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I just bought a car with a cassette player and thought it would be fun to make myself some proper mix tapes for it. Easier said than done. The one cassette recorder I have turns out not to work, and can only record from the radio anyway. No problem, charity shops always have a few old hifis or cassette decks, I'll just get one of those. But no. Not one for sale in the whole town. Not even a lovely old midi-system. But then I remembered something, I own one of these briefcase music centres:  So I dig that out, blow off the dust and to my amazement the tape deck works. Sounds good, even. But there's no ordinary 3.5mm input, it uses separate 3.5mm jacks for each channel. But I can work around that. I grab a 12v wall wart and some bits of bent wire and use that to power an in car FM transmitter, bluetooth my laptop to that and now I have the laptop audio running through the briefcase's radio. I stick a black tape in, hit record, set the level and the needle suggests the recording is going well. Except it has not, it's just silent. The whole thing was surprising. If you'd asked me a couple days ago if I can record cassettes, I'd have said yes!
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Aug 6, 2020 21:01
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 01:51 |
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It's the Sanyo G-2615N. My grandfather bought it at Harrods.  The thrills of stereo in an attache case. It can run on D cell batteries, and actually sounds decent. I wouldn't put any precious vinyl under that stylus though!
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Aug 6, 2020 22:06
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Pretty good posted:One friday afternoon in 1997 or 1998 Around the same time my family had a TV which would default to channel 1 when it was turned on. You then had to change it to channel 6 to watch cable. Surprisingly irritating, since it meant we needed two remotes, one of was solely to switch the thing to channel 6 several times a day. As we never actually used the TV's own channels 1-5, I suggested re-tuning the TV so the cable box used channel 1 and we could abandon this silly second remote thing. This idea was dismissed, as it would be "confusing". My grandparents didn't even have a remote control TV at the time so you can imagine how well they took to this non-confusing channel 6 bullshit when they visited.
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Aug 12, 2020 17:22
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taqueso posted:I think it's just seconds since you reset the counter, but I was pretty young when we had a vcr with that feature. Numbers that count up are inherently cool to a kid though ...as are vacuum fluorescent displays. What kid didn't shine a light into the VCR or stereo display to see all the elements which weren't used on your machine?
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Aug 13, 2020 21:09
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martinlutherbling posted:There’s a whole book about that? It’s boring.
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Oct 3, 2020 14:39
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Nocheez posted:A cheap headunit with USB/bluetooth is so cheap, I haven't messed around with CDs or MP3s in years. Now it's all Spotify and podcasts. I needed a Bluetooth headunit for my car this year and was quite impressed how almost nothing has changed in that market since I last needed one. Amazingly, Bluetooth is nothing like a standard feature. You have to go looking for it. CD player, though? Default, of course.
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Mar 1, 2021 22:37
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ishikabibble posted:A lot of that is probably just from automakers moving away from DIN standard head units to dumb proprietary ones that have higher levels of integration into the car (HVAC, car info, etc). So the market for aftermarket head units is nothing like it was fifteen years ago and there's not much incentive to really innovate or advance what's currently available. Well, yes, but it's still a large enough market to warrant a huge display in car parts shops, and besides, wouldn't you think almost all people replacing their headunits in the 2020s would be looking for phone connectivity and digital radio? Yet there are very few headunits with both, and surprisingly many with neither. The single-DIN market isn't completely moribund though - Pioneer make a very nice looking one with a retractible phone holder which can be controlled through an app, and then there's this wonderful thing from Blaupunkt:  They took one of their 1980s cassette players, and turned it into a completely modern unit. Under the 'cassette door' is an SD slot, USB and Aux jack. Of course it has Bluetooth and DAB+, and you can change the lighting colour to match your car. They're going to sell loads of these to the Porsche, VW, Audi, Mercedes and BMW guys.
