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Armyman25 posted:FM radio adapter for your 8-track. I know they also made these for standard Cassette decks. Which reminds me of the discman car kits with power and that 3.5mm to cassette adaptor or the soundfeeder fm xmitter and cdplayer power cable combos.
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Sep 22, 2013 10:39
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Most people have seen a printing press. A typesetter puts together the letters and words to build the lines of type that get locked in the press to get inked and print on the paper. Now we just use computers to layout everything. But between the 2 there was a really neat machine called a Linotype. It was this crazy Rube Goldberg contraption that let you type in a whole line of type on a keyboard. It would mechanically pick reverse molds of those letters off their storage spaces, place them in a row and justify the text by adjusting the size of the spaces between words, shoot molten lead into the mold to create an entire line of type ready to go into the press and then sort all the letter molds back to their storage spaces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzilaRwoMus&t=218s The whole thing is like an IBM Selectric on steroids with 600F lead tossed in for good measure. There is a documentary that was on Amazon Prime that is really great Linotype: The Film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avDuKuBNuCk I only know about them because the lead mixture they use is blended to cast fine details and be hard to stand up to an entire run of a paper without distorting. These are great properties for casting bullets so most bullet casters look for old printshops or newspapers to try to get the old linotype lead to cast with. my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 14:13 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 14:11
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I was in a cellphone repair place and they had a neat displace case full of obsolete phones.       
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Dec 12, 2016 05:45
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Once a cashier accepts the bill it doesn't sit in some special area of the drawer, it gets mixed in. Chances are more than 1 hundred note comes in on a single day and if it gets missed when the drawer gets counted it ends up in the safe mixed with all the other poo poo. Once the cashier takes the bill there isn't much proof the guy on the camera was the one that passed the fake bill. Obviously if a rash of stores in one area all had bad bills and you are at each of them you are busted but that's why you would spread them around.
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Dec 23, 2016 07:24
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Just get a jobsite radio. They are compact, waterproof, durable, loud, have their own speakers, have an aux in and run on a drill battery. I just picked up a ryobi p740 at a garage sale for $3. Mainly to use at the drivein to keep from killing my car battery over 2 movies. They rent the exact same radios for $10 in the concession stand as 90% of the pole speakers are broken.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:07
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Horace posted: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! 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. https://magnadyne.com/magnadyne-7960tl-tapcode-keyless-entry-system/
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Jun 23, 2021 06:42
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Horace posted: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. It was a high dollar accessory back around 2000 but that website is the only thing I could find on google for it. I'm guessing the $20 price and obscurity are because it's obsolete technology itself. Most new cars have rfid keyless entry or a phone app from the factory. And it relies on sending a + or - 12v signal to trip the door lock solenoid. I would assume that most newer cars use a BUS data signal from the door lock switch to the onboard computer since it's controlling all of the security/keyless/rfid features and throwing 12v down a data line will either not work or fry the onboard computer. Back in that same late 90s early 2000s era I used to work at best buy and remember someone in the car stereo department learned that lesson the hard way. Tried to install a remote start/keyless entry system in a customer vehicle and didn't realize it used bus communications which were just starting to be adopted in cars. Best buy ended up towing the car to the dealer and paying to replaced the fried onboard computer and the entire wiring harness that had been hacked up by the install tech.
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Jun 24, 2021 02:15
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I would imaging the 2 things that would cause hard candy to spoil would be exposure to humidity and oxygen. There is a pretty fascinating YT channel of a guy opening old military ration packs and trying the food/cigarettes. Usually the ones that retained the vacuum seal are still edible even for stuff from the WWII Era. In this video the charms in a 1940s life boat ration are still perfect. https://youtu.be/u0KRF7jvvV4
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Aug 29, 2021 19:06
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I Google Elsie the Cow anamatronic and found a writeup and video of a working one at an unlikely source. https://peewee.com/2015/03/23/for-sale-vintage-elsie-the-bordens-cow-animatronic-store-display/
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Nov 29, 2021 06:54
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I remember the days of abusing the few seconds of communication you got when making a collect call from a payphone before the person you called had to accept the charges when I was a kid. Usually I was just calling home to have my parents pick me up from the pool or library so why waste the 50 cents or whatever a local call cost? It worked perfectly and was so widespread geico even spoofed it in the Bob Wehadababyitsaboy commercial. https://youtu.be/9JxhTnWrKYs Towards the end of the 90s I remember the phone company offering program with a phone card that allowed you to call a 1800 number and then enter a pin and it would essentially make a local collect call that would be billed to you home number as an outgoing local call. It made it easier than abusing the collect call system and I used that until I bought a cell phone.
