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LifeSunDeath posted:If I had the disposable cash, I would get a police scanner, some walkie talkies, and maybe a ham-radio. I find all these things interesting, but have no use for them at all. used to take camping trips with my family and my grandparents, in two vehicles, CB was essential for coordination and also saying hi to grandma
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Feb 13, 2020 01:35
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Nocheez posted:I have a toddler. I think I'd rather have my virginity most days with the energy of homer simpson explaining his bed situation to kirk van houten: i have no children or virginity, no cheez
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Feb 13, 2020 01:56
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I vaguely recall having a CD shaped like a circular sawblade, like, I think a PC Gamer demo disc or something?
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Apr 25, 2020 18:54
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take apart the drive and make windchimes
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May 3, 2020 21:02
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Guy Axlerod posted:Around 2010 I had a flip phone that was spring loaded. I was a little self conscious opening it in public at first. I got real good at this lil move with flip phones where I'd toss it with a sharp wrist snap and it'd flip and spin in the air before landing open in my hand worked with the generic-looking silver samsungs super well after the hinge had loosened up a bit
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May 21, 2020 16:55
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LifeSunDeath posted:How was the ESP on them? The last portable CD player I owned was an iRiver that played Mp3's off the cd, it had pretty good buffering but still couldn't keep up if I tried to jog with it. had a cheap RCA version of the same thing as my last disc thing I carried around, after the 32mb Rio, before the 1GB Creative stick, long before "ill just use my phone for everything"
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May 24, 2020 10:27
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Moo the cow posted:"Yeah, you can skip that scene. Sure, fast-forward that bit. Region-lock? Nah. Want to watch a VCD, no problem. Hey, let's include .wmv playback, you never know. Music playback? mp3, AAC, .ogg, sure we can throw in a few otehrs there. Pictures? might as well: jpg, gif, jp2000 and all those propriety ones you've never used' when most DVD players were still like $400, I had a $100 one that could play some .avi container files right offa whatever disc I burned em to was super disappointed that PS2 USB didn't work like this out of the box, was again disappointed when my first LCD TV's USB port was for firmware flashing only- but manufacturers seem to have given up that anti-piracy measure, last couple TVs I've had just let you play whatever off of USB, to say nothing of how most of em support Plex without having to crack anything
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May 25, 2020 20:30
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I still have a $40 Memorex that I bought from Fred's Dollar Store because it could play FLV files. yeah I kept my Mintek DVD player until I had a secondhand laptop that could do HDMI, like, three years ago
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May 26, 2020 09:23
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Shibawanko posted:the wii is the only console i have absolutely no interesting in owning. id pick up a wii u if i saw it in a thrift store or something but a wii? nah itd just get in the way it's super easy to run games off a Wii HDD, tho idk if the WiiU is any easier
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May 28, 2020 11:20
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bitrate on audio cassette is very low, they're relatively crackly so the analog audio has to be slow and redundant it's kind of the same principle as an analog internet signal over telephone line vs cable
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Oct 5, 2021 13:21
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the new toy will not last nearly as long that's it
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Nov 1, 2021 10:10
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evobatman posted:Where do you work, so I can short their stock? if you're looking to short fax users just target p much any publicly traded american company faxes just work! you don't have to involve a PC at all, that's a bonus, I love computers and they are also awful
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Dec 25, 2021 13:46
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currently I'm technically homeless (eviction in July, new place available in March) and so I haven't had my PC set up, been using a twelve year old netbook every day to code, write, and play games (mostly 8/16-bit emulators) I think this is right on the edge of being a retrocomputer- it's a 32-bit CPU that can (sort of) understand 64-bit instructions, and it absolutely cannot handle react.js (once tried fb messenger on it- I would type a sentence and then spend ~30seconds watching the sentence gradually appear). I bought it used for twenty bucks back in '17- it had shipped with Win 7 but the prior owner put XP on it. It can technically handle Win 10 but not actually, since it isn't compatible with all of the newer 64-bit instructions (some 64-bit Linux distros work but I'm running an i686 Debian build) stutters on YouTube over 480p, but it only has a 600-line display anyway; handles snes9x-gtk like a champ, python3 and Arduino IDE both run great, super good at video decoding (at sdtv/web resolution) (all of this said, I'm using my 2016 smartphone to post this, lol)  lil HP Mini 210 running Crunchbang++ (debian + openbox + tint2) and I love it. Supposedly the 2G/3G modem inside would still work with my cell provider but coverage is rear end anyway: netbook appreciation post. I've only upgraded the RAM (maxxed to 2GB) and put a fresh platter drive inside (500GB vs stock 250GB), if I did any more upgrades to this thing it would be a small SSD, moving the platter drive to a USB enclosure. I love how little this thing is! Favorite form factor, by far After I get my main PC back, and after I get my hands on a better portable, plan to use this lil guy as a workbench PC for as long as possible
