Do you remember when ...

[HiTech]

- drug stores had a vacuum tube tester that allowed you to test them yourself?

- the largest parts section in an electronics store was the vacuum tube aisle?

- high voltage putty - used to mend HV leaks in wire insulation in television sets?

- servicing electronic equipment that typically used wax covered or oil filled capacitors and having to deal with the goop that leaked from failed ones?

- having to curse your way through trying to restring a tuner dial and all of those pulleys?

- 8-track audio tapes?

- removing the "metal" rear cover off of a television set to service it?

- when Watts RMS was a measurement term reserved for rating quality audio amplifiers, while the cheap knockoffs were rated using IHF or instantaneous peak specs.?

Post any additional memories you may have of those bygone days!
(and thank God they're bygone! )

 

[ericgibbs]

hi,
Don't get me started!.

- old zinc carbon batteries, 90v and 120v for the radio's HT

- 2Volt lead acid batteries for the vacuum tube heaters my job was to get a recharged cell, once or twice a week
from the guy down the road.

- 9V zinc carbon battery for the 'grid bias' on the tubes, they had voltage taps every 1.5V

- food and clothing ration books, identity cards, the 'black out', power cuts.

- sitting in our air raid shelter for hours each night , 3 or 4 times a week, listening to the bombs exploding and wondering if ..............

- queues at every shop and yet more queues.....

- the BBC TV system closed down in 1939 for the duration.

- after the war, building homemade TV sets from war surplus radar IF strips and green phosphor crt tubes..


Alas, I remember it well, the GOOD old days............my ar*e

Regards.

 

[dch222]

-

2Volt lead acid batteries for the vacuum tube heaters my job was to get a recharged cell, once or twice a week
from the guy down the road

The guy who charged our accumulators in the 1950s lived in an old mill with two enormous parallel wooden water-wheels about 20ft diameter driving a generator, not because he was green, but because he couldn't afford to have electricity installed. Didn't need to I suppose, but how's that for over-kill?

 

[Pommie]

Looks like I'm not as old as you guys. I listened to the moon landing on a crystal set that I built when I was 10 - that should give my age away. I do remember trying to get a red spot transistor for a radio circuit. Think I ended up with an OC71.

BTW, what ever happened to white dog Pooh!

Mike.

 

[ericgibbs]

During the 1950's a guy setup a radio battery hire business.

He used old 6/12V car batteries, stripped out the good cells and rehoused them with separators, using just two plates/cell.
He finished up with a 90V battery.
Obviously the amp/hr capacity was down for the battery, but they lasted 2 to 3 weeks, he came round exchanged the battery for a recharged one, you paid as you go.
Far cheaper than the 90v dry batteries and longer life.

He did the same for the 2V accumalator batteries.

Thats what I call GREEN [ at least his fingers were from the 'verdigris']

I wonder if that battery recycling is still done.....?

 

[ericgibbs]

Looks like I'm not as old as you guys. I listened to the moon landing on a crystal set that I built when I was 10 - that should give my age away. I do remember trying to get a red spot transistor for a radio circuit. Think I ended up with an OC71.

BTW, what ever happened to white dog Pooh!

Mike.

I remember the OC71, 'silver case', still got one or two kicking around.

Ref: the white dog sh*t its been exported from OZ to the UK!.

 

[CheapSlider]

I had an OC71P

(ner ner)

 

[HiTech]

I still have to laugh at the fact of going to a drug store to test vacuum tubes!!! And the cabinet underneath the tester even stored the most common tubes. Given that any consumer could break open their radio or television set and replace suspected weak tubes, so they can sit down and listen to the Lawrence Welk Hour or watch Ed Sullivan and the Fab Four!! If you think about it, imagine common folks poking about inside a chassis that has various voltage potentials, from heater voltage to plate voltage!! If drug stores today offered that service, we'd be buying IC chips and processors along with a bottle of aspirin, shampoo, and some cold medicine!!!!

Druggist: "what are ya gonna build with that Core2 Duo processor there, young man?
College kid: "gonna go home and upgrade my computer and try not to drip my runny nose all over the motherboard"

 

[Marks256]

WTF is a "vacuum tube"?








JUST KIDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JohnH]

How about buying a rebuilt color picture tube for your TV?

I still have my dad's tube caddy full of raytheon/sylvania tubes.

 

[Leftyretro]

Well I'm probably a little older then most of you but I clearly recall a week in the late 50s where my parents called the TV repairman one day and a Doctor the next. Funny thing is that both came with about the same size case, but the Doctor wore a tie. Don't recall the purpose of the Doctor's visit but the TV was sick for sure.

Lefty

 

[dknguyen]

I remember when it was a big deal to have one GUI colour screen Macintosh in the school library (as opposed to the computer rooms filled with command prompt interfaces only). Although I'm fairly certain the adults' computers in the office had Windows 3.1 on them.

 

[Sceadwian]

Command line interface are given a bad wrap, by people that don't want to learn them. Most people would be surprised at the simplicity of using a simple command line interface compared to todays GUI's.

 

[Marks256]

Command line interface are given a bad wrap, by people that don't want to learn them. Most people would be surprised at the simplicity of using a simple command line interface compared to todays GUI's.

I like command line interfaces.
1) they look geeky
2) no crap, just the vital data
3) no room for ads...
4) usually it takes an intelligent person to use them, therefore no morons asking "umm, how do i check my email...." losers... :rolleyes


There are up sides and down sides to command prompts vs. GUIs. I like a mix of both, that is why i have a 486 laptop running DOS 6.22, and a new 1.3GHz laptop running XP! Oh yeah, and my desktop, but that is just pure class right there... AMD forever!

 

[Hero999]

Have you tried replacing M$-DO$ for FreeDOS?

I use it in a DOS emulator and it's great!

 

[Hank Fletcher]

I remember when game controllers had one stick and one button, and they were called joysticks (and I remember getting a pretty wicked blister when I first got one, too). I remember when a good time on a winter Saturday afternoon was putting $5 worth of quarters in a machine at the mall's video arcade. I remember when people would talk about how great the graphics were on the latest Atari 2600 game. I remember when a 2400 baud modem was really, really fast. I remember when Flight Simulator was the best (and in a lot of ways the only) 3D, first-person video game. I remember those dorky Charlie Chaplin style PC adds touting the "portablility" of a computer lighter than a 50lb piece of luggage. I remember a time before cell phones, the Internet, first-person-shooters, video rentals, more than 13 channels (including UHF), CDs and mp3s. I remember a time when floppy disks were floppy, and "wireless" was something my Dad would call the radio.

 

[Roff]

I remember when the biggest known number was ten, and the only math functions known were addition and subtraction.
Seriously -I remember paying 25 cents for a galena crystal embedded in solder (lead?) for a crystal set I was making. I remember buying a CK722 when they finally came down to 99 cents. I remember having to take a full semester of Slide Rule my freshman year in college. I remember paying $120 for a 4-function TI-2500 calculator.

 

[Marks256]

Have you tried replacing M$-DO$ for FreeDOS?

I use it in a DOS emulator and it's great!

I have tried FreeDOS. Personally, i though it sucked. It didn't offer very much stability (tried running QBASIC). Either way it really doesn't matter. I have the original MS-DOS 6.22 installs (on the original 5.25" disks). Since my Compaq doesn't have a HD, i just boot to bootable floppy. I wish i could figure out a way to rig a Compact Flash up to it, but the HD connector is really odd...