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Dec 24, 2021 01:00
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Hi quality vintage reel to reel tape has a shelf life so the prices of NOS tapes are creeping up to the point that a $35 new manufacture cassette isn't crazy. Last weekend I hit a weird estate sale and bought a shitload of retro tech from a complete Commodore Vic 20/monitor/games/manuals to 70s color organs. Among the scores I saw a few boxes of cassettes and figured they'd be worth $5 a box.  Turns out these lovely ones sell for ~$30 a box.  Then I looked up the type II metal tapes and they are selling for $20 each tape. Also found a realistic hand winder in a box of turntable accessories. Looked it up and they are going for $50 lol. 
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Feb 11, 2022 07:31
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I guess the color organs I picked up are pretty appropriate for the thread. Saw these sitting on a shelf, saw the fresnel lenses and had a hunch they were color organs.  Flipped them around and saw the speaker wire terminals and the potentiometers and asked the guy how much.  He said $5 and I said sold. Then I got distracted hunting out all kinds of other stuff like a tambour stereo cabinet and loading everything up that I didn't have a chance to Google how color organs work til later that night. Turns out most people just hook them to a seperate low power amp to isolate them should anything go wrong, especially with one's that are of unknown working condition. Then I remembered the guy had a little integrated amp sitting there so I stopped back the next day and he sold me that for $5 and I found a glass head to display my Koss headphones he threw in for another $5.   Moment of truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqfisyehK4 my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 04:35 on Feb 12, 2022 |
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Feb 12, 2022 04:21
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They are actually just a simple circuit with some different colored Christmas tree bulbs and the knobs on the back usually either function as a gain or a crossover so you can have the different color bulbs kick on and off differently. There was a wide variation in lens styles with these being an early basic Starburst pattern. Here is a decent example from someone who obviously collects them. https://youtube.com/shorts/E-PbYMsOrsU?feature=share They were sold in places like RadioShack and also available in kit form which is what mine appear to be. They are solid walnut and have 2 side lenses in addition to the front. Most commercial and later production ones seem much less ornate and usually only have one lens in the front and I can't find any with the wood pieces seperating the side lenses from the front lens and a similar overhanging top and bottom panel. I have never seen any in the wild before as I think most people assume they are lamps, plug them in and they don't turn on so they assume they are broken and pitch them. When they come up on eBay they seem to sell for $300 for a larger one or a matched pair that are working.  They were popular from the late 60s to the late 70s. Similar to oscilloscope visualizers and VU meters they gave you a bit more of an immersive experience before VCRs and MTV made them obsolete. Techmoan has done an episode on a pioneer scope/VU visualizer. https://youtu.be/cC8aqfAWupg My Marantz 150 tuner in my main stack has one that pairs nicely with my 510m's VU meters if you hate your wallet. https://youtu.be/bQazMkBrtZY Ultimately I am waiting for warmer weather to move my good setup and Vinyl collection to my new place. At that point the danish cabinet will either be moved to the basement for a second setup or sold off since it's solid teak and I don't know if I want to carry it down the basement stairs. When I was house shopping last fall I saw this 1965 MCM ranch pop up and knew I was done shopping.   Still thrifting my way along. Buying a 60 year old house from the widow who built it has involved quite a bit of catching up on deferred maintenance.  Once I get the cork wall peeled and painted I'm seriously considering mounting the Color Organs above the bay window in the spots where the cork isn't faded that they obviously had either speakers or color organs hanging.
