"Jungle" IC

[Meat Plow]

Anyone know why it's called "jungle" ?

 

[Ken G.]

I think that was someones clever term for a chip that does many
functions i think its

``Y.C. jungle chip `` Panasonic had problems with those .

 

[[email protected]]

If you ever saw the actual schematic of the internal circuit you would
see it right away. I remember an old upc something or other, nowhere
near the complexity of today, it was the 80s. You could see a schematic
of it, but it was huge just to be able to see it.

Now we are only talking a color decoder and circuits to allow DC
control of brightness, tint etc., this is nowhere near what we have
today. Bus controlled with circuits to compensate with the geometry
outputs for HV drop, coring, all kinds of stuff, and now the IF strip
is usually in there.Now when you add the rest of a TV that has a full
complement of composite, Y/C and component inputs it's like one of the
jungles on a whole damn continent.

Mainly it's called a jungle because of it's complexity, but I did get a
laugh when I heard of a manual referring to it as the "video rain
forest".

JURB

 

[Michael Black]

Anyone know why it's called "jungle" ?

I always thought it was in reference to the complicated waveform
that makes up the video signal.

But I can't remember if I saw that spelled out years ago and have
forgotten where, or if it's just an assumption.

Michael

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I always thought it was in reference to the complicated waveform
that makes up the video signal.

But I can't remember if I saw that spelled out years ago and have
forgotten where, or if it's just an assumption.

ISTR the Cyclops circuit used in UK TVs - don't know if that one made it off
shore.

 

[Jeff, WB8NHV]

ISTR the Cyclops circuit used in UK TVs - don't know if that one made it off
shore.

After reading the posts in this thread, I now have a small idea of
how complicated (!) the jungle IC is in my RCA CTC 185 19" TV. I would
guess most of the small signal circuits are on that chip (my gosh, it
seems like most of the TV, outside of the deflection circuits, is on
there!), not to mention auto color control and so on. Which reminds me.
I've been wondering for some time how the older (1990s) CRT RCAs (19"
CTC185A7, model F19261 in particular) handle the auto color control
functions. Posted a question in reference to this on AudioKarma.org (in
one of their color-TV forums) some time ago and got no responses, so
I'm posing the same question here. Are the control circuits on the
jungle IC or are they on a separate black box chip, and do they operate
anything like the older RCA ColorTrak system? I think my set must have
some kind of color tracking system, as the color is very
stable--haven't had to adjust the onscreen controls much at all since I
installed the set seven years ago; I just set the auto-color menu
option to "on" and left it there. If it is not strictly ColorTrak or a
variation thereof, what type of auto color system did this set use? I
know the later RCA TruFlat TVs have what is called "Advanced Color
View"; is this also a variation on the ColorTrak system? Whatever it
is, it must work very well, because as I said, the color on my RCA
CTC185 TV is very stable with the auto-color on; it's the most stable
of any color TV I've ever owned, and I've had several in my life,
including two 13" Zenith color portables that weren't half bad in that
department.

I realize the part of my post dealing with ColorTrak, etc. is off
topic in this thread, but I thought it might fit in, considering we're
talking about the jungle IC in modern sets and its many functions. I
wouldn't be surprised if a very sophisticated auto-color system is on
that chip somewhere.

Kind regards,

Jeff Strieble, WB8NHV (email addy not shown to deter spammers)
Fairport Harbor, Ohio USA

 

[Arfa Daily]

ISTR the Cyclops circuit used in UK TVs - don't know if that one made it
off shore.

Hey Homey - hows it goin' ? That was a Thorn special and it was Syclops with
an "S". It was an acronym for SY-nchronous C-hopper and L-ine O-utput
S-tage. As I recall, it was used in the 8500 chassis - maybe the 8000 as
well - and was a bloody nightmare to work on ! Happy days ...

Arfa

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Hey Homey - hows it goin' ? That was a Thorn special and it was Syclops
with an "S". It was an acronym for SY-nchronous C-hopper and L-ine O-utput
S-tage. As I recall, it was used in the 8500 chassis - maybe the 8000 as
well - and was a bloody nightmare to work on ! Happy days ...

I never could see how to repair such a beast unless you had a power supply
to run the set while you fixed it.

 

[Clint Sharp]

ISTR the Cyclops circuit used in UK TVs - don't know if that one made it off
shore.

Euuughh, thank you very much for reminding me of that one.... BTW,
wasn't it Syclops? Nasty Thorn sh*t.

 

[Clint Sharp]

I never could see how to repair such a beast unless you had a power supply
to run the set while you fixed it.

Umm, Variac, several different light bulbs for current limiting and a
large bag of thyristors.

 

[Lionel]

Anyone know why it's called "jungle" ?

Because it's swampy mess that's swarming with exotic animals. It's a
chip where they've thrown in as many functions as they can, to keep
down the chip count. Canon used to use the name 'Octopus chip' for the
same sorts of chips, & some of their Octopus chips even had a cartoon
of an octopus on the package.

 

[Meat Plow]

Because it's swampy mess that's swarming with exotic animals. It's a chip
where they've thrown in as many functions as they can, to keep down the
chip count. Canon used to use the name 'Octopus chip' for the same sorts
of chips, & some of their Octopus chips even had a cartoon of an octopus
on the package.

That's cool. The term jungle has been around awhile. I think I first came
across it in the mid/late 80's.

 

[Lionel]

That's cool. The term jungle has been around awhile. I think I first came
across it in the mid/late 80's.

Yep, that's when the industry realised that it was now cheaper to
shoehorn a bunch of functions into a big chip on one or two PCBs than
to build, connect & test twice as many PCBs. Canon lead the way with
that philosophy in other complex, high volume machines like copiers,
lasers, etc. It was always fun opening up their high end machines for
the first time, because they put cute pictures (like the octopus chip
I mentioned) on most of their other ASICs as well.
Sadly, it's all very boring these days.