Hi,
I have acquired an RCA black and white 12" tv with the KCS-204 chassis. It came with the owners' manual and is in superb condition. I wiped it down and it plays great. Taiwan built with an EIA of 1240 on the crt. (not RCA, I guess)
Is anyone able to identify the model year? All of the labels are gone from the cabinet..which is odd since the thing is pristine otherwise. Come to think of it I had a similar set once with the same missing labels.

Thanks in advance

Cabinet and knob layout looks like what RCA was building in the late 70's, and the KCS 204 chassis is listed in Sams Photofact set 1817 which was published in 1979. There is quite a list of model numbers in the Sams index from 1980 which all go back to the same schematic, so it could be difficult to pick one out from the list.

1979 or 80.

your rapid responses are greatly appreciated! I thought it was a late seventies model from what I could summise based on the story the seller told me. It was his late father's set and he watched it as a kid.

But I then ran a web search and found someone who had an '84 model with the same chassis. I guess they stuck with a sure thing and used this chassis for a long while.
It is your basic singleboard solid state b/w but at least it has a TO-3 horizontal output transistor and is mostly discrete componentry.

I realize these types of t.v.s have no collector value and are ubiquitous but I have a certain fondness for any monochrome crt and the thing is over 25 y.o. with a great pic!

It wouldn't have been unusual for a manufacturer to run a small black and white portable chassis like that for several years with only minor changes. By that time there was really no reason to come out with new chassis every year if what they were already building proved to be reliable.

Some of them will work for decades with little or no service. My wife has a little K-Mart 12" black and white, with a tomato red plastic case that is probably about the same age as your RCA. One of my friends from the antique radio club who lives several blocks from us picked it up from his neighbor's front yard on trash day, and gave it to her because she liked the red color. We have been using it for about 10 years now and put a digital converter box on after they changed over. It gets at least 4-5 hours use every day.

I still see those once in a while at the Thrifts, usually in an all Silver cabinet.

makes sense, Mr. D . i'm sure the market for these was drying up by that time anyway. I attached a shot with the crt lense which I forgot to install after cleaning. what i've also done is to connect it to my video experiment rig since it's portable in nature. here's a negative raster of a quick loop with a low-exposure CCD type camera. nice bright pic on this RCA. not having a shadow mask helps light emission as we all know, and this is a superb example of this type of image. using my Macbook cam doesn't help

That last pic is showing a night-vision shot of the underneath of my deck and the one section of the yard. I have some valuables in the nearby shed so I leave the cam aimed and ready all the time. no one has been under that area since ~'99.

Actually we were still selling quite a few black and white sets in the store every year in the mid-late 70's, mostly as 3rd or 4th sets for kids bedrooms or college students who didn't have much space to put a larger set. The 12" sets were always popular, probably because anything smaller than that was annoying for most people to watch for any length of time unless you were sitting a foot away from it.

I still see them at yard sales and once in a while at a thrift store. Most of the thrift stores around here don't want to bother with black and white sets and some won't take any electronics over 10 years old.

well, that's interesting. My last local thrift closed over a year ago, and the curbs are picked clean for metal so I don't stroll through anymore. I have had good luck at Craigslist and word of mouth.
Seems to me like this one, too, was used as a 'spare' set for most of its life. The previous owner told me it sat in the garage I bought it at for over five years. I'd normally think the labels are missing from the cabinet due to improper storage, but there was a ton of 'merchandise' in there and it was all clean.

RCA made a ton of those sets in various cabinet styles. Several years ago, I had a late '80's RCA 12" set that was in a more modern looking cabinet; but, the chassis was similar to the ones used in the older models.

BTW, I remember new 12" B&W sets being available at least into the mid '90's. I think they were in the $30 range, were not the best quality, and ran off of a 12V wall wart.

The older solid state B&W's from the '70's and early '80's are usually well built and give very little trouble.

In the very early '90's, I was constantly picking up broken ones for not more than a couple of dollars. I could usually fix them for a few more dollars and then sell them for $20-$30. Now, you can't give them away; but, I still like to collect them when they come my way.