Randy Fromm's Technical Despartment

[CheffoJeffo]

Out of curiosity, how many folks here subscribe to Randy's technical department ?

I subscribed last year, mainly to get access to the Blue Book and the monitor flowcharts. To my mind, it was well worth the money just for that.

It's only in the past week that I have started watching the podcasts and I have to say that I am getting more than my money's worth out of them (and I am retaining far more from the videos that I did reading the Blue Book).

Hell -- just the one little trick for testing TTL ICs allowed me to locate a single potential problem IC on a known-bad board in less than an hour. Now, if I replace that IC and the board fires up, then everything is paid-for with just that one repair.

to Randy for making such a cost-effective resource available.

http://randyfromm.com/amusements/techdept/

[ChadTower]

Are you familiar enough with his full length videos to give a comparison to his Tech Dept sub vs just owning his vids?

[CheffoJeffo]

Never managed to find a set of his vids at a price that I liked and then gave up trying.

FWIW, the podcasts are divided up along the lines of his videos (e.g. Basic Video Game Troubleshooting, Monitors 1 and Monitors 2, X-Y Monitors, Basic Electronics, Semiconductors, etc ) and the total run times seem to add up roughly to the tapes.

For example, the podcasts for Basic Video Game Troubleshooting run a total of 77 minutes.

I watched the series on Linear Power Supplies last night (learned a lot, including the fact that my sister-in-law likes the 80s Randy Fromm look ) and it was a complete run (including the opening and closing "credits").

[shardian]

I thought Randy's videos were on Youtube now?
(with Randy's permission of course.)

[2600]

I think Randy only put a few samples up there, not all of them.

[CheffoJeffo]

Yep, he put some monitor repair podcasts up on YouTube ... 4 out of a total of ... well, lots ... 12 sections at, say, 8 or 9 podcasts per section.

It looks to me as if he has the entire video library covered in the podcasts available behind the login.

[WunderCade]

Does he cover convergence rings and twisting the yoke, etc.? Those things that scare the hell out of noobs to try?

[CheffoJeffo]

Messing with the convergence rings scares the hell out of me -- only because it can take so freaking long to get them back in alignment.

He does talk about them ... he tells the class to keep their grubby paws of of the tabbed rings (and then explains how it can be a real pain to get convergence back, especially if you don't have a pattern generator or board with a cross-hatch handy).

He does talk about yoke flipping (e.g. reversing the connectors), but not twisting (although I think he does mention it is passing as something not to bother doing).