Hello, I'm new!

[superdeez]

Hello, all, I just today signed up for this forum because I share a fascination for 70s and 80s televisions.

I still watch the TV that was in my nursery. An RCA 12" B&W. It's been mine (more-or-less) since I was 8, and I would guess it probably has more than 100,000 hours by now. It still works great, strong picture tube, no cataracts, no problems.

I can watch cable using my VCR as a tuner, and if the cable fails I'm not stranded (like a newer set would be) because I can just pull the cable off the adaptor and use the chassis reciever.





Please excuse the relatively poor picture quality, these pics were taken in an above noted cable failure.

Then about two weeks ago, I was getting a haircut when I discovered my barber shop was about to trash a 17" or so Magnavox colour set in favour of a crappy Japaneese replacement. Believe it or not it even came with the original remote, which works perfectly. I have pics of that too, but I won't force those upon you guys unless you're really interested.

Well thanks for looking and I look forward to being a member on this forum!

[jpdylon]

Welcome Superdeez!

It don't really matter what kind of old tvs your faciniated in, its all good here. I've got stuff from 49 to 83 and a new wega as well.

I'd be interested in seeing this magnavox. I don't see alot of maggies. Do you know if its a solid state or tube set?

[Adam]

I got exactly the same TV at a yard sale 2 weeks ago. It worked fine as-is, but I don't have the original volume and brightness knobs anymore, though. What I thought was really odd about this set is that there is only one place to hook the antenna to, for both VHF and UHF tuners, rather than seperate connections for each. Is yours the same?

Anyway, this is a great place if you like old TVs, enjoy reading about all the old sets! There is really alot of good information on here.

[Charlie]

Welcome, SD! That particular RCA style was quite popular. I remember we had one when I was a kid. For several months, we had to watch that portable 12" as our MAIN set in the house because our color Admiral went south... at the same time the Gulf/Chevron refinery had a big strike and income was somewhat limited. We didn't really understand why my parents couldn't get another color set. Actually, not having color didn't seem to bother us kids... however it was kinda weird having such a small RCA in the living room!

[superdeez]

Yeah, this set has the single 300 ohm input. It never has been a problem, in fact, it's better this way because whenever I've been connecting it up to a VCR I only have one connection to worry about. Doesn't really matter now but before I had cable, I could just use the VCR as a pass-thru and not worry about swapping wires or anything. I love this set; I've watched DVDs and looked at pictures off my camera on it.

The Maggie is definately solid state. Made in 1986. It works good, except the picture tube makes an unusual high pitched noise whenever it's on. I'm sure it's alright though, because it spent 8-9 hours a day on in this barber shop for years.

I know it's not super interesting, but I just couldn't let it go into the dumpster.

[dr.ido]

What's the laptop partially visible in the photos of the Magnavox? It kind of looks like a Zenith Supersport SX, but it's hard to tell. Yes, along with audio and TVs I'm also into old computers (no wonder I never have any room to move in here).

[zenith2134]

I picked up an '81 or so RCA set like that once, Exactly the same, but white cabinet with a black edge and escutcheon. It appeared to have been in a flood, because the inside and chassis were quite corroded, but it still worked fine! I guess they were built well. It eventually saw use as a garage set after I cleaned it up and used it outside, catching a friendly neighbor's eye. I believe he still uses it, and this was almost 5 years ago! Anywho, welcome to AK - I have found it to be a nice place to share interests. Take care.

[blue_lateral]

Welcome!

John

[luvvinvinyl]

Welcome to AK!

Transplanted from Britain, or Canada?

[superdeez]

The laptop is an "HQ2001." I think it's made by Toshiba but this was a grandpa-garage find, so I'm not sure. 386sx/25 with an 80MB Hd. It's outlasted two IBM and one dell laptops. Currently runs DOS 6.22/Win 3.11, or I can boot "BasicLinux" which is a linux distro that runs on a loop file atop DOS. I really wanna find one of those parallel-port ethernet cards so I could cultivate that linux distro.

I can sympathize with the no room to move around.

And no, heh, not a transplant, but I did spend some time out of the country and picked up the contental spellings. And I had a whole host of 220v appliances to hack! The differences between EU-spec appliances and US-spec appliances is really interesting.