I ended up not tearing it down, being too wary of the built-in CRT.
What, that scary glass vacuum-filled death trap?
Actually they are safe, so long as you don't drop it on concrete right next to you.
If you want to dismantle something containing a CRT, and so need to safely dispose of the crt, do this:
* Put it face down on newspaper (to catch an little glass slivers.)
* Wrap a towel around the back and neck of the tube. (It's not going to implode and throw glass everywhere anyway, but just in case...)
* At the connector, there's a little glass tube with a melted closed end, between the metal pins. Sometimes it's exposed, sometimes it's inside the plastic plug body (if any.) If you need to, pry off the plastic plug body to expose the tube.
* Put the end of a flat blade screwdriver against the side of the end of the little tube, and tap the screwdriver handle with a hammer lightly. The small tube fractures, and air sucks into the CRT via the small hole. A second later you have a no-vacuum glass CRT, which is safe to put in the garbage. (Apart from the pollution issues of the phosphor and leaded-glass face.)
One caution: if you do smash the whole thing up, be aware that the phosphor on the inside face is made of very nasty substances, that you don't want to breathe, ingest, or get into cuts. Ditto the coating on the cathode filament, and the 'getter' - a little ring-shaped thing on the side of the electron gun.
That's true of all fluorescent lamps too btw. Not talking about the mercury, but the actual phosphor powder.
This is another reasons why the whole "tungsten light bulbs are evil, let's ban them and replace with CCFLs" thing is insane. Filament bulbs are entirely non-toxic, and use minimal materials and manufacturing processes.
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