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Feb 12, 2022 07:49
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I only got the glass head for $5. The Koss Pro AA headphones I found a while back on Facebook marketplace for $15. I also have a pair of Koss 2+2 quad headphones I found at Savers in their plastic hardcase for $10. Someone had cherrypicked all of the nice stereo/ham/gun/tool stuff so there were no nice hifi components left but obscure stuff like the color organs or the box of turntable stuff with $200 sets of isolation feet and nib shure cartridges were everywhere. I did find this plug cover in turntable box of junk so I know there were a pair at one point.  Fun fact: older Koss headphones were lifetime guaranteed so Koss still has replacement ear cushions and parts available. Both of mine could use fresh cushions but last time I was in Milwaukee their factory repair dept and store was closed due to covid so I would have had to mail them in to get the parts for free and haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully they are back open and I can stop in again this summer. If you search for "old headphones" and "koss" on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and have a bit of patience you can find nice pairs for cheap pretty often. They were built like tanks so aside from cleaning the plug and volume pots most will only need new cushions which are $5. https://koss.com/products/pro4aa-ear-cushion Worst case if they are broken you can always ship them to Koss for repair under warranty if the drivers are blown. Hardest thing I had to track down was an old 25' coiled headphone extension cable. At the time everywhere online was out of stock or $50 by the time I added shipping. Places like guitar center only stocked mono or uncoiled stereo extensions. I hit a few pawnshops that sell guitars and stereos and dug through their bins of cables in the back and found a nice vintage one for $5. Looks like sf cable has some in stock right now for $5 but their direct website shipping rate is much higher than their Walmart 3rd party rate if you are buying more than 1. https://www.walmart.com/ip/847312249
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Feb 13, 2022 02:14
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So I went back to that estate sale I found the blank supertape cassettes at a few weeks back. Found a whole bunch more random tech I missed the first time. As luck would have it, I checked what I assumed was a fake leather covered jewelry / keepsake box. Inside, I found what I'm assuming was a dealer/tradeshow promotional item.  A sample 2 pack of BASFs professional series cassettes with a standard and a metal tape still sealed with letter introducing the line to the consumer. Probably not worth much but neat. I also poked around and the guy had a few hundred supertapes that he had dubbed albums on but no way of knowing if they were in good enough condition to hassle with.
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Mar 1, 2022 08:43
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wa27 posted:I think you know that this isn't true. I will admit I get lucky sometimes. I once found what I assumed was a knockoff weber smoky Joe at a garage sale for $5. Asked around and it was a first few months of production one from 1955 and I had a dude email me a few years later from my post and pay me $1000 cash for it. I checked ebay and Google for the tape sampler and didn't find anything similar. Based on a cassette collector site it appears that line/packaging was introduced in 1976 so these would have to be from 1975 or 76. Verbiage in the note seems to indicate it was sent to dealers. It's neat but probably obscure enough that there isn't a huge market for it to drive the price up unless someone like techmoan finds one and makes a video. I dug through the boxes and found more cool stuff like a BSR spectrum analyzer, realistic apm100 power meter, realistic quad decoder, Dolby dbx box, realistic spl meter etc... Might be time to start a new hobby YouTube channel. I have a firearms one that I kind of lost interest in because it got demonitized, but I don't think weird electronics/cooking/photography/videogame/computer poo poo will get demonitized like guns. I always assumed BASF was like the European 3m. Edit: Bonus shots of the BASF sampler, from the fancy box I really expected a broach or letter opener or something.    Bonus video of the BSR Spectrum Analyzer https://youtu.be/Re4Ep5amRDw my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 02:03 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 22:34
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Did more digging and found a few ads in Google books scans of 1970s billboard magazines that make it seem likely the BASF sampler came from the NARM show. 
my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 02:26 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 02:23
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Humphreys posted:If you find an RF AC-3 Audio demodulator for like $5 let me know! I may pay your 10 times that for it! I didn't see one but when I bought my marantz gear back in ~2000 I had to buy an entire collection of 30 other things. All I sold off was a Sansui G9000 and a Marantz 1150d a couple years back for most of what I paid for it all. There was a couple of surround processors in there. But I just looked and only saw one of them in the storage closet. It's a Yamaha DSP-1 I'm in the process of moving all that stuff so I'll have to see what else I come across.  I know I have a laserdisc player, CED player, betamax, 8 tracks, rtr recorders etc.. all squirreled away that either came in that collection or from garage/estate/rummage sales back then. At the time anything that wasn't a DVD player or Ipod/Mp3 player was considered worthless so I got all kinds of neat tech for peanuts.
