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Vintage Television and Video Vintage television and video equipment, programmes, VCRs etc.

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Old 25th Nov 2014, 12:27 pm   #1
mcousins
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Default The madness continues...

I don't know what it is that drives me to bring back from the dead (as my Wife calls it) so much obsolete technology.
Here in Perth Western Australia we have an annual household rubbish collection, where all sorts are put out on the verge for collection. Wifey and I were on our morning walk and I spied a Sanyo VTC9300 and a VTC5005 just sitting there...
I went to work and somehow noticed they were still there on the way home so the seed was planted. We had a couple of wines, waited for the cover of darkness and embarked on our mission, aided by a fold up sack barrow. To her amusement, my Wife filmed the whole episode.
Got them home and will need to replace the power cords as the local council has someone going round cutting them off... H&S maybe but they look good and unmolested.
Wifey thinks it's some sort of condition but I think it's just a yearning to get back there, when it seemed like just work at the time but now I can see I really enjoyed working on that stuff....Happy days!!!!!
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 12:44 pm   #2
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Well done.

That's just the kind of thing I get up to too!

I wish I'd had a barrow when I was younger - I can still remember carrying a 20" Philips colour TV for over a mile uphill when I was a young teenager. My arms shook for hours afterwards and took days to feel normal again. It was a nice telly though (CTX-E chassis) and gave a fantastic picture for many years. All it needed were the pins on the LOPTx re-flowing.

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Old 25th Nov 2014, 12:44 pm   #3
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Well done that lad! Keeping up a noble tradition of rubbish "recycling". A man after my own heart.
I have just spent 4 hours and £25 (new NiMh batteries - essential, unfortunately) getting an old HP 403B analogue RMS voltmeter going. Madness, certainly, given that I paid £8 for it and it is still only worth about £15, now it's working! But how could I leave the poor old thing, still in nice condition, to get scrapped? I must say, for early 1970s tech it is beautifully built and now works very nicely indeed.
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 12:46 pm   #4
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Default Re: The madness continues...

£25 + £8 = a lot of pleasure for you.

Nothing to lose sleep over there, sounds like a bargain.

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Old 25th Nov 2014, 12:53 pm   #5
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Your wife is definitely a keeper. In my experience, most women don't understand the male scavenging instinct and many find it downright disgusting. It probably dates back to our hunter gatherer ancestors.

Sadly, local authorities in the UK don't operate regular kerbside pickups as happens in Australia and the US, but some people fly tip stuff, and others leave redundant items in their driveways with a 'help yourself' sign - very public spirited.
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 1:00 pm   #6
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Default Re: The madness continues...

A very familiar syndrome- and one that has a tendency to snowball... It's far more satisfying to spend a few hours and a few pounds/Aussie dollars/euros/whatever on re-vitalising something than a few minutes flashing a credit card in a shop for the new equivalent. Must be a lingering hunter-gatherer thing... A crucial variable being how long the missus stays (relatively!) on-side!

The cropped mains-lead thing is irritating but, on balance, understandable- how dare anyone leave things around for the sense-bereft to easily harm themselves

Ha! Crossed with Paul!
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 6:10 pm   #7
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Well done for rescuing them
Occasionally I do find the odd item left out for the bin men, but in the UK skips are the main source of goodies.
I do find it impossible to pass one without having a good look!

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Old 25th Nov 2014, 7:08 pm   #8
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Default Re: The madness continues...

While it's not so easy these days to find free stuff with permission to remove it, general auctions are a good hunting ground for items from house clearances etc., which often go for a pound or two.
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 7:48 pm   #9
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Hello,

In 1977 I lived in a rented flat in Muswell Hill, London ... with no TV. One particular day I spied an abandoned TV left on top of a dustbin. It worked, the picture was not that great, but it was good enough to watch the Wimbledon ladies final on (Virginia Wade etc).

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Old 25th Nov 2014, 8:02 pm   #10
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Yes, it's really satisfying to find something that you really need, as opposed to something that you feel sorry for and wouldn't mind playing with.

I found a large, "Bejam"-branded microwave dumped in a bin just after I'd moved into an empty flat during my first year after university. It actually a superb-quality Brother, and was immaculate but didn't heat the food. I knew nothing about microwave ovens but read-up about them in articles from Television magazine in the local library. I diagnosed that one of the diodes had failed O/C so sent off for one from a company in the Isle-of-Wight. I could hardly wait to fit it when the package dropped through the letterbox. Budgen's own-brand microwavable chicken jalfrezi never tasted so good!

