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?
LaserDisc
Jan 20, 2012
13 Replies
Have you a museum nearby ?
Sounds facetious, but I had to smile at the ZX81 I saw in Birmingham's Science museum.
I just smile at the one in my workshop!
Might be of use to people reconditioning Domesday laserdisc players.
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JGH
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...
I gave mine to Bletchley Park.
I've seen it. I have a calculator I must take along next time I go.
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
:-) 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 ;-)
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
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.
Take a look at:
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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 ...
I have posted a link to this group/subject here:
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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.
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