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Mar 3, 2022 00:41
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Shitstorm Trooper posted:
I just found a 9" sansui combo on the curb in its travel bag. Had the 120v and 12v power cords and the manual but no antenna or remote.  Took a second for the capacitors to charge up but once they did it works perfectly. My vhs selection was falling down
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May 31, 2022 00:55
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Shitstorm Trooper posted:Extremely jealous. Of both the TV and the VHS copy of Falling Down. It was in a box of skateboard/punk rock tapes I got out of a storage locker years ago. Turns out a few of them are worth a few bucks.  There was also a hand labeled VHS that turned out to be local idiot highschoolers trying to make their own version of Jackass from drinking ipecac, to hassling homeless people to dumpster diving etc... And a horrible VHS porn title called Chicalot part 2 lol.
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May 31, 2022 01:35
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3 of them are apparently live late 90s shows recorded at the Metro in Chicago. Tried googling them and can't find any reference to them online. 2 are some band called Apocalypse Hoboken and the 3rd one is Less than Jake. 
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May 31, 2022 02:12
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At 20 years old it probably just needs new belts for the cassette deck and the cd drawer eject motor. If you are slightly handy try opening it up and taking a look. If you Google your model number and belts the first results are eBay and Amazon listings with the belts as a kit and YT walk-throughs of fixing it. Tape deck https://youtu.be/63s-Jo6hvOM Cd player https://youtu.be/U4HBWvgtXOY my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 03:06 on Jun 9, 2022 |
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Jun 9, 2022 02:47
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I once bought a 1949 seagrave firetruck at a scrapyard. It had a V12 Pierce arrow block from the 1930s that seagrave boughtthe rights to when PA died and used until the 50s. It had a hole in the grill and sure as poo poo behind the seat there was a crank. No I was not dumb enough to try crank starting it. Most crank start cars/ kick start motorcycles had manual timing adjustment to let you retard the ignition to prevent kickback. Motorcycles were particularly dangerous because a kickback could break your leg or make you faceplant into the ground.
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Jun 11, 2022 07:25
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LifeSunDeath posted:guessing these aren't the most critical rollers: Looking at the roller it looks like the punch paper actually rides on the inner area of each roller and the edges are just to keep the paper centered. As long as most of them aren't dinged it shouldn't be able to shift enough on one bad roller to come off track. Based on the hinged mechanism and the damage I'm betting something got trapped in between the roller edge and the lip of the cabinet or the hinges sagged enough the door got stuck. Someone then proceeded to hulk the door open and crunched that roller. Betting replacements are discontinued long ago lol..
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Jun 27, 2022 23:08
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Wired remotes were pretty common before wireless technology caught up. I have a 1950s fisher 400 CX tube Preamp with the original wired remote that allows you to control left and right volume from across the room. Aside from the tuning fork type of proto remotes there was also a zenith flashmatic design that used 4 light sensitive photocells with one mounted at each corner of the picture tube. IIRC they allowed channel up/down, power and mute. The remote was essentially a flash light that you would aim at the corner that corresponded to what you wanted and pull the trigger. While it did work the main drawback was the sensors could pickup light from other sources so placement of the TV in you room required some finesse. Otherwise headlights of a car passing by or sun coming in a window etc.. could cause random inputs. For the time it was cutting edge and also kind of presaged lazertag and the Nintendo zapper. Found an article with more examples https://hackaday.com/2017/03/16/retrotechtacular-how-old-is-the-remote/
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Jul 4, 2022 00:42
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Prior to the NES nintendo spent about a decade making lightgun skeet shooting systems and arcade cabinets like wild gunman. Those systems used a projector and the targets would lit up against a black background. When you pulled the trigger the gun would detect light and determine if you were on target. Black meant miss, light meant hit. Due to the technology pointing at any bright light and pulling the trigger scored as a hit. The NES was actually designed to prevent cheating. When you pull the trigger the entire screen is switched to black for 1 frame and then the picture returns but with white boxes drawn over the target areas for 1 frame. So the gun actually looks for 1 frame of black and then 1 frame of white to determine a hit which is reliant on the timing a crt tv. My guess is the NES compatible gun in the article is using some method of tracking the hits using modern electronic guts and spoofing the signal sent to the NES from an original zapper to allow it to work. My guess is that nes clones have just enough different circuitry that they interpret the signals faster or slower than an original NES which causes them to not work with whatever system they came up with.
