A few years back and many moons ago I acquired some nonfunctioning camcorders and came up with the idea of using one of the viewfinders as a monitor. there was a really compact one that I started with and couldn't get to work, so I moved onto another one which I was successful and have completed pictures of. it is so bright!!! it can also double as a miniature projector although the focus is a little bit tricky. I don't remember why I opted for SVideo input although I think I read somewhere that this particular model was S-Video ( upon further retesting it works either way although I think SVid gave a clearer picture signal… it may have been that during my testing of the camera output wire to a monitor it required an S-Video input to view ). I installed a power switch and I even figured out the wiring for the LED; that's not wired in as I can't decide whether I want a power indicator because the wonderful analog TV noise and bright screen is already obviously enough for me. maybe as some sort of indication down the road…. Hmmmm.

which brings me back around to my current thought process.

I recently started pondering the idea of getting the other compact one ( an Zenith PT. NO. 800-1159, 8v, 7w, made in japan, July 1991 ) going knowing a lot more about circuitry then I did 10? years ago. unfortunately I was pretty certain I would never find any documentation I made many years ago ( I've since moved to digital documentation it's so much easier! photos and/or a text file with some sort of relevant name and date and maybe even in a folder of its own off a projects subfolder. ) so I needed to figure out again which one was the power pins without digging into my scrapyard. I didn't think the metal casing of the HV transformer would be connected to ground but sure enough DUH!!! it was. and now that I figured out the ground pins the positive was next and of course fused and I was off and running and with only 4 wires remaining it was quick work to find the video pin ( I took longer because I was quite fascinated with the ground loop I was inducing just by touching the video pin ).

it has 7 pins of wires, 2 grounds Brown and Black, one positive thankfully Red, one video White, and the remaining 3 wires are Yellow Orange and Gray and are some sort of output signal generation and I would love to know more; I think I managed to get my multimeter to read out 60Hz on one of the wires.

being that this model is 8v, With more electronics knowledge now and having an adjustable power supply ( EBay $15 module ) made things a lot easier than many moons ago when I think I tried to power it with a relatively close 9V battery or 7.5V worth of 5x AA's and got nowhere.

I have determined that it will run on 7.5v somewhat unhappily, so I am not sure whether I blew the fuse or if it was damaged prior to my acquisition. so now knowing that it was a fuse and it was indeed bad I did the horrible!!! temporary bypass!!! ( of course with a 700mA limit on my power supply. this thing is pretty efficient as the amperage draw was 0.07mA@8v ) and I managed to create life.

so I now know it's a 250mA fuse that needs to be replaced but I don't know whether it's fast or slow blow because I am having horrible trouble tracking down the datasheet for the ceramic "SOC 250" ( I wish manufacturers would put an "F" for Fast, an "S" for Slow and an "N" for Normal ).

once i know the correct fuse to order I will add it to yet another eBay order with an adjustable boost converter with a micro-USB connector. my thought process on assembly is to take the boost converter and sandwich that with another board of connectors. Video in on an RCA and 3.5mm T_S Mono, Power and Video output to monitor on an 3.5mm stereo TRS to allow remote location of the power unit and easy extension with headphone extension cables.

P.S. the Windows 98 startup screen which is by far my favorite of all the windows must be burned into my brain because I thought that the image was in color as well, either way it stuck out like a sore thumb on image searches trying to find more information.