Andy C:

. . .


Roger Bryant, regarding the tape machine I am currently converting a load of cassettes to MP3 using a couple of Radio Shack tape decks from 1983, still going strong, and the Sony hifi system I got back in 1978 sounds as good today as it did then, just need to sort out the crackle on the volume pots.

I have an early Sony Walkman. Originally it was intended as a portable compact cassette player used with headphones. In practice, many people used them to play cassettes through hi-fi amplifiers. The quality was reckoned to be pretty good. I use mine mainly to play cassettes into a computer, so I can produce mp3 files.


The mention of crackle on pots prompts me to my last post in this series. Around 1980 I had a colour television set whose picture would spontaneously degrade into "fringing" round the edges. Image edges would split into three representing primary colours. Then the picture would spontaneously restore itself.  I opened the back, had a fiddle and tracked the fault to a "noisy" potentiometer on the convergence panel. Eventually, after some difficulty, I managed to find a shop that could sell me a suitable replacement potentiometer. (This was before the days of Maplin.)


I replaced the potentiometer. Then came the tricky job of setting up the convergence. I had no cross-hatch generator available. I used a live broadcast of Test Card F and, using the grid lines on that, managed quite well to get everything aligned.


COULD I DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS NOWADAYS?


Only with an old TV set. In the absence of analogue broadcasts it would need to be linked via a "set top box" to a video recorder containing a suitable image - not an insuperable problem. Modern flat-screen sets, using plasma, LCD, OLED, etc., technology are an entirely different ball game from cathode ray tubes, - and there is no such thing as convergence on them. They are however much more difficult to get into and service; it's all module replacement nowadays.

Andy C:

. . .


Roger Bryant, regarding the tape machine I am currently converting a load of cassettes to MP3 using a couple of Radio Shack tape decks from 1983, still going strong, and the Sony hifi system I got back in 1978 sounds as good today as it did then, just need to sort out the crackle on the volume pots.

I have an early Sony Walkman. Originally it was intended as a portable compact cassette player used with headphones. In practice, many people used them to play cassettes through hi-fi amplifiers. The quality was reckoned to be pretty good. I use mine mainly to play cassettes into a computer, so I can produce mp3 files.


The mention of crackle on pots prompts me to my last post in this series. Around 1980 I had a colour television set whose picture would spontaneously degrade into "fringing" round the edges. Image edges would split into three representing primary colours. Then the picture would spontaneously restore itself.  I opened the back, had a fiddle and tracked the fault to a "noisy" potentiometer on the convergence panel. Eventually, after some difficulty, I managed to find a shop that could sell me a suitable replacement potentiometer. (This was before the days of Maplin.)


I replaced the potentiometer. Then came the tricky job of setting up the convergence. I had no cross-hatch generator available. I used a live broadcast of Test Card F and, using the grid lines on that, managed quite well to get everything aligned.


COULD I DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS NOWADAYS?


Only with an old TV set. In the absence of analogue broadcasts it would need to be linked via a "set top box" to a video recorder containing a suitable image - not an insuperable problem. Modern flat-screen sets, using plasma, LCD, OLED, etc., technology are an entirely different ball game from cathode ray tubes, - and there is no such thing as convergence on them. They are however much more difficult to get into and service; it's all module replacement nowadays.