Archive for Vintage Electronics
Retro Christmas Wishlist: Day 1 – 5
I’ve always wanted to do a “countdown” style series on social media. I just never thought of, or settled on a suitable countdown theme to do so. This year, while perusing some old catalogs I have in my collection, I decided on a theme of items I remember wishing I would get for Christmas when […]
Random ROMs
I have this weird habit. I collect stuff… Even weirder, I am insanely curious about the stuff I collect, even if it takes me years to discover what it is I’ve actually collected. In this case, I was perusing through parts drawers and came across a bunch or EPROMS. These EPROMS were collected over the […]
AMI D-80 Jukebox
It’s not enough that I have turntables, record players, and other equipment to play my 45 RPM records. I needed a way to play them in style! It was during the recent 2015 White Rose Gameroom Show that I was able to make that happen. What is a jukebox (some have asked)? A jukebox is […]
Damark – The “Great Deal” Catalog
On the lines of Fingerhut catalogs that are still being sent to millions of houses today, well known as a recognizable source for borderline useful tchotchkes for the home, the Damark catalog generally provided similar product offerings in the form of electronic devices. Apparently, Damark (up until the year 2000) ran a number of shopper’s […]
Texas Instruments SILENT 700 series
In the early days of public online services, there were many ways to access information sources like Compuserve, BIX, and GEnie. You could use a desktop computer in the home or office… when you were in the home or office. Or, you could use a portable data terminal device like the Texas Instruments SILENT 700 […]
Vintage Volts Episode 4 – 1976 Radio Shack Catalog – Part 1
Follow along with my guest host, Mike Whalen, as we browse through the 1976 Radio Shack catalog and discuss the technology of the day. If you wish to follow along with us, you can browse an online version of the 1976 Radio Shack catalog at: http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1976/ This Radio Shack catalog series is broken up into […]
Reliving History… One Videocassette at a Time
One thing which makes the Internet such a wonderful tool for exploring history is the immediate access to media from the past. It will also allow future generations to be able to relive their own past, which will coincidentally be derived from the media we post these days. It is safe to say that the […]
Throwback Thursday – The Rotary Dial Telephone
A recently discovered YouTube video, subsequently shared on the Vintage Volts Facebook feed, got me thinking about the quaint beginnings of a technology we all seem to take for granted. That technology is called the “telephone.” Today, we most grab our smartphones and tap a name in a contact list or text thread to call […]
Throwback Thursday – Rhapsody RY-610 Multi-Band Radio – 1990
Back before streaming audio, and before the limitless listening options offered by the first commercially successful MP3 player (Diamond Rio), we listened to radio. We had entertainment and listening options all up and down a frequency scale ranging from 550KHz – 1600KHz (AM), or 88MHz – 108MHz (FM). All we needed to do was turn […]
“Tube”-ular!!!
OK. I admit it, I’m mixing up the decades a bit… I was referring to the old vacuum tube, thermionic valve, electron tube, or whatever you want to call it, using references from my favorite decade, the 80’s! So, why even bring up “tubes” in the first place? Well, for one, we got “here” from […]
