Retrojab

Hello everyone, and even if it's a little late, merry Christmas!🎄🎅🦄 It's been a while since I published my last post, and I guess I've already said this in most of my posts. This blog is not going to be abandoned any time soon, but it's not my highest priority either. I will continue making posts about things I love, even if I won't make them often. For Christmas, Santa Claus got me a 1989 Kashtan-1 4-track consumer reel to reel recorder. Where he got it from, I don't know. Does Santa Claus have deposits of ancient products? Who knows. Maybe he's a fan of old technology too. I can finally say that I am seriously getting into reel to reel audio (My last recorder from 1968, even though it's probably much cooler and more valuable than this one, doesn't come near to the sound quality of this one, because, first of all, this one passes the tape trough the heads at twice the speed, and second of all, this one is glorious STEREO) Glorious, it ...

Hello everyone! Today I'm going to explain why one would want to install a CF to IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics, the internal drive standard before SATA) adapter in an old laptop (or desktop). It's worth keeping in mind that you can also use the much more popular SD card, but a CF has a big advantage, which I'll explain later. I'm going to use my good ol' Zenith Z-Note Flex , on which I did a review on three months ago. The laptop ran windows 3.1, but I also wanted to have access to 95 whenever I needed. That's one of the reasons why it's a good idea to install one of these adapters in a system: You can store two different operating systems on two different cards. I, as an example, installed windows 95 on an eight GB card, and windows 3.1 on a one GB one. The second reason is the flexibility: You can easily take the "solid state drive" out of your computer, and plug it in any cheap CompactFlash adapter, to easily transfer files to or fro...

I finally got one. A real, actual, monochrome TV. And it also works. Perfectly. It's apperently a Brown King Personal B&W Televison. The exact model is BR1804. It uses the SECAM standard, which was mainly used in French and the Soviet Union. It has four knobs on the back for adjusting Brightness, Contrast, Vertical Hold and Horizontal Hold. It can also run from dc power on 12V 1200mA. The fact that it has a built in antenna would have been very convenient when this was brand new, but since no analog television signals are broadcasted anymore, it is basically useless. What is still very handy, is that it's got two RCA jacks, which can accept modern-ish composite signals. This is how I can connect it two pretty much anything. It also has a switch for changing between Antenna and RCA mode. It only has two rca jacks because the speaker is mono, which means it doesn't need an additional one for stereo sound. The two dials on the front would have been us...

After a long while, I'm back with a new review. And this is not just a review... It's the review of the piece of technology I love the most from my entire collection, which also happens to be the oldest one I have. It's the Telefunken Magnetophon 302TS portable reel to reel recorder from 1968. And oh my God, it's simply mindblowing in every way. It uses 13 cm  (5 inch) magnetic reels to record and play audio. You can set the speed at 4.7 cm/s for longer playback but less quality or 9.5 cm/s for higher quality. It can play stereo reels, but won't record in stereo. It also has two buttons for selecting between left and right track. (or both) People consider reel to reel tape recorders to be the highest quality option for listening to music. Mostly because of the analog nature of the recording method, and the ridiculous speeds at which the tape moves in some higher end Recorders. Of course, you could consider this a high end recorder. It depe...

Hello everyone, I'm not dead yet,but my phone's USB C port is. That's why I'm kinda taking a break from this blog, or at least making less posts, until my port gets fixed, because it's really hard to transfer photos. Meanwhile, I have been paying around with some old phones. I inserted my sim in a 2010 Nokia 6600i Slide, which I tried to connect to the internet using bluetooth, but that didn't work. I have also ordered a new battery for my 2004 Samsung V200 flip phone, which has an "Exciting digital camera". Probably the biggest news though, I ordered an original Nokia 3310 from 2000. The legendary unbreakable phone itself. I also tried charging my 2002 Nokia 3410 using some USB cable that had the right jack, although that didn't work. Hope when I'll receive my 3310 the charger will also be compatible with this one. It probably will. I also cleaned it on the insides. Hope I'll get my port fixed to be able to make more...

Hello there! I'm still alive, but I've been extremely busy and I ran into some problems. In the past few days, I started building the Saracia. It's almost finished now. We found an old computer in an attic, and we decided to use the case of that computer because it looked very cool. No cardboard after all😔 Meanwhile, my sony Mavica camera arrived. Not the one I ordered, an inferior model instead, but still absolutely awesome. I took some pictures yesterday with it. If I forgot to mention what's special about this camera, it's that it stores pictures on foppy disks. Also, I fried the USB C port on my phone, so I'm making this post directly on it, because I don't have any efficient way of transferring photos to my computer. So sorry if this post looks weird. I did bother to transfer some pictures taken with the mavica trough email. This is what they look like on "Fine" quality: Also, ...