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Dec 26, 2021 19:03
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used to work in a gas station also, makes me think of a technology we had there that still exists in many convenience stores, tho they rarely have a layout that accommodates it: the state lottery keno monitor!! not sure if this is a fixture in other states, here you can have em in gas stations but not bars or restaurants I still see them in mom-n-pop gas stations, but all of the small-timers have remodeled such that they no longer have a booth- the one I worked at, about ten years ago, did, and we had regulars who would come and buy snacks, drink coffee, and play Keno all afternoon. I have seen some die-hard gamblers play the Keno in a gas station, standing up, but it's rare. Kind of sad- the only gas station in town that accommodates hangin' out anymore is Casey's, and it's also the place where all of the antivax/antimask people go more obsolete gas station tech: lil mini-arcades tucked in the front corner! gas stations rly don't want people hanging out there anymore
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Jan 9, 2022 07:35
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Neito posted:Weird, where's this? Up here in Mass, even a few of the "nicer" and even "nice" casual dining places have Keno just chilling out in the open for everyone. In fact, I'd say it's pretty rare (though not completely unheard of) to see it in a corner store or gas station, and those that do have a little set of cafe tables for the players to use. I know one that even gave them free bottles of water or coffee as long as they were playing, like some sort of truck stop Vegas. Kansas- long history of fighting against slavers, liquor barons, and casino operators because that trifecta was largely responsible for making this place a hellscape in the 19th century (especially for women)- it's also bound up in protestant austerity and paternal utopianism, tho, 'under christ's watch there will be no exploitation', kind of a thing. So. A century and a half later: no booze in the grocery store or gas stations, full-strength beer outside of liquor stores was just legalized a few years ago, as of fifteen years ago you can sell liquor on Sunday, and as of eight months ago you can open your liquor store on Sunday before noon (but no earlier than 9am, and only if the city government approves it). We lived right by the border, though, so you could just pop over to Missouri- still a valid tactic as the prices are cheaper, and if you're in the ozarkland When I was a kid, liquor stores weren't allowed to have custom signs- they had to get a special neon sign that doubled as a license, all in the same style, and strip mall liquor stores would have marquees that said "?????????????". Some counties you still have to pay a token fee for a token membership to drink at a bar (usually it costs the same as a drink and comes with a free drink), and there are still dry counties but I very rarely visit my own state outside the Topeka-KC corridor Native reservation gambling is relatively recent, less a matter of legalization and more a matter of the state not having a legal leg to stand on- people used to keep their private poker games secret at the same level that, say, 1990s midwest stoners would hide their weed habit. I'm guessing the business operating the state lottery endpoint gets less of a percentage here than there, and isn't worth the negative association as a gambling den. There's one gas station in my hometown that straight up has a bank of slot machines that probably makes enough money to where the owner doesn't care- I suspect the cops are on the take for that one quote:I feel like a lot of places that used to have an arcade machine or two don't anymore. I know Papa Ginos used to have a couple of machines hanging around (my local one was Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 194x). Much like being able to order pitchers of fountain soda, it's something that will forever remain in my memory as a staple of the arcade playing experience that just doesn't happen anymore. weirdly the only restaurant I can think of here that has a lil mini-arcade in it (with 3-4 brand-new machines!) is called Papa Keno's. They don't do pitchers, tho, they just have free refills at the fountain this whole post is about obsolete social technology, but that another thing that I haven't seen in years: not trusting people to operate the soda fountain themselves
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Jan 11, 2022 22:22
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madeintaipei posted:Obsolete and failed grocery store technology: buggies with castors on the front and fixed wheels in the back. Sure, it makes them easier to move in large numbers with one person. For everything else, they suck. this is the regular and modern technology everywhere here, I think they're fine unless they're the old uncoated metal kind that will shock you
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Jan 12, 2022 21:11
