It’s hard to convey just how radical and mind blowing this board swap is to younger folks who never knew the joys* of repairing consumer CRT TV’s.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MoqflFfvkR0
* By rights I should be thrice dead.
The main thing that makes it so mind-blowing is that back in their heyday, these devices were sold in such high volumes that every model was like a special snowflake custom-engineered for a different CRT picture tube and yoke.
CRTs had 20 alphanumeric character model numbers and you never saw the same one twice, different voltages and pinouts, etc. The coils on the yokes had different inductances and energy requirements.
Now it appears the economics have changed so that one can buy a generic circuit board that has multiple footprints for the CRT socket, and multiple taps to support different magnetics.
It’s probably an odd effect of the world being down to only a handful of CRT manufacturing plants and low demand for long enough that a degree of generic compatibility has come to a design space that lacked it previously.
