The Dust Bin of History

Gucci Rush

2025-02-07T05:13:21Z

Gucci Rush, I went through this bottle so fast but when I went out to find a new one - it was discontinued.

Anyone know of a suitable replacement?

Nakamichi Sound Space 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, and 21 Pamphlet

2025-02-07T04:46:59Z

I save and collect anything that crosses my path. It killed me to leave VW pamphlets behind when we moved back from Germany in 1980 but I had a stack of them that weighed several pounds and even I admitted that there were too many to carry home with me. So I saved the ones for cars available in NA at the time - the Passat, the Kafer (Bug) and the new body VW bus. But this isn't about those - I'm not throwing them out yet. This is about a Nakamichi pamphlet, no date but the Internet reviews date to late 1990s early 2000s.

Vaccination passports, Canada

2022-11-08T18:09:29Z

Technically, I still have these.

I don't know why the Canadian Government didn't go back to these. Apparently vaccination passports are not a new thing. If the dates in the parenthesis are in fact a publication date, then these are from 1968:

Canadian Document: Q3 2006 (5-68)

These are unused - none of the pages are filled in. They contain pages for the biggies: yellow fever, Smallpox, Cholera... and the last page is dedicated to vaccinations they hadn't made up yet.

Pioneer, NAD, Onkyo

2021-09-23T19:25:03Z

THIS

was my turntable in high school. Connected to a buzzy RadioShack preamp and my Pioneer SK-31 boom box. I knew nothing at the time, and my music probably sounded like crap until I got an amp with a Phono input when I moved to the big city in 1988. I got rid of this (I shouldn't have) because the speed control couldn't maintain consistent speed. I didn't know about Deoxit at the time. I replaced that 20 years later because I wanted to listen to my records again. I bought a cheap AT-LP60, realized how horrible it was, bought a NAD C556, which was made by REGA and was basically a Rega P1, and when I got tired of its severe lack of features, upgraded again to a Fluance RT-85. No pics because I still have these.

This was my first amp with a phono input:

And I can't for the life of me remember how or why I don't have it anymore. It must have been stolen. The house that I had this in WAS broken into, but the guys were caught, and my amp by then was the Onkyo TX-82:

This one's power supply blew up in 2020. Maybe it was the pandemic.

And somewhere along the line I picked up one of these Pioneer SA-6700s:

Which is also gone. I don't know why I don't just build a room in the basement to archive my old equipment. I have no vision.

First intro to the audiophile world: age 5?

2021-09-23T16:58:54Z

I grew up with my parents record players, first a homemade console with one full range driver in the box and a Garrard turntable on the inside, and then an stylish Clairtone with DUAL turntable.

home made console

Clairtone (I'd set up the orb speakers on the ground facing each other, and put my head in between them.)

Pioneer. (My college sound machine paired with the turntable below.)

Pioneer

I used my parents equipment and LPs to death but my own foray into the audio hobby was with the purchase of a Pioneer PT4 turntable and a Pioneer boombox with a cheap Radioshack Phono preamp to go in between.

After high school - after college actually, I bought my first set of external speakers.Koss isn't generally known as an AUDIOPHILE speaker company, though some of their headphones are held in surprisingly high regard. And SEARS was not known as a place audiophiles would look for equipment. And yet people are still asking, in 2021, whether these KOSS M/90's are worth re-coning, or a viable speaker for the cabin or whatever.

I loved mine until one day in 1988, when I was out of town for the weekend, one (or both) of my room mates played the music a little too loud, and blew the paper cones to smithereens.

After we got married we spent some of out gift money on new speakers... the Boston Acoustics A-60 bookshelf speakers.

They sounded good enough for us, and lasted until about 1995. Six years is not long for a pair of speakers, but that they broke down is not their fault:

Our Onkyo TX-82 had a fatal flaw: When the power tripped and the receiver restarted it always reverted back to Radio mode. The levels of radio were a magnitude or three higher than the levels coming from the CD player. So if we were last playing CDs, and the power turned off and back on, the radio would start playing at insane levels. More than once did I have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night and run downstairs to turn off the stereo. One day we were not home when this happened. The Electric company turned off the neighborhoods power to do some work. It was a Sunday and we were out of town. When we got back, all I heard coming from the stereo was a bunch of buzzing. The woofer cones on both speakers were tattered, and one voice coil was seized up. We replaced those speakers (insurance actually paid) with some Boston Acoustics CR-9s which were bigger and better. Those are still going strong now in 2021+, and I think they are audiophile grade speakers (no matter what you say).

Boston Acoustic A60

Boston Acoustic CR9 (still going strong but not my main speakers)

Batmobile

2015-10-12T20:16:52Z

Batman tm DC comics 1989

Pioneer SK-31

2014-09-14T22:51:50Z

My Pioneer SK-31 finally sent to a goodwill store. One like this served my music needs from 1983 until the tape drive mechanism failed around 10 years later... The tape buttons big feature was that with the slightest touch, the buttons/levers would suck themselves all the way down. There was a servo mechanism that required the slightest trigger push to take over the job. I guess I rewound and FFd far too often for the mechanism and the steel on steel action wore grooves in the parts. Tolerances slipped and eventually they stopped working altogether.

