Minitel Disaster

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About 25 years ago my late father got hold of a French Minitel terminal unit that was being dumped. He was the stores clerk for the local council and the lads that managed the dump put old computers to one side for him. It was one of the things that I lost when my first marriage broke up and I have always wanted to get another one to mess about with.

The Minitel terminals were for a telephone based information system, but also had an RS232 serial port so can be hooked up to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. A Philips Minitel 2 appeared on eBay and since nobody else was bidding I got it for £15 including postage which seemed too good to be true.

Which it was.

The seller didn't pack it with any bubble wrap, just an old cardboard box, and it arrived broken. Specifically, the CRT tube had come loose inside the case. After a bit of fuss I was only able to get a refund of £5 so I have a broken Minitel terminal worth a tenner.

So is it repairable? Only time and effort will tell. It is trying to power up, but no picture on the CRT. Hopefully it is something relatively simple as I don't have a lot of experience working with CRT monitors, but I do have the oscilloscope now to help.

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