Removing the Case from a CRT TV

[mylz]

I was wanting to rig up my Sega Saturn into an empty cab and use a CRT TV for the monitor. How easy/difficult is it to take the casing off an old TV and put the tube and chassis and everything in the cabinet? I've been doing lots of googling and getting a lot of mixed results. Everything from, "Its easy!" to "Don't do it, you will die."

What's the consensus here?

[maxisoft2]

Hi Mylz!

This totally depends on the type of CRT TV you use as your donor. One thing is for sure: You need to make 100% sure it is fully discharged before you touch any of the high power parts of its chassis (which is basically the PCB behind the tube). I usually wear thick rubber cleaning gloves, which is nice because it a) isolates you and b) gives you very nice grip! Make sure you measure everything very well so you don’t crack the tube in the process.

Also most monitors are not made for mounting, eg there are no mounting brackets in the front that arcade crts have. This means you will almost for sure need to make up your own mounting system for the crt which will need some fiddling around.

Depending on where you are based I would advise using the screen via RGB (e.g. Scart) instead of composite (that single yellow plug) to get a decent image quality. Sadly most CRTs in the US did not have a scarf port... it is possible to hack into their chips to get true RGB (there is a couple of YT videos on this), but I would consider it no easy feat.

Apart from that - good luck! And don’t shock yourself please ! There is many good videos how to discharge a monitor on the inter webs.

Best,
Max

[mylz]

Thank you so much, that's very good advice!!