Some thing for Phill

[Gothichome]

Was wasting time in the reference section of our District library. Found this, I thought it might be of interest to Phill or any one else interested in vintage radios.
https://archive.org/details/RadioMontgomeryWard

[phil]

thanks for the link. That book was from 1924. there were 600 stations spread across the US. All the radios were battery powered. about the same time Rogers came out with the first AC tube. this replaced the need for batteries where there was electricity in homes but battery sets would continue to be used off the grid. Radios were starting to appear in homes and then everyone had to have one. They provided current information. I think its quite similar to when computers became mainstream and everyone ran out to buy a 486 or early Pentium , shortly to be replaced by something a bit better as the technology leapt forward. Most of these early ones were more function than fashion , by 1929 ( stock market crash) there were some really fancy cabinet models and they sold like hotcakes despite the harder times to come. when war started the radio manufacturers were told to make military equipment and after the war the Bakelite table radios were common and worked well because the technology from the war again brought about improvements in design.

[Gothichome]

Phill, you young kids with your fancy Pentiums, I rushed out and bought a commador 64, plugged it into our little potable TV. Took a few simple DOS courses and still could do nothing with it. Shortly after taking the DOS courses, windows came available and I forgot all that DOS.

[phil]

I worked with a lot of computer techies they could do some amazing things with the low level commands in dos. Us button clickers just have a GUI so we don't see whats happening under the hood.
I've got a suitcase with a vic 20. that was just after the commodore 64. the hard drive is a tape deck and it has some books and cassette tapes with it.
I've also got something even more unusual. its a terminal with a B and W screen. on one side it has a phone. It also has a keyboard and a modem so you can connect to other people who own them. I've never met another but I was making it try to connect to a dial up internet server. I dont; think it has a mouse or much of a hard drive but it has the ability to remember about 40 names and phone numbers. its called an "exceltel" I found a link to some info here:

http://www.acrpc.net/exelvision-exeltel ... ment-16761

[Lily left the valley]

My grade school got a grant to build a computer lab (in '85) that were all Mac in the boxes.

As to home computing, my cousins got the Commodore which they mostly used to play games. We had a TI-99/4a with the cassette storage, and learned to type from the plane typing game cartridge. I played games on our Atari 2600.

But back to radios...one of these days I have to get some decent pics of the console unit that I swear the relatives only left here because they couldn't fit it in a car. Some day I'd like to get it up and working.

[1918ColonialRevival]

Lily - I'd like to see pictures of that radio. If it's a tube unit, you'll be amazed at the sound once it's properly restored.

[Lily left the valley]

Lily - I'd like to see pictures of that radio. If it's a tube unit, you'll be amazed at the sound once it's properly restored.

I have informed my mister that tomorrow after we've had late morning visitors depart, we will uncover it in the garage and finally get around to taking photos. He said, "ok."

Time will tell whether his memory gets selective tomorrow or not.

[Gothichome]

I worked with a lot of computer techies they could do some amazing things with the low level commands in dos. Us button clickers just have a GUI so we don't see whats happening under the hood.
I've got a suitcase with a vic 20. that was just after the commodore 64. the hard drive is a tape deck and it has some books and cassette tapes with it.
I've also got something even more unusual. its a terminal with a B and W screen. on one side it has a phone. It also has a keyboard and a modem so you can connect to other people who own them. I've never met another but I was making it try to connect to a dial up internet server. I dont; think it has a mouse or much of a hard drive but it has the ability to remember about 40 names and phone numbers. its called an "exceltel" I found a link to some info here:

http://www.acrpc.net/exelvision-exeltel ... ment-16761

Buzzzz-click-static-bing-bing. And off you were cruising the net, down load speeds measured in ten minute intervals. I do remember those days.

[phil]

do you remember the newsgroups? they still exist but many aren't aware. To get them properly you can sign up with a usenet server. Mine used to carry the groups but they were discontinued from my server. There is access to some through google, not sure if there s one for old houses. as an example here is the one called rec.antiques, but there are many others if you search around.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.antiques

here is one for home repairs
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.home.repair

The groups are pretty much non moderated so there is good and bad in that you might find spam but also sometimes you get more candid views on things. The newsgroups cam about before the internet went mainstream and forums like this one became a popular alternative. The binary ones were interesting, full of porn and junk but if you weeded your way through there was also a lot of free offerings, much of it pirated software and stuff, movies, music etc. Not sure if they continue. as I remember google doesn't support the binary groups. the posts are (or were?) in multi part binary code.

[Lily left the valley]

Sean tried to wriggle out of the photo time since it's -3° F and the console is in the garage. I told him at least it wasn't still -11°. I had posted about the Markel Playmaster record player before. (Long post, the bit about it is at the bottom.)