LaserDisc

[Dave Plowman (News)]

As part of a clearing out of a deceased pal's flat we've got a Laserdisc player and some 300 discs. (He was a real hoarder) It works, but not well. Looks like a VHS does after being copied many many times - dreadfully noisy colour. Captions black on white look fine, though. I remember these being pretty close to a decent broadcast analogue picture, so is there anything simple worth checking before junking it? The discs seem to fetch not much on Ebay - perhaps a quid each - so we were hoping to dispose of them all as a job lot. Any monies received going to charity. Any suggestions?

[Jethro]

Have you a museum nearby ?

Sounds facetious, but I had to smile at the ZX81 I saw in Birmingham's Science museum.

[Bob Eager]

I just smile at the one in my workshop!

[jgharston]

Might be of use to people reconditioning Domesday laserdisc players.

posting on comp.sys.acorn.hardware

JGH

[Tim Watts]

I loaded an emulator on my laptop, wrote a 5 line program and ran it for the kids - in SLOW mode which AFAICS was pretty realistic. Random numbers at a rate of about 1 per second...

Found a picture of one hooked up to a small portable B&W TV and said "that's pretty much what I had".

Went to shed to get shovel to scrape their jaws off the floor...

[Huge]

I gave mine to Bletchley Park.

[Bob Eager]

I've seen it. I have a calculator I must take along next time I go.

[Steve Walker]

A friend of mine works in IT, delving deep into the innards of databases. He has had at work (for a number of years) my ZX-80 in a glass fronted case with a sign reading "Emergency Backup System, Break Glass".

SteveW

[Jules Richardson]

:-) Mine's a sod to get working with any kind of modern TV - IIRC they were all a bit picky as there was some quirk with the TV signal that they generated. It might be wise to include some sort of display as part of the backup ;-)

[Jules Richardson]

There are quite a few there* (or at least were when I worked there) - it seems that they're still quite common. I had four or five myself at one point, but gave them away during a clear-out - I wish I'd kept one now, because it's not as though they take up a lot of space! I do still have a ZX-80 and Spectrum in storage, though.

• well, at TNMOC on BP's land - although BP themselves did have a small computer collection (but I'm not sure if they still do).

cheers

Jules

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Just as an update, I've tried it out at home and it's pretty well like I remember them, so not faulty. Not sure why it didn't work well on the pals BFO 3D set via a SCART.

[Terry Casey]

Take a look at:

should find plenty of help there, if you need it, and, if you want to find a new home for it and the disc collection, I'm sure someone would like to keep it as a working machine - much better than a static exhibit in a museum ...

[Terry Casey]

I have posted a link to this group/subject here:

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've looked on Ebay, and working players seem to have a value. Although I couldn't find a Philips Matchline like this one to do a direct comparison. So it looks like we'll Ebay it.