hydebee wrote:
http://cgi.ebay.com/tube-tester-u-te...QQcmdZViewItem

Oh my God memories of childhood. When I was a wee lad of 10 years old,
my dad would send me walking to the drugstore with a bag of tubes from
the TV (which was always on the fritz), and 3 dollars. He'd say, "go
test em and buy the one that's bad". When I returned he'd replace them
all, spray the tuner till it dripped, swear a lot, move the antenna a
lot, etc. Fun stuff for me in those days. These days we just throw
out the TV and buy a new one. The cabinet speaker area always had a
stack of tube boxes in it with phrases like "might still be good"
written on them. That was an Admiral console around 1965.

We also had a Magnavox "portable" in the kitchen that used to explode
5U4 low voltage rectifiers a lot, we just replaced them until it
exploded again.

What would cause a 5u4 to pop it's glass, upon power up? A defective
job lot from the factory?