I'm Pissed Off

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Sorry to disappoint you, but I paid cash, $1300 three years ago. Add another $100 for the wood as I built my own solid oak furniture grade stand for it.

[RickH]

here:

This set is very worthy of restoration, if you really want to do it, you will.

Post it here and get an evaluation:

BTW you can always get an RF modulator and go into channel 3 or 4, considering how dirty the old tuner probably is, this would be an added bonus to not have to use the original tuner. The picture tube could also be going dim and you will have a hard time finding a new pix tube, you might find one of those in-line "brighteners" but those will shorten any last life in the pix tube electron gun. Most all of the other parts are readily available or have substitutes.

[alvinamorey]

here:

>

Thanks

I like that site. Lots of interesting stuff.

The picture tube on this set was always good. The tuner was flakey, I think thats the most common problem on all older sets. I have sprayed it several times already. I guess when a picture tube goes, it's over for most tvs. I remember having a color set in the 60's who's pic tube died. I saved the chassis always hoping to find a replacement tube. I just pulled the small tubes and threw that chassis in the trash a couple years ago. The old color tvs were really expensive and were worth fixing, but no longer. Only the real antiques, like my old Zenith are worth the effort now.

[alvinamorey]

We're all different.... If you can justify that kind of money for a tv, thats great. To me, anything much over $100 is too much. To me, a tv is just something to catch the news and weather and watch an occasional tape or dvd. Even if I could get cable, I wouldnt spend no $50 or more per month. That's just my preference. I'd rather spend the money on other things that I get more enjoyment from.

I can watch a movie on a 12 inch tv with one speaker, or on a big screen with surround. It's the same movie and I can enjoy it the same either way. It's just a movie ! I also dont care for loud sound systems. I cant hear the doorbell, or anything else with all that noise. Being a farmer, I have to listen to what's going on outside so I dont end up like my neighbor who recently had his entire herd of cattle and horses get loose.

On the other hand, sitting in front of my antique Zenith and watching an old B&W episode of Bonanza or the Lone Ranger brings back great memories.

[Harry]

Thank you for describing yourself. You've succeeded and may leave now.

[Mark Lloyd]

Strange, considering that I found w2k more reliable than any other version.

I don't watch most of the new TV shows, for that reason.

Yes, they do.

[snip]

[Phisherman]

I paid cash for mine too. You get more for less $.

[Alphonse Q Muthafuyer]

...

...

Sorry to have to say ... I agree to most all of this.

I'll assume that the "Entertainment Industry" (EI) in the US is primarily a money-grubbing and propaganda machine until I have evidence to the contrary. Endless idiot garbage-hype, grossly contrived BS, etc largely designed to foster a culture of intellectual zombies. I still get cable but only for the infrequent (1 in 100 ?) decent movie and certain over-hyped sports. Haven't watched -any- "prime time" programming since Hill St Blues.

Food for thought. Somebody/anybody can split hairs over the "precise" numbers, but I grossly estimate that, when they OK'd the demise of NTSC, there were about 300 million "old" tuners in tv's, vcr's, etc in the US. Can you imagine why the Fedral Gummint would render such eqpt (about 2 tuners in every US household) inoperable for the public airwaves just to re-cycle some frequencies? Makes no sense whatsoever without the EI's hooks in such alleged gov't. "They are bought and paid for!".

I have no objection to making the bleeding edge stuff available: if folks wanna spend their money on it, that's their business. But, trashing ~300 million tuners constitutes terminal insanity and prima facie proof of gov't control by large moneyed interests.

I read every night and encourage everyone to find a good book. The garbage on the tube/LCD/ will rot your sensibilities Muy Pronto.

S'long, AQ

"The monkey and the baboon was playing 7-up. The monkey won the money but he scared to pick it up. The monkey stumbled, mama. The baboon fell. The monkey grab the money and he run like hell!" - from "Dirty Motherfuyer", Roosevelt Sykes, around 1935

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I'll agree on the so called entertainment side of TV, but there are may intresting shows on travel, science, nature, home improvement, etc, that can educate and broaden the horizons of the viewer. The recent PBS series The War was very educational. I enjoy watching How Its Made on the Science channel. The Planet Earth series on Discovery HD Theater was fascinating. Some of the travel shows have been a help to preview other countries before I went there. I have a DV-R so I watch what I want, when I want to watch it.

