I ranted back here about how awful the 8-track cartridge was. I’m happy to report that I’ve finally found a good use for it as a mortal insult to tape as a data storage medium.
I’ve always hated tape backup. My first experience with it was a Reveal brand device that piggy-backed somehow onto the floppy controller. It was an attempt to make tape backup accessible to the humble consumer; the drive was badly made and poorly supported, and any time I attempted to use it, the data was corrupted before I even had a chance to put the tape back in its plastic case. The $200 or so of hard-earned paper route money I spent on the thing was as irretrievable as the files I entrusted to its care.
So I figured I could kill three birds with one stone:
- Insult tape backup by associating it with something as reviled as the 8-track
- Revive the cherished experience of storing data on consumer audio media, as the first generation of home computers did in the early ’80s
- Pay tribute to the 8-track, which I secretly love.
Here goes. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments
I’m continuing to work on repairing my antique television, which I began documenting here.
There are a few good resources for television repair, such as Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Television Sets. The wonderful thing about televisions is that they’re basically big oscilloscopes, so you can frequently use what’s on the screen as a detailed troubleshooting resource.
However, there are a number of risks, too: the CRT anode gets 16KV, which is enough voltage to require your daughter to attend expensive therapy when she’s old enough to understand What Happened To Dad. With everything guaranteed antique and without good documentation or test equipment, it’s also hard to know where to start. And certain bits and pieces, if they’re broken, will be very difficult to replace on the cheap — for example, the CRT.
Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments
I’ve cornered myself in my office amidst heaps of large, unfinished projects and it seems that whenever I try to get somewhere with one of them another 5 will throw themselves at me. I’ve got a broken B&W TV to fix, a monstrosity of a T6600 laptop to modernize, a few broken 8-tracks to tinker with, an antique Viewmaster to make awesome, and all the assorted Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards those entail.
So it’s nice to start and finish a small project in less than an hour. This is also the first project I’ve made for Luciana, who is now 16 months old and ready to handle that sort of thing.
Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments
I have a thing for old televisions and cabinet stereos, and by a narrow margin, old televisions are the lesser of two evils. With evil, in this case, being measured in square feet. Perhaps that’s why I have two old televisions and try to remain content with only one cabinet stereo.
Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments
Microwaves are funny things. People are terribly superstitious about them, probably because of the word “radiation” or because they act insivibly on food and people find that creepy. I have friends who won’t stand in front of a microwave while it’s running.
The urban legends aren’t all false, though: at least two people have been sent to jail for microwaving their babies to death.
Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments
Coathangers breed in closets. In drawers, it’s chopsticks. In pockets, at least until recently, pennies. Presumably the universe avoids breaking the laws of physics through some complicated system involving lost socks. These mysteries have yet to be solved.
When you deal with computers, it’s mice and wall warts. They fill boxes and desks and spill out onto floors and it continues to boggle the mind that people buy new ones while they’re still knee-deep in the last batch.
There’s a certain visual symmetry with mice and wall warts, too, so as a palate cleanser while I’m scratching my head over larger projects I decided to build the Wartmouse.
Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments
I have long been meaning to work on some 8-track related projects. At long last intention grew to overpower inertia and I went looking for some raw materials. I was met with some surprises.
First, in the hiatus since I last went looking for old gear, many of my usual haunts have ceased to exist: the thrift store at 4th and McDonald has moved and gone upscale; the furniture store run by an incurable hoarder up at Main and 34th was liquidated by someone who wanted to run an actual business; and most lamentably, the free-for-all as-is section in the basement of the Sally Ann on 12th has been cleaned up and turned into pressboard furniture showroom. This left me feeling old. I fondly remember arriving at that Sally Ann just as a shipment of new junk was dumped into the troughs and it was a frenzy to be experienced. Unsaleable things that would’ve earned you a look of disapproval at the transfer station would show up in that basement for a dollar a pound — think Big Mouth Billy Bass at the nadir of his popularity; coffee makers with cracked decanters; mismatched department store speakers with torn fabric and wires cropped too short.
And of course the 8-track player, something I assumed would always be lurking in the corner, as omnipresent and unsaleable as macrame.
Read the rest of this entry »
7 Comments