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Waste of Breath posted:There's a papa kenos in Lawrence with arcade games (last I was there). Overland park isn't the center of the universe even if joco fuckknuckles think it is it kind of is the center of the region I was talking about the Lawrence one, yeah, but this is a small town compared to amalgamated joco also holy crap i think this forum has the highest density of kansas city people i've ever seen online, i'm usually the only one
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Jan 16, 2022 01:38
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SniperWoreConverse posted:drat this is more or less what I do to share content to my raspberry pi, hooked up to a TV it's a samba share and windows isn't involved at all but it's the same protocol
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Jan 18, 2022 22:47
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hey is this a good thread for obsolete technology tips? I found a big box of 3.5" floppy disks that have been untouched for at least twenty years- I lost my internal floppy drives years ago, what's the best USB floppy drive product for reading old and possibly damaged disks? I don't just want to get something cheap and have it error out too quickly, or worse, damage the disks. Many of these are probably dead, since about a third of em are circa 2000 cheapo floppies that would stop working after a couple years, but there are a lot of solid circa 1990 floppies, both retail and blanks, that I'd like to read mostly I want to see if a copy of the digital zine I wrote when I was twelve is in there- it was a sort of button-driven graphical menu interface that ran on an .EXE, compiled from some menu-and-newsletter creation software that came bundled in a grocery store CD-ROM 12-pak. I remember writing an article about if Windows 95 will be good for games, and a review of Wario's Woods that was also a eulogy for the NES Does anyone know what I'm talking about, with this digital magazine creation kit? I can't at all remember what it was called, just that it operated in DOS with graphics, and it had a lot of grey, was navigated through skeumorphically raised buttons
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Feb 17, 2022 22:55
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https://twitter.com/katie_panda/status/1496607013589204998?s=20
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Feb 24, 2022 02:43
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Kwyndig posted:Do they have emulators for ancient PC hardware? oh yah they do http://www.6502.org/tools/emu/ here's an online fantasy 6502 console implemented entirely in java script: http://www.6502asm.com/
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Feb 25, 2022 07:31
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Yeah old electric organs have been a staple of the "I found all of my furniture curbside" life around here for a while I have a weird one tho, and I love it- it's a dark wood organ from 1897 that was built to operate using foot bellows, pushing air through leather tubes into reeds and other devices that can be activated with pull-pegs- one is a vibrato setting that pushes the air through a wide spinning 'blade' made of a dense oiled cardboard- at some point in the 1960s, the church that owned it retrofitted it with an air pump and an electrical socket in the back (for a lamp, probably) I'm between homes so the organ's in a friend's garage, but when I can get it back, I really want to give it another 60-year update, and at the very least put a quieter pump inside
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Feb 25, 2022 17:27
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spookygonk posted:Sounds like a Harmonium. yep! mine's almost identical, down to the gold lettering, except it was manufactured in Massachusetts, and has the manufacturing year on it in that gold lettering, with a simple metal toggle switch just drilled right into the middle of the manufacturer's name. It also has disabled foot bellows- they're both nailed down flat (I'm guessing if they weren't, the air pump would move em around). I imagine there was like an old lady who played it in a church for decades, but couldn't operate the bellows anymore, so someone automated it- it was a very cool and weird find! mine has a couple of dead notes on some voices, and some of the oiled leather tubes are starting to crack a little bit- I want to experiment with other materials, to see if such as PVC tubing significantly alters the sound for the worse my dream is to make it capable of MIDI-out, my pie in the sky dream is to make it capable of MIDI-in (w/servos etc) really looking forward to being able to work on it again- I've done some minor restoration on it (it was full of cobwebs and spiders when I got it, a handful of the hoses inside were disconnected, and the vibrato blade was stuck), but I want to carry on the modification done halfway through its life. Some midcentury tinkerer probably felt super-hi-tech putting an electric vacuum pump in there, wonder what they'd think about me building in a Raspberry Pi Peanut Butler has a new favorite as of 23:25 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 23:17
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Kwyndig posted:It's there anything a Raspberry Pi can't do? provide a stable desktop environment without heavy modification to let it use SATA otherwise tho! they're great!! I have a few and only use one all the time, that I set up as a turbo-portable console emulation machine to take to friends' houses etc Zopotantor posted:Are you this guy? haha no, I'm not any guy, but that's the kind of thing inspiring me to dick around with a 120yr old machine very cool, thanks for sharing it!
