I keep a super beta running too, but only because of the 400 adult films a customer gave me in beta format.

My CDP-1 became a jet ski anchor after many years of great service. I still remember the buying process:

Hello Federated, did you get your CD players in yet?
Hello Federated, did you get your CD players in yet?
Every day, day after day, until I was $1000.00 poorer.

Being an early adaptor of CD technology, I was around to buy the Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon CDs that were yanked off the shelves for copyright infringement. Remember? The ones with the Japanese printing instead of English. I see them on ebay from time to time for mucho bucks.

Being a warranty station for Runco, I remember the 15.7k projectors. We used a lot of Zeniths too, at the time, but of course they didn't have the Left Handed Credenza Circuit in them. Oh, and Impaqt, can I buy one of those line singlers from you?

Before Charlie dropped all the dealers that didn't sell tonnage. He's got a nice smile and an easy manner, but he's got no loyalty.

Signed,
Disgruntled ex-dish seller.

Guy's, How many of you live in areas with plaster homes..Not as much as an issue as it was some years ago..But I have had to cut in-ceilings in, in plaster, on many occasions..Most newbies have not even seen it..Ever had to use a sawzall and burn up 2 blades per largish speaker and be covered with plaster??..Had to do a historic Home site once which also doubled as the home of the Hospital President..We had to do 1 room a day, wire to multiroom, and cut in speakers after rooms were completly covered in plastic,(since tours were given there) place had to be left superclean when done..house was built in 1911..My old boss at the time gave us a bottle of Gentlemen's Jack when finished with project...

THXRick

I can go one better... a customer was rebuilding a home that had STUCCO ceilings... They covered the stucco with sheetrock, and finished that up really nicely...

When it came time to put in his in-ceiling speakers, it took 4 sawzall blades, 6 masks, and 2 hours to get it done. That was cutting through sheetrock, stucco, and a wire mesh the stucco was attached to...

I told him that if it ever sounded like rocks were in his speakers, it's because stucco was breaking off and falling into his speakers... I did use duct tape to try and hold the edges together, tho- my first use of the redneck toolkit in doing trim... LOL

My FAVORITES:

The JVC "Message Center". This was a brilliant (*sarcasm*) feature they built inot their VCR's that allowed one family member to turn the VCR on, scroll through 10 menus and use the up down and select keys to laboriously type in a message. So you could spend 10 minutes writing a message that would take 20 seconds to write on a sticky note. Then the next person that turns on the VCR gets a flashing warning that says "you have messages"! I'm sure a lot of people used that feature.

And for the most idiotic product of all time, the two in one projection TV from Projection Design. Use it as a rear projection set or open up the bottom of the set and pull the projector out and use it as a front projector. That was a big hit too - for about the month it was on the market. I took one look at the thing at CES and just shook my head and kept walking.

How about the Zenith Space Phone TV -- the first one I delivered the customer called her friend on the Space Phone,looked up to see the local news anchor on the screen and exclaimed "I didn't call him!"

Or the Zenith motorized rear projo(it looked like a console tv then the top flipped up and the screen and mirror motored up from the cabinet). We replaced a lot of plastic belts in those.

The Mitsubishi 6 pack cassette changers that never worked.

Or Sony ED-Beta.

You have no sound, huh? Look at your receiver very carefully. Is the TAPE MONITOR button pushed in?

Variable Reluctance cartridges

Lenco turntables, continuously variable speed from 10 rpm to about 96 rpm

Benjamin Miracord turntables

Perpetuum Ebner turntables

hanging 0.1 mfd across the speaker output of an amp using two 6V6s in push-pull...the capacitor kept the speaker wire from picking up the signal from the CB antenna two flights up on top of my dorm...that was a 23-channel CB unit

I started collecting 78s in 1961, so...anybody remember a record player that could also cut records? There was a little pin about an inch out from the spindle that stuck up through a hole in the record blanks so that they would not slip when you lowered the steel cutting needle onto them.

tubes: the 35, 80, 17....I once had a radio, bought in 1961, with one of these that was labeled to show it was a REPLACEMENT tube and had been installed in 1935!

listening to each channel of a Beatles record, one at a time, to hear everything you could

FM radio! It has no static!

My grandparents' TV, that had a tuning dial on the left for VHF, with a rolling knob to scroll through the channels, and another on the right for UHF...in the middle fifties!

Lol!

I have a 90 some odd year old customer that still drives and still operates his pancake house AND still operates his Zenith System III with a WORKING Space Phone. He's so afraid that his Space Phone will quit that we have a standing order to sell him any SP modules we run across. Any one got one? Lol.

Got a part number?

I know we're all trained to despise Bose, but didn't anyone like the 901 speaker?

An architect invited me by a house under rennovation to look at a client's unit. He told me he would like me to re-install it, going on to say that I ought not to charge too much money to do so in as much as it would be "fun to do this kind of project". I took one look at this turntable-telephone dial hybrid and told him I was in this business to make money, and that having fun was a weekends pursuit. Wish I could claim I've always been that smart.....

As Im reading all if the posts I knew sombody would say it,but it never came up so I have been forced to
type words like:actuator arm,one run(was this the first structured wire?),LNA,LNB,LNC,feed horns,east/west limits,yes its C-Band!!!
ah the good ol days when girls were girls and men were men
and putting up a dish was a three day job(if you were good at it)and there were no Trunk Slammers putting up these Mother F#ckers...

Oh, don't hold back; tell us how you really feel.

It's a 9- somethingorother. I'll look it up if you think you might have one. I'd also want to call my 90+ year old customer and make sure he's still kickin'.