oldest electronic
Electronic WHAT!?! Choose a noun, son.
I suspect this is the (non-word) singular form of the noun “electronics”. If there’s a better term for such words, and you let me know what it is, I will give you my thank.
i have an old magnavox TV from the early 70s, with the wooden slat curtain thing you pull in front of it.
Old 8 track players,
my great grandfather was an electrical engineer and made some custom lighting controls in wooden boxes, with dials and meters and switches, he did made it all for his church!
from that same grandfather, he had some portable reel to reel tape recording stuff, an old portable projector that comes in a cast iron cowl.
tons of stuff that everyone makes fun of me for holding on to.
i have an old magnavox TV from the early 70s, with the wooden slat curtain thing you pull in front of it.
i grew up on old floor wooden console tv’s and had one up until 2014 when it died and discovered that neither replacement parts nor repairmen existed anymore despite the tv being manufactured not very long ago in 1992.
i haven’t bought a tv ever since then and my plasma died after only 8 years, so i don’t have a tv anymore; but would instantly buy one they made another console tv.
i keep wanting to rip the guts out and install a 40 inch tv with some self hosted stuff in the cabinet, amplifier etc.
it would be cool! but also that thing is cool as it is
i thought about doing this multiple times, but each time i remember that i’m considerably less handy than i like to think i am and that my hubris lead me to almost killing myself when i changed the breaks on my car myself. lol
Original Gameboy.
Still works.
I have an electric singer sewing machine from 1964 and another one from around 1950. Amazing how well they work.
1983 Lenco LRP 5450 DD record player &
1998 Yamaha RX-496 RDS stereo receiver
My father-in-law got them for us 2nd hand for a joint present. Quite a decent system!
Not a real audiophile, but it works well and we enjoy it.
I also made a Google Home kind of thing out of it using an ESP32S3 that uses ESPHome, Home Assistant, and Music Assistant to make it a Spotify connect node to play Spotify through it, control it with an IR blaster, and use Voice Assistant with it if I am not too far (it has a single mema mic)
Donkey Kong Game & Watch (1982)
Casio f-91w watch. Its like 6 years old now, so the battery only has like 4 more years left.
250 MHZ analog oscilloscope from HP
My original gameboy colour
Bulova Accutron from the 60s. I also have a Heathkit oscilloscope which I think is of similar vintage.
I have my old Speak & Spell. It still works.
Don’t know if it counts, but my suitcase record player has vacuum tubes. Still spins but it needs a needle.
I still have my original Pikachu gameboy color, and it works. Somehow the battery on my Pokemon Red hasn’t died but there’s nothing useful on it.
Not electronic, but I have a pre-WW2 era windup clock that still works. It’s loud af and built like a tank
The first generation Pokemon games all used significantly less power to maintain their RAM battery saves than Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal by virtue of not having a real time clock constantly ticking the power away. RBY saves only needed to maintain the power for the save itself and did no additional work on top of that.
Original GSC cartridges would last about 10-15 years, whereas RBY could last 20-30 years. We’re currently in the span of time where many RBY cartridge batteries will be failing but it’s still possible to find ones with functional original saves on batteries just barely holding on.
Many people like to try using physically larger batteries when doing replacements, but most of them don’t realize the batteries aren’t losing charge at the end of those many years because they’re drained and out of power. RBY saves use so little power from the battery in the cartridge that they won’t fully drain it after 30 ish years. Instead the battery saves fail because the batteries themselves fail after 20-30 years. Picking the larger button cell batteries won’t help since they’ll still have the same total lifespan and will still lose charge at almost the same rate as the spare batteries that weren’t installed in your cartridge of choice.
1962 fender brownface pro-amp
I’m still the original owner of one of these 1982 Pac-Man consoles. Actually, I thought it was lost for decades but my aunt discovered it during a basement clean out and gave it back to me. Last I checked, it still worked. But the volume is so dang loud that I remember I always had to play with it outside.
