This CRT has seen better days, so it's getting rebuilt as an A/V coffee table & smarthome terminal
this was the problem: the plastic buttons flexed when pushed, turning backwards force into downwards force and hitting the button switches on the circuit board. One of the plastic strips came free and got lost in the housing
Much as i love touching hot circuit boards, its best that i rewire these. I started with the off/on button and soldered on some leads. I was going to use a doorbell but ultimately wired up this chonky arcade pushbutton
This table was a bit taller and more topheavy than I wanted, so I grabbed a squat coffee table from the dumpster and did some Modification. There side compartments for eg the remote, and the inner components are not dangling menacingly.
after some wrangling, the raspberry pi composite out feed now displays on the CRT. Here it displays a terminal-based screensaver (cmatrix); it is also monitoring the temperature and humidity in the living room. Next challenge is getting infrared signal working!
needed aa better stand. someday i'll find a busted up coffee table but for now this chair from the dumpster will work after some modification