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Mar 2, 2021 12:03
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Thomamelas posted:Every CRT used for a POS system ever. I suspect it's entirely possible they were sold with the screens pre-burned in. Also every single ATM had "INSERT CARD TO BEGIN" seared into the screen
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May 24, 2021 22:08
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Powershift posted:like 8 years ago in this thread there was a discussion about the keypad on ford vehicles being obsolete I'm so jealous of those things! For whatever reason, they never put them on the Euro Fords, even the high end stuff. I'd love to be able to open my car without a key. The closest I came was a Mitsubishi I had which had been parked in London for 15 seconds and therefore the door lock had been ripped out. You could lock and unlock the car by twisting the barrel with your hand. It was really useful! e: I probably said the same thing in this thread like 8 years ago
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Jun 22, 2021 15:19
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evobatman posted:Since each key covers two digits and the code has four digits, a certain sequence of numbers will try every possible combination, and takes about 20 minutes to go through. Physically tearing the lock barrel out of my Mitsubishi's doorskin probably took less than 20 minutes.
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Jun 22, 2021 16:01
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Yes, I have experience with those. The annoying thing was having to input the code every single time you started the engine, even if you only stopped it for a few seconds. At least Citroen put the keypad in front of you. The Peugeot 405 keypad (same one) was underneath a little plastic door, underneath the centre armrest. Behind you.
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Jun 22, 2021 22:51
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my turn in the barrel posted:They make tap sensors that allow you to tap front/rear window to unlock your car. A friend installed one in his bmw 325i in the late 90s early 2000s and it seemed pretty slick at the time. I’d never heard of these before, but I absolutely love it and am ordering one. Even if it won’t work with my current car, it’s cheap enough to buy anyway.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:16
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I had the Questron pen too, and was obsessed with it. I don't remember the books at all, but I loved finding stuff in the house that would trigger the noises. Also made an excellent pretend barcode scanner.
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Dec 14, 2021 17:52
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Cojawfee posted:I stopped watching Doug when he went on a string of reviewing super cars and that's really boring to me because I know I will never own them, and I'm not a kid lusting after them anymore. Same reason why Top Gear became boring for me. I love cars, and I loved Top Gear but I always recorded it and skipped through the bit where they're driving a supercar round the track and going "WOOO ITS FAST WOOO" very boring and supercars are very same-y. When I was a kid my favourite Top Trumps card deck was "ford cars" because it included staggeringly mundane poo poo like the 957cc Fiesta MK2.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:54
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Michaeldim posted:Thrift store find from yesterday: Additional buttons under a flap. Couldn't have a 1990s telephone, video recorder, camcorder, remote control, tv or stereo without additional buttons under a flap.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:01
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Powered Descent posted:American here. Three or so years ago, I was in the market for a new car, and wanted a manual. Car dealers regularly trade their inventories back and forth between them, so my local one did a search for me of all the other dealers in a 400-mile radius. Care to guess how many they found of the (extremely common) make and model that I wanted? The dealers had a grand total of four of them, across five states. I guess we stickshift-fanciers are a dying breed. Fortunately, one was right in the next town and was even a color I liked. I don't expect to have such tremendous luck next time around, but there's also a decent chance that next time I'll be ready to make the jump to electric anyway, and EVs don't even really have a "transmission" at all. I have the opposite problem. Brits can't spec a car for poo poo. As long as the year on the numberplate shows it's newer than the car next door, they're happy with an underpowered diesel gloomwagen. The last time I was car shopping, all I wanted was a well equipped petrol saloon/hatch with automatic. You wouldn't believe the amount of otherwise high spec cars which are inexplicably manual.
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Feb 17, 2022 22:44
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Mega Comrade posted:What a weird post. If you're enjoying your underpowered diesel, good for you! I'm sure it's very... economic?
