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Are you old enough .......


DennisD

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My experience with everything here except Cassetts (of which I had many as a kid) is limited to random tinkering I've done with the objects I've found in my house. I do have a Victrola somewhere in my house too though. . . . .

 

Somewhere in the house??

 

How could you not be tripping over something that big?

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All I can think of with a screwdriver is adjusting the belt in them, but I don't have enough experience with them to say for sure. I haven't even seen one in abuot 10 years :lol:

Yeah...you have gotten real close. One more hint: DoubleTrack

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I remember the pencil and cassette tape, they were the best of mates sometimes. I also remember LED calculators and alarm clocks, which I find interesting how that old stuff can still work flawlessly with a new set of batteries while some newer renditions can fail within 2 years.

 

I have an old alarm clock that I got for Christmas in 1975 that was acting up (who would think to give a 4 year old kid an alarm clock for Christmas). I couldn't find a newer alarm clock that I liked so I took the old one apart and put on a new electrical cord, etc., and it works flawlessly again and hopefully for another 36 years. Now that's old school!

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OK...you guys got close with the 8 track. 8 Tracks had a tendency of loosing its track...Double Tracking. We constantly had to disassemble and used a phillips screwdriver to adjust the heads. Some players came with an access hole so you can put a screwdriver in and adjust it without disassembling. The ones without a hole had one manually added. ;)

 

Now how many of you had this:

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I remember the pencil and cassette tape, they were the best of mates sometimes. I also remember LED calculators and alarm clocks, which I find interesting how that old stuff can still work flawlessly with a new set of batteries while some newer renditions can fail within 2 years.

That's deliberate obsolescence, manufacturers realised about 20 years ago there was far more money to be made by making goods that would only last 5-6 years (also cheaper manufacturing to a lower quality), this having to be replaced. All electrical goods nowadays could easily last 15-20+ years comfortably but there's not enough profit in that.

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That's deliberate obsolescence, manufacturers realised about 20 years ago there was far more money to be made by making goods that would only last 5-6 years (also cheaper manufacturing to a lower quality), this having to be replaced.

Funny you mention that because it will supposedly only get worse! One of the local news channel in my area reported about electronics in the upcoming 2-5 years becoming significantly cheaper built making them far less expensive (like HDTVs, etc.,), but at the same time they'll also only last about 2 years. I can't remember what electronics manufacturer they were quoting however it sounds grim if it pans out to be true.

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After learning that your TV is unrepairable, this is probably one of the best lines I've read this year ...

 

If the set is past the 12-month factory warranty, Vizio advises owners to buy a replacement set from the company.

 

Yea, right.

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Guess we'll be seeing more pages like this then

 

http://gadgetbox.msn...re-unrepairable

No, don't tell me this we have two 1080p 32-inch Vizio LCD HDTV's. Well they're so inexpensive to buy now anyways, and I wouldn't personally wait for a "repair" anyways because trying to detox from my PlayStation 3 dependency wouldn't be a pretty sight. My theatre room Vizio is 2 1/2 years old, the one in the living room is about 1 1/2 years old.

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A lot of years ago a factory foremen said to me that I shouldn't ever confuse "Quality Control" with "Quality".

 

Many many products are made to the minimum quality a producer can get away with, but to the layman "Quality Control" can have a reassuring ring to it.

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Talking of games anyone remember

as a kid?? :lol:

 

Richard S.

 

I almost came out of that link before the real action started. Brilliant.

 

When my son was 7, he wanted one of those consoles, and it may be hard to believe but it was a small console, and Pong was all it did.

 

While in the shop about to buy, one of the sales staff was demonstrating the latest thing ... a Sinclair Spectrum.

 

We went crazy and bought the one with the huge memory, 48K. The other was 16K.

 

Wow! What they managed to do with 48K was impressive, especially when the first 3D game hit the Spectrum, "Knightlore".

 

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We HAD the ENTIRE Atari 2600 collection. My kids had all the games and the console. Though it was ancient, it was a nice collector item. Then we moved and the console disappeard. We suspect one of the movers seen it and took it. :angry:

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An interesting fact about the 48K Spectrum ...

 

To keep the prices down Sinclair used faulty 64K chips (internally 2 X 32K). All the chips in the 32K bank of RAM had to have the same half of the 64K chips working. A link was fitted on the pcb in order to choose the first half or the second half.

 

It was possible with a few logic chips for the experimenter to have access to the faulty 32K bank.

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=223&st=1

 

I've just found that out.

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I almost came out of that link before the real action started. Brilliant.

 

When my son was 7, he wanted one of those consoles, and it may be hard to believe but it was a small console, and Pong was all it did.

 

While in the shop about to buy, one of the sales staff was demonstrating the latest thing ... a Sinclair Spectrum.

 

We went crazy and bought the one with the huge memory, 48K. The other was 16K.

 

Wow! What they managed to do with 48K was impressive, especially when the first 3D game hit the Spectrum, "Knightlore".

My first game machine was a Spectrum 128k, some amazing games, regardless of looking less than great (I've actually still got it but it doesn't work :( ). I remember after that I got a Sega Megadrive and was left with the overwhelming thought of 'how bloody easy are these games?!'. Completing a spectrum game was a massive achievement (and not one I managed with many games at all). Then along came the consoles and completing the game was par for the course :mellow:

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A friend bought one spectrum from Dixons, and went though about 6 free replacements before he had one that worked.

 

After a few weeks the cursor went left when the mouse went right.

I suggested a virus infection.

With a little evil I suggested holding the mouse upside down and he found that fixed his left/right reversal problem.

I had quite a laugh when he tried that and found vertical directions were reversed

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