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Aug 9, 2022 00:29
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I was at a garage sale and saw a crusty but beautiful 1949 Crosley 9" tv in the corner of the garage. I asked the seller about it and she said it was a family heirloom and she wasn't interested in selling it but it didn't work anymore anyways.  Since it's front is relatively compact and the cabinet is super deep to accommodate all the TV guts I asked her if she had ever thought about cutting most of the back of the cabinet off and putting a modern smart home display like a Google Nest home inside it so it would still at least be getting some use as a display piece. The veneer on the back half of the cabinet was trashed anyways but the front would clean up nice and the only difficult part would be replacing the speaker Grill fabric and putting a new display in it. Her eyes lit up and she said well clearly you'd do something with it and I wanted it to go to a good home and insisted that I take it for free. Googling tells me it's a Crosley 9-408. I'm going to have to do some research or maybe a goon can chime in to figure out if there's any historical significance that would make it a sacrilege to gut it. Assuming I'm not going to wreck something that should be in a museum... I'll lobotomize the front off and throw in an Echo show, nest home or a cheap tablet connected to one of those mini 2 channel bluetooth amps and some moden 4x6 speakers. Should make a neat little setup that can stream bt from my phone or video/tv/music from my plex server.
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Sep 10, 2022 23:31
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Googling the model brought up some decent results. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/crosley_9_408.html Several sources indicate that though this was a 1949 set it still included Channel 1 on the tuner inspite of Channel 1 being dropped as a broadcast channel in 1948. So this model is one of or possibly the last model that was ever built with reception for channels 1-13. One interesting thing about electronics this old is that while the tubes and capactors do fail often times bringing them up with the voltage and current restricted allows the capacitors and tubes to slowly charge and reform without a surge of power damaging anything. The link below is a write up someone who cleaned and inspected and slowly powered one up and it functioned correctly with all the original components intact. They said it only needed the picture tube adjustments tweaked and has pictures of a very crisp signal being displayed. http://amptechsystems.com/crosley_9408.htm I found a vintage variac on FB marketplace for $30 a year or so ago that the guy had been using to over/under drive a tube guitar amp. It was dinged up from the guy taking it to gigs but tested ok when I tried it with a lightbulb and my Fluke 87v. I will have to rig up the variac and a dim bulb tester or a fan speed controller to limit current and see if I can coax the pixies to life. I also found this Antique Radio Forum that has a bunch thread results that mention this model. https://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=975573 Once I get a chance to poke around inside it I'll have to register there and post a thread. But scuttlebutt in the threads seems to indicate its probably only worth a few hundred in working condition so it would defintely cost more to repair and restore the cabinet than it's worth. I'll definitely see if anyone on there has a museum or more dignified use case for it before gutting it and if I end up gutting it, I will offer the internals to anyone that can use them before scrapping them.