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Feb 18, 2022 16:40
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I love 80s/90s maximalism. All the pointless words.  That paragraph next to the power button reads "new class A" CIRCUITRY WITH SYNCHRO BIAS ELIMINATES SWITCHING AND CROSSOVER DISTORTION ENABLES HIGH POWER AND EXCELLENT WAVEFORM FIDELITY
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Mar 10, 2022 13:41
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I still say that someday all the buttons and knobs will come back because style is cyclical and I just pray I'm still alive for it. I'm sure it will come back. Look how drop shadows and gradients have started creeping back in after years of ultra-minimalist UI design. My favourite bit of classic iOS design is the version (iOS6?) which used the accelerometer so the light was accurately reflecting off the spun aluminium volume slider as you moved your phone.
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Mar 13, 2022 18:07
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Vavrek posted:I don't think I ever truly understood Winamp skins before. Look at this tower of power. From the days when playing one song from a CD involved more button presses than a pilot starting a commercial airliner. 
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Mar 13, 2022 21:47
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Imagine jacking off so wrong the daily mail write an article about it.
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Apr 23, 2022 01:44
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These "Video Stabilisers" were sold in the back of magazines. Obviously only intended to stabilise and restore your picture quality, nothing else. 
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Apr 30, 2022 11:16
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I'm more concerned about his knees.
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Aug 23, 2022 21:16
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I bought a new TV, didn't even occur to me to check what inputs it had. I just assumed it'd have loads, and it only has HDMI. Had to buy a new DVD player off eBay because the old one was SCART.
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Aug 30, 2022 23:56
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barbecue at the folks posted:I haven't seen a SCART input on new televisions for years now, most I've seen only have a single composite in for legacy devices. Honestly, I'm glad we're finally rid of that obsolete and failed tech. I remember having to reach out behind the massive 16:9 CRT to change leads and the fuckers would never align right without having to move the entire set to get all close and personal behind there. Obsolete, yes, but not failed. Scart was THE connector in Europe for over twenty years, and it was good, with some nice features like auto source switching and wake from standby. Plus it was good for cable management to only have one wire between TV-vcr-cable box etc. The plugs were awful though - enormous but also somehow impossible to get into the socket blind, and quite difficult to seat properly. Powered Descent posted:I still have my small collection of DVDs, but really just for sentimental reasons. The last time I recall actually watching one was... probably about 10 years ago? To watch one today, I'd have to go find the USB DVD drive that I know is in my computer parts pile, plug that into a laptop or something, and connect from there into the TV's HDMI input. And depending on the relative obscurity of whatever it is I want to watch, it's honestly a toss-up whether I could do that any faster than I could just torrent it and pop it onto the Plex server. Admittedly, I bought a replacement DVD player with HDMI and connected it but have not actually used it yet. It's been a few months.
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Sep 1, 2022 19:31
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By popular demand posted:I'd argue that DRM is an obsolete and failed technology, unlike most of the stuff ITT no person on earth will miss it. Surely it's neither, they just figured out how to do DRM without pissing off the legit end user? Netflix, Disney+, Spotify et al all have practically seamless DRM we could only dream of in the Playsforsure, Sony rootkit etc era. And god drat was that era a chore. It's been a decade and I'm still pissed about the Peep Show dvd I got for my birthday that wouldn't play because of a botched Ripguard implementation (never fixed. "try it on a different player" was the solution). When there was no legal way to watch Always Sunny in the UK I imported the region 1 DVDs only to find out they had "enhanced region encoding" to prevent them playing on region free players. Lesson learned, stop trying to give your company money, got it.
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Oct 6, 2022 11:57
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In 2019 I stayed at a hotel in Birmingham (england) where the TV was a 14in CRT with a digital converter box on top, and that had obviously broken because they had duct taped a second converter box on top of it.
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Nov 8, 2022 00:41
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Killingyouguy! posted:Do you have to take a test before you get a TV license no, but a friend pointed out that you had to "apply for a TV licence" which implies they could refuse to grant one.
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Nov 17, 2022 02:59
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By popular demand posted:Jerk Van Gay* should be a username here. Does anyone else remember the urban legend/email circular about the TV anti-profanity device which renamed Dick Van Dyke "Jerk Van Gay"? Snopes had an article debunking it. Presumably the TVGuardian was the inspiration.