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Feb 26, 2022 22:39
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BalloonFish posted:My ambition is to have the space to properly strip it down, replace/repair the vacuum assembly as required and properly restore and re-voice it. hell yeah the electric pump in mine is pretty loud- the midcentury modder did a good job of putting it down in one corner of the organ, so it's well-muffled- MUCH louder when the top is open- but I'd like the pump's hum to be more of a whisper
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Feb 27, 2022 03:50
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He's put stuff up on archive.org before: https://archive.org/details/@betacollector p sure in this milieu that sitting on it would bring the opposite of clout
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Mar 9, 2022 21:06
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Kwyndig posted:That was the worst thing about recorders for DVD, they were very particular about which formats they would accept, and some of the players were like that too. So you could buy a player that only takes one format, and a recorder that only takes the other format, and your scream of frustration once you learn this will disturb astronauts on the ISS. this stuff all got easier with a desktop PC, with capture cards and more powerful cheap CPUs becoming common around the same time, but yeah for a while I had a DVD-R only reader/writer that got relegated to DVD-ROM duty alongside an external DVD+-R device can't remember exactly when I stopped using DVDs to back things up- around the time a TB of storage got cheap whether we're talking hard drives or a remote server? These days I just have a very old pre-DRM DVD-ROM that I don't think I've used in five years
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Mar 15, 2022 00:59
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they are lying
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Apr 24, 2022 00:38
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Computer viking posted:It feels like the current take on TVs as nice furniture are the Samsung TVs that try to hide in plain sight, by looking like paintings when not in use. It's honestly kind of nicely done, though I've only seen them in stores: oh! this seems like a cool and fun project for a couple lcd panels I have which have tacky/cracked casings
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Jun 5, 2022 10:20
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weird, I often find them for free and I'm thrilled abt it
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Jun 19, 2022 21:42
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wackier formats are possible https://youtu.be/SMFeOwv_MXA
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Jun 21, 2022 03:46
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the tone clicker is also a completely mechanical device, no electrics
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Jul 3, 2022 23:03
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its fun to improve things and the last decades of the 20th century left behind a ton of cheap tech to learn about signals with
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Aug 1, 2022 03:12
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Dick Trauma posted:Back in the day I found pre-recorded tapes to be of poor quality, and I only ever owned one: Sade's "Promise." But I made loads of mix tapes on good quality TDK tapes and they maintained their sound for a shitload of plays. I didn't get a CD player in my car until around 2001, and since it could read MP3 I generally just kept a couple of CDs packed with them in a carrier. Within a few years I added an iPod via aux cable to the mix and that became my go-to. I've not had a newer car since owning a 2000 Hyundai Accent in 2005, so for a decade or so there I was using a trunk disc changer, a tape deck, and sometimes a tape deck aux for an mp3 player- these days my car audio source is 100% a lighter Bluetooth/FM tranceiver- it has a tape deck/CD/DVD that I've never used and probably never will
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Aug 13, 2022 15:54
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in the 90s we only had one phone line so I was rationed like 5 hours/week (also a holdover from our first ISP, which charged by the hour- flat monthly rate dialup internet was, iirc, a shiny new late 90s MSN thing) I remember wanting to see the FMVs from the new Final Fantasy Chronicles PSX collection, so I set one to download on one of those downloader utilities that let you pause and resume It took two weeks to download a ~240px tall 4-minute video, a postage stamp of a thing even on the CRTs of twenty-five years ago- so yah when I started seeing people using flash for video (not long before YouTube hit, and not long after my dialup download days), it positively blew my mind. Of course, now it's, "damnit why does this keep playing in 720p 30fps when it should be 1080/60??"
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Aug 16, 2022 19:28
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Pham Nuwen posted:surely the phone company never made a white payphone; nobody would use it because they could see the crusted hobo piss on the mouthpiece as they raised it to their face. this might sound amazing but for a while there people used to clean those
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Dec 19, 2022 17:12
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empty baggie posted:I took a pretty cool 2006 outhouses calendar if you still have it, you can reuse it this year!
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Jan 12, 2023 09:00
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Porfiriato posted:There is a shocking number of those on Ebay complete in case/box, etc., for < $100 (albeit "untested") and uh, I should really stop browsing before I end up hitting "buy it now" on something yah the only thing is: how much does media to record to cost? tho if one of these turned up locally for cheap, yeah, okay, maybe there's a use
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Mar 22, 2023 07:35
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Kwyndig posted:For one thing it won't crash your phone. I run it on a potato and have no problems. yeah ive been running it in one of the most hostile environments for a side loaded apk- an unmodded kindle fire HD from 2010- and it works great, crashes only seldom, I think when the ol girl runs out of memory in a thread with lots of images works better than web on a lovely connection, too
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Mar 25, 2023 05:22
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Guy Axlerod posted:My friend in college had his parents old custom van. It had a built in vcr and crt for the back seats. I don't think it had an inverter, but I assume you could get a voltage adapter to run a Nintendo off of 12v. yeah we had a 12V TV/NES/VCR setup in the Winnebago, that'd operate while driving felt amazing to watch TV and play video games on road trips, in the early 90s
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Aug 24, 2023 15:51
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