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Sep 11, 2022 05:58
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 Good bad news, I slowly ramped up the voltage on my variac.  The tv tube never lit up but all the board tubes did and I hear a slight flyback tranformer whine when its turned on. I found 1 tube that had the spring clip/wire off and reconneded it.  Then I noticed some empty tube slots on the board....   So I'm guessing i just need an original wiring diagram and whatever tubes are missing and I have a feeling it will work cuz everything else seemed to be in working order and lit up okay. I wanted to empty out my back seat and put some blankets in to pick up the TV so I came back on Sunday and was BSing with the seller about how I bought a time capsule 1965 mid-century modern house and I'm looking for weird old furniture/ kitchen appliances Etc She looked at the picture of my kitchen and said my microwave wasn't going to work. She asked if I wanted a wood grain one that would match and me being an idiot I said yes so she also gave me a 1981 Quasar wood grain microwave that she purchased new and had used up until a few years ago when she put it in the garage and went with a smaller microwave.    Control panel is super weird and it took me a few minutes to get it to turn on to test it but it did kick on and dim every light in the lady's garage. my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 22:28 on Sep 12, 2022 |
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Sep 12, 2022 22:25
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Oh man we had a microwave like that and those exact floor tiles in the basement The house was built in 1965 by the widow I bought it from and her husband who passed away in 2012. He was a fine woodworker who built cabinets and wooden church pipe organs in the garage he DIY added to the house in 1967. The entire house was completely original from the cork bedroom floors and living room wall to the exposed beam ceilings.   The basement he must have DIY finished the basement in the early 70s as it has cork and mirrored glass walls like a 70s orgy.  After 1 year of thrifting and DIY repair/restoration it's starting to look how I pictured when I saw the listing.     Ultimate goal is to kit each room out with vintage furniture/lamps/electronics and knickknacks to have a bunch of retro photo backdrops that are actual rooms to shoot in once I get more time for photography.     Etc.. my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 04:05 on Sep 13, 2022 |
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Sep 13, 2022 04:00
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SniperWoreConverse posted:My friends dad had that panther too, v powerful. I think there's a white elephant in the same style I'm about 20 minutes away from East Dundee where the Royal Hager Factory was and yet I have never stumbled across one of those Panthers at a garage sale and ended up having to resort to a Facebook Marketplace listing. Of course I managed to find a red bull for $10 and a green panther for $20 but both were 4+ hours away from me and neither seller would ship.   
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Sep 13, 2022 05:37
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8 track players only have a metal capstan that spins. When you jam a tape into the player it lodges the captstan against a rubber wheel inside the cart and the tape is caught between the capstan and the wheel. As the tape is pulled through it spools itself back onto a reel in the middle of the cartridge and then feeds itself out of the middle of the reel to make an endless loop. The 3 things that cause issues are 1. Crap gets built up on the metal capstan wheel 2. The foam that is in the catridge that keeps the tape pressed against the head crumbles apart 3. The tape gets moldy or the powdered lubricant that lets it slip fails and the tape starts binding 1 and 2 are easy fixes, try cleaning the capstan and put a piece of weather stripping in the cart to replace the foam.
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Mar 3, 2023 07:10
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I might be wrong but I think it's actually the flyback transformer whining and not the tube itself that puts out the high pitched whine. I can still hear it at 38 in the same room as a crt TV/Monitor but when I was a kid I could tell when the zenith console tv downstairs was on sitting in my room.
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Apr 11, 2023 04:46
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The safehouse in Milwaukee has a pneumatic tube that starts and ends behind the bar. When you order a spytini they put the shaker into the tube and it shoots around the whole restaurant and comes back so it's shaken and not stirred. They also have a now very conspicuous secret exit that consists of you walking into a phone booth, dialing a number and a secret door at the back of the booth opens and let's you exit via a passage to the alley. There is a bunch of other neat stuff I won't give away and it was franchised to Chicago a few years back but I have never tried that one. It's worth a trip if you like weird cold war/James bond inspired bars.
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Sep 14, 2023 03:19
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Yes the entry is a nondescript door leading to an office. The operative/hostess there will ensure you have proper security clearances and open a secret entrance to get into the bar.