So you buy a digital adapter. At some point you just have to drop the old technology and take a step ahead. This is not much different than when you abandoned that 300 baud modem you used to connect to the internet. Or are you still using it?

Are you into the romance novels? :)

[alvinamorey]

Maybe it is. I quit using it mainly because I still like to access DOS. Not only do I still use some dos apps., but I like to be able to tinker with windows from the C: prompt when it gets screwed up. I rarely have problems with 98, except for IE locking up fairly often, which means I just use Firefox more now. The only other drawback with

98 is the need to install drivers for USB devices. I have considered switching to WinME because of that, but I understand ME lacks dos too.

I may have to eventually dual boot to 98 and XP or something, but that seems like a big hassle to me. All I really do with the computer is internet, word processing and some photoshop stuff. None of this really needs anything above 98 or more power. I cant play most of the videos that are so popular these days on the net, but being on dialup they are too slow anyhow, and who really needs them.....

[alvinamorey]

You said it........ I completely agree.....

If they want us to use a convertor, then I want ONE (whole house) convertor that I can connect to my antenna, and wire it to the whole house. I dont want to buy one for every tuner. I think your figures are low on the amount of tuners per house. I have a small house, but I have 2 tv's and 2 vcr's. That's 4 tuners alone. That does not include the 12V portable 5" B&W tv I bought when I go camping, which will not be convertable and will become useless entirely. I also liked to take that tv to the barn when I need to watch a sick animal or just want to sit outdoors on a hot summer day and watch the tv with a cold beer. I will not be able to do any of that anymore. This 12V portable could be run in a vehicle off the car battery, run on 8 "D" batteries, or plugged in with the transformer. After the change it will only work with the plug in and a convertor, which makes it pretty useless for it's intended purpose.

[trader4]

When you make the claim that you are still using Win98 because it's less trouble than any newer OS, it makes me wonder how out of touch with reality you really are. You could practically crash Win98 just by looking at it. There was no use of memory protection to isolate one task from another, so when one app blew up, the whole system crashed. XP and Vista are an order of magnitude more reliable, easier to install new hardware/software, user friendly, and support apps that Win98 never could. If you only use one app and it still runs fine on your Win98, that's OK, but it doesn't make Win98 the superior OS. I can't imagine using Win98 on a PC today that's connected to the internet and being used for even a part of what most home PCs are used for today.

Regarding your restoration project, the govt will be giving out two $40 coupons for converters to any household that receives ONLY via antenna, ie they do not have cable, sat, etc. That should drop the net cost to less that $30 bucks or so for a converter. Yeah, it ain't free, but it seems it's not such a bad compromise either.

BTW, you said you'd only spend $100 for a TV. How much do you think it's going to cost to restore that 50's TV? I'm no expert in this area, but I would think that components beyond the simple stuff like capacitors, could cost quite a bit. Like what do people do for tubes these days?

[Mark Lloyd]

There are a few problems with older software / hardware, but for Windows applications 2K is much better.

Not True. ME has DOS (v8.0) just like 98 (v7.1) does. MS has just made some attempt to hide it, but it's there. ME won't let you boot from HD without starting the GUI, but does let you create a bootable DOS disk.

XP and 2K are very similar, it's just that XP adds a lot of crap and unfeatures.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Yes. I remember the many reboots required.

Still, 2K is better than either.

[snip]

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

You can do that now, it's just limited to ONE channel. A multichannel setup would be quite expensive, and probably not worth it.

[trader4]

Amazing that you think Photoshop app is cool under Win98. I remember all the trouble trying to do anything that was image or graphic intensive under Win98. It was notoriously unreliable and crash prone. Exactly like you report today with Windows Explorer locking up, forcing you to choose Firefox. Which again is OK, if that's what you want to use, but it shows you're limiting your apps choice to get around Win98 problems, so how is it better than Vista or XP?

