Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Electronics Nostalgia

Susan asked me to troubleshoot her sound system at the store.  I had a mismatch set of equipment - my 1971 Radio Shack Tuner, an acquired 5 Disk CD changer, and some Samsung Surround Sound Speakers.  The Radio Shack equipment was about to bite the dust.  One toggle switch for the cassette tape (yes that was high tech in those days - Dolby Noise Reduction) had been damaged and consequently proper contact with the main speakers was not occurring and the sound was scratchy. 

I replaced the tuner and CD changer with the Samsung DVD 5 Changer Surround Sound tuner.  All is well at the store now - she had been putting up with the static sound in speakers for over 2 years.

So now what to do with the TV downstairs with the blown out speakers.  I took the Radio Shack tuner home and did the macho thing.  Open it up and try to repair it.  The repair consisted of eliminating the toggle switch and direct connecting the wires - no more tape input.  Next get an old DVD player and after an evening of repair the downstairs TV is set to go.

But the tuner had some other casualties.  The Stereo/Mono switch no longer works and for some reason the Phono switch wasn't playing well from the old DVD (had to route through L2 of the VCR).  Blew some fuses on the light up display and who knows what else.

But it works for what I need - TV, VCR and DVD in a spare room.  And it gave me great comfort to still see the 1971 Radio Shack Tuner live on.




No comments:

Post a Comment