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Sep 14, 2023 05:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:Last time I went on holiday I found a bar that had pinball machines and I went there every drat night. We basically don't have them at all where I live. Since the pinball crash of the late 90s and early 2000s there has been a pretty decent revival and more and more places like record shops and microbreweries are starting to get pretty decent pinball rooms going again but sometimes they are hidden in a basement or back room. This is a crowdsourced map that you can check to find what places around you have pinball machines and what specific machines they have. https://pinballmap.com/
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Oct 18, 2023 01:12
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I bought a time capsule 1965 ranch from the widow who had it built. I have wood paneling but mine is on the ceiling. Apparently the hot ticket for wall paneling and floor was cork as I've got a cork accent wall in my living room and cork floors in my bedrooms.  In the basement they went all out and alternated cork and mirrors with gold leaf that look like marble for the accent wall.  I'm lazy and would rather wait for cork to come back into style than remodel but sadly the lower half of the cork around the living room windows was starting to crumble aside from where it was glued to the yellow wall underneath so I've got a brown and yellow polkadot pattern that I need to address when I have some vacation time and ambition.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:14
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Mr.Radar posted:
Good eye it's actually Marantz's top of the line in ~1975 510m amp, 6300 turntable, 3200 pre, 150 oscilloscope tuner hooked to a pair of Ohm i speakers which are conventional instead of Walsh design but were quite possibly the first home speakers with integrated subwoofers. https://ohmspeaker.com/legacy-products/i/ The pioneer RT-707 was a recent $20 find at a garage sale that I rehabbed and is a compromise because Marantz never made a reel to reel. It's one of the smallest reel to reels and it actually fits in with the stack once I put some wood rack mount covers I got off eBay on it.  The house itself has all kinds of obsolete technology still installed like combined antenna rotator and output wall jacks, pushmatic circuit breakers, 100% copper water supply and sewer drainage plumbing etc...  My next project is setting up a voip system that will let me run pulse dial house phones so I can teach my 5 year old how to use analog phones in emergencies and so I can have an excuse to put out some of the phones I've thrifted like the rest of my furniture.  Enhance 
my turn in the barrel has a new favorite as of 01:57 on Oct 19, 2023 |
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Oct 19, 2023 01:31
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Your house is the very best in obsolete and failed technology. It looks like you even have close-enough vintage hifi gear in there too 
Please never change it.
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Wipfmetz posted:Why did they need to rotate the antenna on such a regular basis that they've installed walljacks for it? I'm in Marengo IL which is a small farm town but is near enough to 4 major markets that you can pull in TV and Radio with a large enough antenna that has a rotator. Local TV news would come from Rockford/Janesville to the west but major market stations like WGN in Chicago/Milwaukee/Madison are all in completely different directions and far enough that without a rotator you are hosed.  My house also seems to act like a faraday cage and blocks TV/radio once you are inside. Being built in 1965 with a then trendy flat roof it's probably a combination of lead sheeting on the roof, lead paint and possibly metal mesh in the walls and probably lead in the window glass. So the PO put up a 2 story utility pole and a huge antenna and rotor that are looming from the back yard.  But once you have the antenna/rotor and run the wall plates/jacks you would hook up your TVs and radios in each room. You could then just take the rotor controller to whatever room you were in and plug it into the antenna Jack and a 110v outlet and it sends the power up the wiring to the rotor so you can see where the antenna is pointing and fine tune reception from anywhere in the house.  My parents had a channel master rotor setup when I was a kid and I used to love playing with the knob and then watching the indicator dial move as the antenna rotated to where it was supposed to point. Here is a YT video with a split screen showing how it works at both ends simultaneously. They were able to be mounted outside but we're also commonly mounted in attics like this to keep the rotor components from getting frozen in the winter or seizing up after years of being exposed to the elements. https://youtu.be/zR0FNET_0p0?si=M8xLlyT9Cu8Jzid8 Here is a few vintage ads that the YT algorithm thought paired nicely https://youtu.be/gq3UsfQ5CoY?si=RjzbwAa_EO_2Qhfn Sadly my antenna wires were broken and dangling from the pole when I bought the house and there is no rotor controller box and I highly doubt the rotor motor still works. I also hate the way the antenna sticks up over the house and the pole is sketchy and leaning so I need to pull the antenna to resell or donate and then cut down the pole before it falls down.
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Oct 19, 2023 22:34
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That's a 65 Impala 4 door project car that my brother was trying to talk me into buying. I previously had a 66 4d hardtop that I had to sell because the frame was rotting away. The 65 seemed nice but on closer inspection it looks like it was built in the pimp my ride era and to about the same quality. They shaved the doors and put in poppers, frenched the tail lights into Chevy bowtie shapes and put in a really nice custom leather interior but the body work has a bunch of Bondo under the failing paint job. It has a motor and trans put in it but needs all the wiring replaced and it's too much $ to put in on top of buying the car. Single dading my 5 year old son means I don't have the free time even if I wanted to invest the cash. It's not quite period correct but once the Impala moves on or my brother finds a better place to store it I'm going to try and track down a 70 to 72 Buick Skylark that's a little more turnkey so I can actually take my kid to car shows and enjoy it and just teach him how to do maintenance wrenching. That or an old El Camino so I can haul my various thrift store furniture purchases.
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Oct 20, 2023 06:24
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