Why does nobody talk about old projection TVs and their weird smell

I was at my uncle's garage last week helping him clean out junk and found his old Sony projection TV from like 1998. I was about to trash it but he stopped me and said those things had a specific smell because of the cooling fans pulling dust through the vents and burning it slowly over years. He's an old TV repair guy from back in the day and he told me the dust buildup inside those things was basically a fire hazard waiting to happen but nobody ever thought about it because the sets were so heavy nobody moved them. I never really thought about old electronics having a personality like that, a smell that dates them. It made me wonder what other weird quirks old tech has that we just forgot about. Anybody else notice a specific smell or sound from old gadgets that takes you right back?

2 comments

2 Comments

cole_mitchell811d ago

The smell thing is real but there's a whole other layer to it nobody mentions. Those old projection TVs had three separate CRT tubes for red green and blue, and over time the lenses would get this haze from the heat and dust that actually changed the color accuracy. You'd fire up an old NES game and Mario would look slightly purple instead of red because the blue tube was overpowering everything. The sound too, those things had fans that would start rattling after a few years and you'd get this low hum that kind of became part of the room's atmosphere. I swear my grandpa's TV had a specific pitch that I can still hear in my head if I think about it long enough, like a C note or something just buzzing away in the corner.

derek_burns11d ago

That bit about the dust buildup being a fire hazard hits home. I had an old 36" CRT that got so hot I could fry an egg on it, finally popped a cap and the whole room smelled like burnt plastic for a week.