Then it was relegated to garage duty for another 20 years for the radio. Should have kept it for that, but that's another story. There's an identical machine at work, used in one of the labs as their radio source, so once in a while I go in there and give it a pat on the the head. I think it's my favorite piece of gear I've ever had. It served me well.

(img source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aka_peabody/3423308480/in/photostream/)

WIRED

2014-09-14T22:38:22Z

TWENTY years of WIRED magazine...

My first issue:

The rest here

My 70's comb

2014-02-22T21:58:39Z

A permanent resident of my back pocket in the 70's/80's.

This shouldn't be here. It found its way into my travel bag and entered regular use again, so... not dustbin material.

Me Ol' name badge

2014-02-22T20:22:27Z

This is from my last job before my career change.

Weird Playing Cards/ Keys/ Mac Pamphlets

2014-02-22T20:17:58Z

Weird shaped UMBRA playing cards in an oval plastic carrying case,

Orphaned keys from old cars, dorm rooms, bike locks, padlocks, etc...

Pre-INTEL and LCD screen Macintosh product pamphlets.

Battery from Polariod Land Camera

2014-02-22T20:14:07Z

AKA No. 532 or DA1308A 3V battery with connectors at both ends

Early Internet Mouse-shaped Mint Tin

2014-02-22T20:11:53Z

Minus the mints... they were good

1995 — My First Website

2014-02-21T04:54:07Z

In the beginning Tim Berners-Lee created the internet. Now the Internet was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the servers, and the content creators were hovering over the keyboards. And Tim Berners-Lee said, “Let there be content,” and there was content. Tim saw that the content was good, and he separated the content from the darkness.

But, I asked, where do I display my Photo albums? As a content creator it was up to me to create, and so I did.

I wish now that I had patented them.

The handwritten text on the albums are my own handwriting, but come from a font I made with Fontographer 4.
The photo albums are scans of some of our real photo albums.
Many changes were made to this site over the next 5 years until Blogger, Flickr, and other Web 2.0 services came along.

The collected works of the Calgary Herald — September 1951

2014-02-21T03:59:23Z

Not Gone But Available to a Good Home

I'm glad I don't AGE exponentially

2014-02-21T03:37:59Z

Twenty years ago you could TRIPLE your hard drive space by installing a 340 MB MONSTER drive.

Today the family has 500GB hard drives in their laptops — equivalent to 1,500 of those 340MB drives, and I have a 1TB drive in mine... equiv. to 3,000 of those monster drives of twenty years ago. Those two little sticks of RAM in this picture have 25x more capacity than the Super Huge 340!

Meanwhile, twenty years ago — I was twenty years younger. Just sayin'.

a dinosaur

2014-02-20T23:31:55Z

A PowerPC 6100/66 AV Macintosh

2014-02-20T23:30:24Z

This is the guts of my first computer, a 1994 PowerPC 6100/66mhz AV Mac. The AV part meant it supported dual monitors with an extra video card (the top left plate in the photo). This photo is missing the CDRom drive front center. As far as I know this computer still works. I kept it around because it still ran Fontographer... but now that I have FontLab for Mac and PC, this computer is out the door.

Coffee Soaked White Mac Keyboard

2014-02-20T23:22:08Z

A golden retriever

2014-02-20T23:19:44Z

Sammy (and while we're at it, Milo, a shitzu/bichon cross, and three cats Boots, Oreo, and Vinny). All died of old age or natural causes.

How a flatbed scanner works

2014-02-20T04:40:55Z

I took apart an older HP scanner. I had to see how it worked. As the scanner head moves across the glass plate, mirrors and a lens focuses a strip on the image onto a 1 x 600 pixel image sensor about 1/4 of the width of the scanner bed.

lens/scanner head/sensor

My first steps on the internet

2014-02-20T04:16:21Z

1994:

I joined Mactropolis, the Macintosh online community in Winnipeg. Shortly thereafter I joined CompuServe and then Apple eWorld.

1995:

I joined the internet proper and left Mactropolis and Compuserve. eWorld shut down abruptly.

My first email address / My first internet account payment receipt / Somebody had to do it first

Syquest Removable Disk Drive

2014-02-20T04:07:51Z

Before USB the only option for external storage larger than the 1.4 MB floppy were Syquest (Zip Drives) and Bernoulli (Iomega) drives. I had one of each drive and multiple disks of about 10-20 MB each. This is the motherboard of a zip drive.

2010 Winter Olympics Coke Can

2014-02-20T03:30:12Z

It tasted funny

My Cologne Map

2014-02-20T03:08:33Z

I'm still looking for the perfect one.

In this age of 'scent sensitivity' the 'Future' outlook was pretty accurate. No daily wear cologne for me anymore.

http : / / farm6.staticflickr.com/5245/5240417416_71ddae3e9e.jpg

The Sensor from My First Digital Camera

2014-02-20T02:49:27Z

Canon A300

My Canon A300 was my Maui camera in 2005 - which was also my Canon T90's last holiday... But I'll never get rid of the T90 as long as it still works!