How many of you are old enough to know what these are for?

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Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,870
10,660
147
Not so hard to find when they are in my daily driver.
IMG_1259.jpg

Had a couple meself. A turd brown '63 Monza coupe with that performance tuned 2 speed Powerglide (my very first car) and later, a beautiful red 1966 Monza convertible with a four speed, a white top, aftermarket dual exhausts on the 140hp engine, and those signature Corvair oil leaks!
 

feralkid

Lifer
Jan 28, 2002
16,858
4,971
136
Anyone have those Flexi records? They were square, flexible records in books. As recent as the '90s Thompson was sending those out as demos for their Vocal Eliminator.


I remember National Geographic had "the song of the humpback whale" in square, tear-out format.

If you played it at 78 it sounded like Bluegrass.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,237
17,895
126
I remember Zenith TV integrating phone into the tv.

That was phenomenal, especially since there was also a remote.

Wait, it was a Westinghouse... I think...
 
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PsiStar

Golden Member
Dec 21, 2005
1,184
0
76
Heathkits!! OMG ... Heathkit was bought by Zenith (I am pretty sure). That TV was a Heathkit & I sooo almost bought it! I had built a few things for others ... people that had more money than time & I was kid with more time than money.:\
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,030
10,521
126
Pic Clipped

Had the tape drive, speech synthesizer and everything!

This was my first computer. I had a Commodore color monitor, printer, and 51/4 floppy drive. The graphics capabilities amazed me at the time :^D

zFCfE.jpg
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,237
17,895
126
Had the tape drive, speech synthesizer and everything!

That was an upgraded model. I was playing with TI86/a back in the days. No reset button, you can buy a module, or just pound it near the power switch :)
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
Tape drives that took regular audio cassettes. They were fun to put in a boom box and crank up the volume. Everyone in the neighborhood heard the screams! Luckily "full range" speakers with whizzer cones are more tolerant of such abuse than a two way with a little tweeter than can handle 1/2W square wave power. ;)
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,237
17,895
126
Tape drives that took regular audio cassettes. They were fun to put in a boom box and crank up the volume. Everyone in the neighborhood heard the screams! Luckily "full range" speakers with whizzer cones are more tolerant of such abuse than a two way with a little tweeter than can handle 1/2W square wave power. ;)

When I got my Apple ][ (first one in the city), it did not have a dedicated tape drive. so we tried every cassette player we had, starting with the best decks. None worked. The computer didn't respond til we used the cheapest car deck we had. Turns out the better cassette players were filtering out some noises :)
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
When I got my Apple ][ (first one in the city), it did not have a dedicated tape drive. so we tried every cassette player we had, starting with the best decks. None worked. The computer didn't respond til we used the cheapest car deck we had. Turns out the better cassette players were filtering out some noises :)

Sounds like they had Dolby Noise Reduction.

That was one of the biggest issues with recording FM stereo broadcasts - the lack of a proper MPX filter. This was to remove the pilot tones (typically inaudible around 19kHz) which were sent to tell the receiver to switch to stereo mode.

If this narrowband signal is in place it will cause the Dolby circuits to mistrack wreaking havoc with your highs.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,237
17,895
126
Sounds like they had Dolby Noise Reduction.

That was one of the biggest issues with recording FM stereo broadcasts - the lack of a proper MPX filter. This was to remove the pilot tones (typically inaudible around 19kHz) which were sent to tell the receiver to switch to stereo mode.

If this narrowband signal is in place it will cause the Dolby circuits to mistrack wreaking havoc with your highs.

Yeap. DNR was doing a number on the signal.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,030
10,521
126
The same record player was used for Alf's voice here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DICd9AwMfBw

Only phrase missing in this video is "Let's go check out the fridge!"

Yeah I had one too. (1990) :$

:^D

That technology lasted a pretty long time. My daughter had a toy phone as a baby, and it had a record inside that played the sounds. I was kind of amazed when I opened it up. This was some time after 1998. I would have thought they'd be using something a little more modern. I guess if it works, it works eh?