall us watching the Apollo 11 moon-landing on it - this must have been on 405 lines, since there was no possible 625-line coverage in the area until "The Wrekin" transmitter got built in the early-1970s.

(Paradoxically, it was the "Wrekin" hill itself that blocked any possibility of UHF reception at my parental home from Sutton Coldfield!)

[robin0577]

Yes, I too remember my primary school having a few of those Decca sets in the mid '80s. How things have changed.....

Except for the Unicol twin pole trolleys of course, the bottom half of which hasn't changed design much at all in the last 50 years although clearly the top section has had a redesign to take large flat panels...

http://www.unicol.com/products/educa...d-trolley.html

[Mr Moose]

Hello,

If my memory serves me correctly during the 1970s, Berkshire County Council had a central contract for TV rental with Radio Rentals and schools had to get their equipment from them.

However sometime in the 1980s this requirement seems to have been abandoned and schools could buy or rent from whom they liked.

Some of the Radio Rentals TVs did have isolating transformers and extra sockets at the back and were badged as Baird models.

Yours

[Alex728]

Originally Posted by Mr Moose

Hello,

If my memory serves me correctly during the 1970s, Berkshire County Council had a central contract for TV rental with Radio Rentals and schools had to get their equipment from them.

However sometime in the 1980s this requirement seems to have been abandoned and schools could buy or rent from whom they liked.

I believe it was well into the late 1980s as school had this giant catalogue which supplied everything from pencils to AV equipment until about '88/89 or thereabouts when the CDT teacher (craft, design and technology told me the school could now buy its own equipment.

Those sets were still there in when I left in 1990, and some slightly smaller ones as well in 6th form (might have been Decca), crossing over with another post I made during free periods I used to bring in a ZX Spectrum mounted in a box file complete with Interface 1 microdrives and use it as a very early kind of "portable computer" for practising Z80 development). I don't think this one had the AV inputs as I'd modded the Spectrum to provide a composite video output but still had to plug it into the UHF tuner on the telly via the modulator...

[Nicklyons2]

Originally Posted by llama

The multiway socket is known as an EIAJ connector from Japan - 8 way I seem to remember.

Graham

Graham is correct it is an EIAJ 8 pin which was a sort of industry standard in its day in the low-end professional/industrial market. National 'cart' machines, EIAJ open reel vtrs, U-matics and a whole range of Sony monitors/receiver monitors used it and R-R, Decca etc followed suit. It was very reliable and had side latches so didn't pull out. It fell on the 'sword' of SCART which offered the possibility stereo audio and RGB video (if with somewhat less reliability of connexion).

[McMurdo]

Our highschool (I started 1981) was graced with a brace of Salora 1F0A's on stands.
They too had a bank of add-on sockets, the functions were hand-written in some sort of silver ink.

[P.Pilcher]

Between 1976 and 1983 when I left, my comp had a single large 26" colour telly on a stand suitable for whole class viewing. We had a Phillips N1500 VCR (remember those?) to drive it and our librarian offered a schools programme recording service. What he didn't like was when I booked the telly for my 3rd.form physics classes, removed panels which "you are not supposed to remove", demonstrated the basics of colour mixing by addition and the fact (denied by the art department) that the primary colours were red, green and blue! I even had my headmaster in a class one day fascinated to see "how colour tellies worked"

P.P.