When I was a kid my family owned a device whose sole purpose was to rewind vhs tapes.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you have a Samsung PCB115UBE USB cable for an old SCH-A870 I will seriously give you money for it right now

        • cm0002@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I hope so, my only alternative to get my old data off this phone is desoldering the NAND chip lol

            • cm0002@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Proprietary Samshit BS, the charging wall wart appears to have a different pin out from the USB data transfer cable

              • notfromhere@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Not sure why I’m being downvoted. If your only other option is desolder the NAND chips, you can build a cable for probably $10 in parts. Ask me how I know. That shit is easy. Get you a breakout board and find the connector or a close enough one that you can solder or crimp and get to it.

                Way easier and less work than messing with the board level components, FFS people.

                There are also people who will build you one as a service if it is beyond you.

                Downvotes for adding to the discussion giving a real alternative to a stated problem is asinine.

                Edit: also, if you’re willing to desolder the fucking NAND chips, just solder directly on the connector header on the PCB. Fucking duh!

                • cm0002@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Dunno on the downvotes lol, but it’s something like a 24 pin connector that I have been able to dig up 0 documentation for. This would be a full blown RE’ing project, so desoldering the NAND would be easier than that because I already have a (one step above low end admittedly) hot air station and lots and lots of dead RAM sticks to remp up practice on

                  Desoldering is the hardest part, then I can just slap it into one of those NAND/BGA adapters and dump it, no REing required

                  But

                  There are also people who will build you one as a service

                  If that exists, could edge out my desoldering solution, do you have any recommendations of said people?

  • trolololol@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Scientific calculator.

    I got a graphing one from TI. It was really expensive and was marginally useful during college. Then I had a cheap one that just did numbers.

    And those were way better than sliding rulers.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have a sheet of foam with 40 or 50 old 7400-series chips - mostly simple logic gates. I could probably make some fun retro led blinky things.

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      1 year ago

      It’s crazy what the talented engineers in the 1970s were doing with those 7400 series logic. It’s a lost art these days, just throw a 10c microcontroller on your board and control everything with code.

      • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Code is my preference, having spent a whole career as a software dev - I do a lot of messing around with Arduino and ESP. But I remember back in the 70s when a college prof let me play with a bunch of chips he had acquired but didn’t have a curriculum put together yet. He let me do a little demo for one of his classes, which was pretty cool. I explained how binary numbers worked, how to step through a counter by pressing a button a bunch of times, read out the count on leds, use the number as an address to a memory chip and other things. He mentioned that the next new thing was going to be a “microprocessor” - a whole computer on a single chip - imagine that! If my school had had an electronics program I would switched my major on the spot, based solely on how fun it was.

  • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A tone dialer. Like this

    https://images.app.goo.gl/fbdmckv44BY7fdWw9

    Not for phone phreaking, just for speed-dialling.

    I would make international calls frequently. I would buy calling cards. The process was: dial the 800 number on the card. Enter the id number on the card to use some of its credit. Dial the number to call. Their service would then connect me at a low rate to another country(probably making a voip call).

    So I’d set up the 3 speed dial buttons with those. For each new card I’d only have to change the card’s unique number.

  • Rebels_Droppin@lemmy.world
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    I have a sony mini cassette video camera. Got a new battery for it and works like a dream. Really fun to record modern events in that format.

    I also have a Sears VHS video camera. Working on getting a battery for that.

    A functional electric Smith Corona typewriter

    8mm slide projector

    Too many CRTS

    It’s a good time being a Junkman

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve got a film negative scanner. I’ve also got a big pile of old negatives. I keep telling myself that someday I’m going to scan all those old negatives. We’ll see.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have an old dial telephone from the 1940s. A couple years ago I saw an Arduino project to make them dial digitally, but it’s not the top item on my bucket list.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    An iPod. It’s still the same iPod I got for my birthday 20 years ago. It probably still works… If I’d be able to find a cable for it.

    • daddy32@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have used a dedicated MP3 player during the workout just few years back - I found carrying my entire almost 200g phone during the workout extremely inconvenient. In the end, I ended that for the benefit of bluetooth headphones which were not supported by the dedicated player.

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        1 year ago

        My phone still has an SD card slot. So I can put my 64 GB SD card inside and have more music offline than my 4 GB iPod could ever have.

        The iPod is a nice little piece of almost antique tech. But I’d still be using my phone over it.

        • Burninator05@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No one can argue that 64gb of storage holds more music than 4gb of storage but 4gb still holds hundreds of songs.

          • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Depends on the compression. Yes, you could fit 500 songs on a 4 GB iPod, as the adverts constantly loved to remind everyone about. But it was the early 2000s, so the quality wasn’t good, and then we’re still talking about a pretty high compression even back then.

            • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You can quite easily convert ipods to flash storage. I have a 256GB ipod mini with bluetooth and a taptic engine instead of the clicker.

              • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Interesting. Most interesting. I take it it would need some soldering? I don’t have the tools, but could you send me a video of some instructions on how to do that? Could be a fun future project.

                • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Depends on ehat kind of ipod you have. The mini is probably the easiest to mod with flash. The taptic and bluetooth are a bit harder to do.

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      1 year ago

      You will only take my Gravis Ultrasound Max from my stiff cold dead hands.

      Not before.

      I moved heaven and earth to find and buy one back in the day. We will never part ways. I don’t have had a system to put it in for the last 22 years. I dont care. It’s resting in its box untill… I dont know, the rapture or something. It’s mine.

  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not mine personally, but my town still has some hitching posts and mounting blocks

  • waz@lemmy.world
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    I found my old TomTom GPS in a box last year. I struggled to find a reason it might be worth keeping. In the end it got recycled.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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    We still have a landline (technically VoIP) phone. There’s also a list of important phone numbers written on the fridge. Good for emergencies.

    There are few things more nerve wracking than frantically trying to find your cell phone and the number for poison control after your kid just swallowed something they shouldn’t have.