30 Oct
1998
30 Oct
'98
1:04 p.m.
Max Eskin wrote:
Most things under ten years old can't be repaired
because they have
weird custom chips. I guess the corporations did an excellent job
convincing people that a machine should die, and be replaced,
impossible to repair.
Not impossible if you wish to buy a new PC board for many times the value of
the item, even in TV and VCR's.
90V batteries? How big are they? How big is the radio?
Not big at all considering what an equivelant amount of C or D cells would
be piled together. If I remeber correctly they were about 1.5" thick by
about 3 inches wide and around 6 or 7 inches long. I have a Zenith AM
portable radio made of a bakelite case that is a "valved" (vac tubes) radio
that's only about 2/3 the size of the smaller 13" color TV's put out now,
and it was made to run on a 90v brick but hasn't seen one since I pulled the
leaking one out over 20 yrs ago. It was my parent's kitchen radio when I was
young, went then the basement shop but no one knew the battery was still in
it. By the time I salvaged it for my first apartment, the battery had easten
up only the contacts which were easily remade from brass sheeting. It works
like a charm and I haven't put a tube in it since the audio amp tube back in
around 1985. I turn it on roughly once a week and run it for 4-5 hrs that
day as it picks up stuff that no semiconductor radio ever could, even with a
long wire dipole antenna.
Yes, _you'd_ fix it. I'd fix it, and I
guess other people here would do
the same. But the general public seem to think that anything over 3
years
old can't be repaired..
One of the radios I use here from time to time is a 1950's Vidor
portable
radio with the FM band. It's valved. I got it
second hand and it needed
very little work to get it going again - mostly cleaning contacts and
valveholders. I think all the valves are original as well. I've made a
little mains PSU for it as 90V batteries are difficult to find
nowadays.
And I don't consider a set of that age that still works to be unusual
at all.
-tony
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