I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
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If your reaction is "WTF????", you can check here :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_tester (the section titled "Self Service"), or look at these beauties: https://vintagestoredisplay.info/2018/01/vintage-sylvania-electronic-tube-tester-self-service-lighted-store-display/
@jztusk lol I'm in my mid 40's and I have one of these under my workbench. I used it before to determine I needed to replace a high-mileage triode in an all-American-six radio I was restoring.
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Another fun old electronics story from the 1970s. Had a Kenwood 6006 amplifier. It stopped working, so took it to the stereo repair place. The guy determined it was a capacitor which he replaced. It worked for a week and failed again, so took it back. Guy said probably a bad lot of capacitors and replaced all 20 of the same ones. The amp is still working today.
I remember when people used to get the drive chain on their cars replaced at like 120k miles no matter what, because that's about how long they'd last and having them fail on the road was really bad.
I am slowly learning that capacitors are the timing chain of electronics: after X years, if you've got the device open just automatically replace them - the odds of them failing are pretty high.
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@jztusk lol I'm in my mid 40's and I have one of these under my workbench. I used it before to determine I needed to replace a high-mileage triode in an all-American-six radio I was restoring.
You're the reason I put all the "retro" hashtags on my post.
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
@jztusk I have seen *and used* one of those.
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You're the reason I put all the "retro" hashtags on my post.
@jztusk in my defense I've been obsessed with radio and electronics and their history since before the whole "retro" thing came into vogue. It has to do with growing up surrounded by broadcast engineers and their collections of strange and wondrous magical boxes that plucked signals out of the air with glass bottles that glowed.
Radio is magic and you cannot prove otherwise.
Someone I follow boosted your post and I saw both the challenge and the picture of that RCA tube tester, and couldn't resist chiming in.
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@jztusk in my defense I've been obsessed with radio and electronics and their history since before the whole "retro" thing came into vogue. It has to do with growing up surrounded by broadcast engineers and their collections of strange and wondrous magical boxes that plucked signals out of the air with glass bottles that glowed.
Radio is magic and you cannot prove otherwise.
Someone I follow boosted your post and I saw both the challenge and the picture of that RCA tube tester, and couldn't resist chiming in.
You're taking to someone who has a still growing collection of slide rules.
Also, to address your last paragraph, this has unintentionally turned into me trawling for new accounts to follow. Glad you took the bait.
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You're taking to someone who has a still growing collection of slide rules.
Also, to address your last paragraph, this has unintentionally turned into me trawling for new accounts to follow. Glad you took the bait.
@jztusk nerds unite!!!
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
@jztusk very vaguely familiar; I feel like the furniture store where we got our first top-loading VCR might have had one, but I think it was decorative, rather than actually in use.
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
@jztusk
as a teenager in the late 70s, i worked at a wholesale and hobbiest electronics shop that had one. i used it for my own stuff and helped customers with it, as needed -
I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
Not only have I seen them, but I've removed the vacuum tubes from the set and taken them to the store to test.
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
@jztusk Yep!
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
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Not only saw them. Used them to fix the radio and TV. If the TV didn't work. "It was probably a tube." And dad would open the back of the set and unplug all 5 or 6 tubes. We'd carry them to the hardware store in a paper bag and use the tube tester to figure out which one was blown. Buy the replacement. Head back home full of hope, and replace all the tubes plus the shiney new tube. Invariably it worked and the TV fired right up. Howdy Doody!
@mastodonmigration @jztusk This was before the "no user serviceable parts inside" era.
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Not only have I seen them, but I've removed the vacuum tubes from the set and taken them to the store to test.
Nice. What kind of store was it? Because the one I saw was at the grocery store (in SoCal), and when I say that it sounds unbelievable.
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@jztusk Not only have I seen one, I've seen a guy pull up to the hardware store in a dog sled to check his tubes. He had one hell of an antenna.
Good Lord! Do you mind saying when and where this was? Because "dog sled" was not something I expected people to include in their response to this.
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I'm reaching the age where people don't believe that the things I vaguely remember from my childhood ever existed.
Please reply if you have ever seen one of these in real life:
@jztusk Yes, and I also remember when Radio Shack used to offer free tube testing.
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@jztusk Seen and used. Tubes in radios, tubes in TVs. My Dad showed me how to use it. Almost 72 now, so it was 60 years ago, gave and take.
Makes sense. I'm a spry 63 (
), and I saw them, but they were gone by the time I was old enough to have used one. -
Nice. What kind of store was it? Because the one I saw was at the grocery store (in SoCal), and when I say that it sounds unbelievable.
I believe it was Sears in St. Louis, which isn't there anymore.
I'm old enough that I remember when we started with a black and white, and it was the first one on our block.
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@jztusk Yes, and I also remember when Radio Shack used to offer free tube testing.
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