I cant play most of the

Running Win98 with a modem, how would you know what a modern OS and computer are capable of to make a fair comparison? I've used Win98 and can tell you, any of today's OS's are far superior.

[Alphonse Q Muthafuyer]

This is true. It's not 100% Idiot-Garbage. Only about 99 44/100%.

It wasn't for me. Ken Burns has his own media agenda, and it shows.

Me? Not the issue. 100 million having to buy 200 million "cheese-boxes"? That's the issue (that you will consistently ignore).

I'm now thinking you've been bitten ...

Aha. You've contracted "Troll's Disease". I'll leave you to your own devices.

AQ

"The monkey and the baboon was playing 7-up. The monkey won the money but he scared to pick it up. The monkey stumbled, mama. The baboon fell. The monkey grab the money and he run like hell!" - from "Dirty Motherfuyer", Roosevelt Sykes, around 1935

[Dick Adams]

Ken Burns ia s worthless wanker.

[alvinamorey]

I am using the same installation of Win98 that goes back to 98. I have changed computers, cloned it to other hard drives, and done other changes. It would take me months to rebuild everything.

Everyone I know that uses XP seems to have to reinstall it every year or two. It gets flakey after awhile. Also, you can not transfer a hard drive with XP from one computer to another. I tried it, it failed miserably.

I know 98 like the back of my hand, and I keep the installation clean of unwanted and old software that is removed, both the files and the registry entries.

I actually could run XP on this computer. I have it installed on another hard drive. All I have to do is swap drives. I gave it a shot, and everytime I actually tried to make use of it, I hated it. It was slow on this 1000mhz PIII too, but it did run. Thats where I learned that it cant be transferred to another computer because I also have a 700mhz PIII and since I did not plan ot use it often, I moved the hard drive to that computer and it failed. Yeah, I could have reinstalled, but why bother when I dont like it.

I do agree that 98 can crash at times, and take down the whole thing. But it rarely happens to me. I use many more than one app at a time. Right now I have Agent, Firefox, IE, Eudora, and Paint shop pro loaded. I'd rather deal with an occasional crash than to have to rebuild my whole setup every year or two.

I have not tried Vista, and really dont care to.

Yep, I am aware of that. Right now they are selling them on ebay for $100 and more. If they do drop to $30 and the coupons are $40 I guess they would be free, but I have a feeling they will stay around $80 or more, which means we will have to dish out $40 or more. I think the govt. should give them for free. After all, they are the ones that created this mess.

Thats a whole different matter. It's an antique and costs just like restoring an old car. But I dont have to do it all at once. Actually I think most tubes will be fine. They dont degrade from sitting. I'll likely have to replace some of the paper caps., clean the potentiometers and tuner, and I know the last time I tried it, there was a high voltage leak. I hope I only need some corona dope, and of course dust removal from the whole thing. Some tubes are actually being remanufactured, and there are several sellers online that sell the old ones. I still have a tube tester which I bought second hand around 40 years ago. I used to work a lot on the old tube stuff when I was young. It's actually much easier to work on than the modern stuff, just a little more dangerous if you screw up and touch the wrong thing. Of course I learned the hard way when I was younger what NOT to touch.

[alvinamorey]

So you are saying that I could not boot to dos, and type WIN to start ME, 2K, or XP ? Just curious. It seems to me that when I once played with WinME I could do it, but I never tried with XP or 2K. It was so long ago that I played with winME that I cant remember.

I ALWAYS boot to dos. Much of the time I just load dos to access my dos based phone address database. Anything I hate is having to wait for Windows to load just to access a phone number. Dos will boot in seconds. I often load my phone list, get a phone number, and shut the computer off right after. When I want to load windows, it's easy enough to type WIN and hit the enter key. I do not leave my computer turned on to save electricity and wear and tear on the computer.

I'd be curious if it is possible in XP, 2K or ME to boot to dos before loading windows?