Found this weirdly named (or maybe better said, no named ?) CRT inside a Sanyo VM-D6P video camera I bought at a flea market.
This was the easiest camera to take apart and salvage the CRT. Morover, the Electronic Viewfinder unit only has 3 signal wires – again, the easiest to identify which are the VCC, Ground and Video IN.
Overview
The camera looked clean and taken care of. Except the microphone windscreen which crumbled away with time, everything else looked perfect.
It also had a large Sony battery installed – and when removing it – battery seemed to have leaked, creating a lot of crystals on the GND terminal:
I was curious to see if the CRT is alive before taking the camera apart.
With 6V, camera would not start, but at 7V there were some sign of life, I had to bump up the power supply to 8V to get it to start properly and not flash the ‘BATTERY’ text on the screen anymore. Oh wait ? On the screen ? Yes, the CRT worked 🙂
As said, the camera was the easiest to take apart. No hidden catches, many screws but then it just splits apart. EVF is especially easy to take apart, two screws and then a little hole is visible from which you can disconnect the EFV from the camera:
EVF Unit
EVF unit also very easy to take apart, 4 small screws, not even some plastic taps to oppose some resistance. This camera was made to be serviced – which is refreshing.
There is a message inside how to safely discharge the CRT so that you are not exposed to the risks of high voltage. Nice.
The most puzzling was the CRT unit itself. It has two markings: 0AE4L7AA00100 as well as 9G977. I tried to find the service manual for the camera, hoping there are insights about the CRT – but nope, the CRT is marked as … CRT. Pffff.
The driver board is powered by the AN2512S Driver IC (although the service manual calls for AN2510S).
Identifying the 3 signal pins were easy. The one having continuity to Flyback Transformer case is GND, another one that has continuity to one of the non-GND FBT pins is the VCC. The remaining one is the Video IN. Since I opened the camera and recuperated the other cable to which the EVF unit was plugged into:
The best focus is at 5.3V and the unit consumes 110mA.
Screen is sharp with a bit of vertical distortion:
In conclusion, a very easy to open camera – a refreshing experience for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
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