By the time I'd got a fax machine (Canon) from the same source, then a full-sized colour TV (KT3) and a video (one of those Matsuis with the limiter pin that dropped out if you sneezed), my empty little flat felt like a palace. And all for free!
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 9:51 pm   #11
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Default Re: The madness continues...

My wife despaired when I found 4 foot of 6 inch waste pipe in a skip that would work for a telescope I was making. Not wishing it to be lost I took it to the (fairly posh) restaurant we where going to, it stayed in the cloakroom and got home in the taxi too. No one else battered an eyelid.
 
Old 25th Nov 2014, 9:54 pm   #12
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Default Re: The madness continues...

I took a skip-found 14" KT3 to a Balti House in Birmingham - I found it on a night out and couldn't bear to leave it out in the rain. The young lady I was with thought it slightly odd but pretended not to be shocked, and everyone else in the establishment was so drunk that they couldn't have cared less.

Not in the same league as 4' of waste pipe though!
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Old 25th Nov 2014, 11:59 pm   #13
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Default Re: The madness continues...

I hope it was an offcut of new pipe, or else I'm going to have to be very impressed with your powers of persuasion.

When a schoolkid, I bought an old US navy radar console (Two 5FP7 tubes) From Jim Fish for pennies, and lugged it across Huddersfield. Sweet talking it onto the Almondbury bus was quite an achievement. I think blocking the queue was the key. I also suspect Jim may have been glad to see the back of it.

David
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Old 26th Nov 2014, 12:15 am   #14
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Default Re: The madness continues...

When I was at school in the late 60s I took a 14" CRT home on the bus. No one said anything. I tried it in my TV and although it worked it wasn't as good as the original CRT. I think it ended its days as target practice on the waste ground at the back of our house.

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Old 26th Nov 2014, 1:04 am   #15
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Default Re: The madness continues...

In the days when excess baggage was free trans-atlantic, I bought an ex US Government TV camera at a Flea Market in Florida. The crash as it slid down the carousel certainly did raise a few eyebrows.
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Old 26th Nov 2014, 10:49 am   #16
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Back in the early 70's, I used to get the bus after school to take a trip to get free TV's from the rear of a large department store. I had found that the older 405 line sets were nearly always in working order, where as the later dual standard sets were less likely to work.

You should have seen the looks I got struggling to get them on the bus home
I used to get two at a time!

I got many of the sets working well, usually selling or swapping them to my friends. I certainly learned a lot about fault finding and curing the faults.
Happy days!

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Old 26th Nov 2014, 11:05 am   #17
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Reminds me of the time I found a complete GPO706 telephone in a skip, minus its connecting-lead (I'm guessing it had been a hardwired-to-the-wall type and someone had just cut the lead off)

I was on my way to a Friday-night pub session at the time. The phone came with me, and sat beside me in the bar for the rest of the evening.

This was just about the time mobile phones were starting to become popular. It caused a degree of amusement.

Another time I carried a 'found' tubular-metal clothes rack from Bethnal Green to Kew Gardens on the London underground.
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Old 26th Nov 2014, 3:14 pm   #18
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Default Re: The madness continues...

You know your skip-scavenging might have gone too far when you build yourself a handcart with a generator so you can test found stuff in-situ .....
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Old 26th Nov 2014, 4:38 pm   #19
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Default Re: The madness continues...

Oh dear me, this is priceless amusement Sadly I cannot compete, as my only 'found' junk were old radio bits scavenged from the local tip. The tip was quite close to school and while most boys went there for a sneaky smoke, I was busy whipping speakers and transformers off rusty old chassis.
The only story I can tell concerned a huge Bush console TV. It was the first ever TV my boss had put out on rent and the old lady customer decided it was time for a new one, so I asked my boss if I could have the old brute. I think he was glad he wouldn't have to run it to the tip.
It was truly ancient, even back then (about 1970), and had a 70-degree tube about four feet long. Boss ran it round to my house in his shootin' brake and we humped it upstairs to my bedroom, where it put in excellent service for a couple of years before there were no more electrons on the CRT cathode!
I must see if I can find out what model it was.
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Old 2nd Dec 2014, 2:26 pm   #20
brianc
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Default Re: The madness continues...

In the late 1970s, I used to live in Germany and they had a wonderful "recycling" system. It was called "Sperrmeull" meaning large rubbish. Every three months, householders could pile large objects to be junked on the pavements outside their housed and in the very early morning, crusher lorries collected the stuff - or what was left of it! Hordes of people would cruise round the area looking for stuff fron ceramics to chests of drawers etc. I personally found Volksemfangers and the large Siemens and Grundig motor-tuned radios and the like. I bet it's not as good now due to all the Antiques programs and the likes of cash in the attic!
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