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Nov 27, 2022 21:37
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Serperoth posted:I've heard of "Penis Van Lesbian", does that ring a bell? This seems to be the Snopes page I remember from 20 years ago. It mentions both Jerk Van Gay and Penis Van Lesbian. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dick-van-dyke/
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Nov 27, 2022 22:53
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Dick Trauma posted:Love the comment about "Swansea lass" Bonnie Tyler. One of the things my brain likes to summon up at random is the phrase "OH DEAR!! a bat bit you"
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Jan 16, 2023 02:02
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I found some 8 Track cartridges in a vintage shop and decided to see if the 8 track player in my car worked. Would you know? It works fine. Even sounds quite good! There's something appealing about the simplicity of the format. There isn't even a power button. The only control is the cartridge and whether it's inserted or not. If it's in the player, it's playing. If it's not, it's not. I think I'll get some more carts.
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Mar 2, 2023 15:39
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I recently bought a car which has a cassette player. Rather than just ripping it out in favour of a Bluetooth unit, I thought it would be fun to make some cassettes for it. The first problem I ran into was that no-one kept any cassette infrastructure. I asked family, friends and friends of friends but no-one had a cassette recorder. I toured all the local charity shops, but none of them had one either. I eventually found one at the tip- in the form of an early 2000s Sanyo Microsystem. Boxed, and looking like new, for a tenner. I made some playlists on the computer and hooked it up to the little stereo, using a decrepit looking 3.5mm to RCA cable that originally came with a BBC Micro. Only after fully recording two tapes did I realise the recordings were peppered with the Discord notification sound because what I thought muted all notifications only muted one channel. Whatever, I’ve still got the playlists, I’ll record them again. Finally the day comes and I go to collect the car. My friend is giving me a lift and we pop the first tape into HIS cassette player - which he’s never used - only to find the belts must have perished because it doesn’t work at all. When we get to my new car I pop my first tape in… and the sound warbles so much it sounds like every vocalist is about to burst into tears. I removed the deck, assuming it was just a stretched belt but one of the plastic wheels has shrunk and cracked. So I tore the stereo out and installed a Bluetooth unit.
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May 28, 2023 13:01
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Oh, I’d also forgotten how much cassettes rattle when in the door pocket of a car.
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May 28, 2023 13:03
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By popular demand posted:Get one of these cheap adapters, no need to replace the player's belts. Way ahead of you! I bought one of the Bluetooth versions. Unfortunately it made a loud buzzing noise, and that was the final straw. When I say "tore out" I of course mean I wrote the code on the old radio (a good old car owner always writes the code on the radio) and stashed it away, it will go with the car when I sell it. It has an integrated pen holder.
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May 28, 2023 16:48
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Desert Bus posted:This is an instance of Show Don't Tell.  The surround with the pen holder is part of the radio. I don't know why they included it, the pen flies out the first time you go round a corner. (not my picture, my car is never so dusty)
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May 28, 2023 17:08
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By popular demand posted:Oooh and a nifty coin slot between the vents there! More obsolete 'tech' - it does have a coin holder next to the gear lever. All French cars from the 70s through 2000s do, something to do with their toll roads. Assume they don't bother any more.
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May 28, 2023 17:17
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Nidhg00670000 posted:106. 💗 🎵 and it feeeeeels like I'm seventeen again
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May 29, 2023 19:43
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I'm a fan of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IOjaCmFX_s despite the Octopus slander.
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Sep 7, 2023 18:48
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 01:51 |
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For the last few years I haven't even taken my wallet out of the house. I used Apple Pay for absolutely everything. But I'm having a bit of a cash renaissance at the moment since I need to beef up my savings and the cashless/contactless makes it too easy to tap tap tap away a lot more money than you intend to. I just get a set amount out of the cashpoint and that's all I allow myself to fritter away on fast food, little treats in shops etc. It's been very effective at reducing my bullshit spending.
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Sep 16, 2023 21:32
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