Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Dr. Zoidberg
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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That's a nice looking keyboard.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:30 am Picked up boxed copies of ole Deer Hunter 1&2.
Does it have a russian roulette minigame?

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Dr. Zoidberg wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:35 pm That's a nice looking keyboard.
I've been using it as my main keyboard since I bought it. I did something with it that you all will probably think is pretty weird. :olol: It is pretty hard for me to keep a keyboard clean and looking nice. This is because I'm always smoking while I'm on the computer. So eventually ashes end up getting all over it and down in it. So for this one I covered it in plastic wrap! I know it sounds dumb but it actually works just fine as a cover.
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I know it isn't an expensive keyboard but hey I like it and want to try to keep it clean since I plan on using it as my main keyboard for a long time.

Speaking of keyboards I picked up another one last night. A Saitek Eclipse II for $2.

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It is a really nice keyboard. Especially for only $2! I looked them up on Ebay and it looks like they regularly sell for about $40. This is the nicest keyboard I've ever found in their random keyboard pile. I looked it up to see around what year it was made and it apparently they were released in 2006. 15 years old but looks like it could have came out yesterday imo.

* I just realized that in addition to the blue lights that I showed in my pic you can also change it to red or purple. I was excited when I found that out because I had no idea you could change the color! :rofl:
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 2:37 pm I covered it in plastic wrap!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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So I recently started another play through of my favorite RPG Skies of Arcadia. I originally played the Dreamcast version but nowadays I've got to go with the Gamecube version since it has so much extra content plus it cuts down on the random battles a bit. I am of course running it in Dolphin. Anyways I was searching for Skies of Arcadia and found that the soundtrack is available on record.

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I thought wow that would be cool to have since it is one of my favorite games. Then I saw that the price is over $100, and it isn't $100 cool lol. At least not to me. So I figured I would make my own Skies of Arcadia soundtrack. I can't make my own records but I can record my own 8-tracks! I've already got the first tape recorded and it sounds pretty good. To record it I am just running the line out from the sound card on PC to the record input on the 8-track recorder.

So the sound quality is fine but what I really need to do is make some quality labels for the tapes. As it is now it is just the SOA soundtrack recorded on and old polka 8-track. A custom label would really make them seem like a cool collectible.

If anyone here who is more creative than me is ever bored and feels like making an SOA 8-track label for me to use well that would be just fantastic! I'm going to attempt to make my own once I've got all the tapes recorded. It is a pointless little project that I felt like doing just for fun!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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I posted back on April 15th that I had bought this phone for $15

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The place I bought it from had a whole box of them and you got to pick which one you wanted. This one looked to be the best one so I picked it. Months go by and nobody else is buying any of their $15 a piece phones so they listed the 8 they had left for $30. At that price I couldn't pass them up. That is only $3.75 per phone! :olol:

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So what in the world am I going to do with all these phone? Idk, maybe use them in a commercial where "operators are standing by" :osmile:
Really though I'll probably end up selling most of them. I don't know what they go for on ebay as I've not been able to find one. The brand is Stromberg Carlson and while there are many Stromberg rotary phones for sale there are none with the multiple lines. I figure I can sell one or two of them and probably get my money back.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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set them all up as intercoms!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Dude, with all those phones, you could set up your own Pizza King!

Cal will be the only one to get that joke, but if he doesn’t I will be very sad.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:01 pm Dude, with all those phones, you could set up your own Pizza King!

Cal will be the only one to get that joke, but if he doesn’t I will be very sad.
I would like to tell you I got it right away and didn't have to google it but unfortunately that is a lie! The closest one to me is a little over 20 miles in a direction I never go. In my town we had Ernie's Pizza for many many years. A small little locally owned place, it was pretty good. But then a Pizza Hut came to my very small town and that was the end of Ernies. For some reason a new pizza place just opened up a few weeks ago called "Cecil's Slice of Pie" but with it being in a small town that already has a Pizza Hut I can't see them lasting very long.

Now onto the pickups! I got a nice pair of speakers yesterday. They are Soundesign Model S38SK. I can't find any information about them online. As far as the internet is concerned they don't even exist! But they do exist and I have the photo to prove it.

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They look pretty damn nice imo. I haven't been able to really test them out though. I mean I hooked them up and they work but I haven't been able to crank them up since it was after midnight when I hooked them up and my girlfriend is asleep. I got them for a pretty good price which was FREE as they were given to me! They came with a receiver too. I'll put up a pic of it later but what I'm mostly interested in is the speakers.

The other thing I picked up today is a 1983-1984 top loader VCR. I know I know, how many VCRs does one Calavera need? I couldn't pass up a top loader though! Here is a not great pic of it.

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The price on it was $8. The most amazing thing about this nearly 40 year old VHS machine is that it sill works!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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So while they big speakers look pretty cool they aren't even close to as good as the 1997 Phillips/Magnavox speakers I had hooked up before, and those are much smaller. So I switched them back. The Phillips speakers on the back say they are 45 watt and I notice the big Sounddesign speakers say they are..... 5 watts?! 5 watts? Seriously? That is it?

They sound fine enough but there is hardly any bass at all. They would be great for a retro setup even if they were just for display. I thought they were going to sound awesome! So at this point I'm more impressed with the VCR. I've only ever come across 1 other top loader and it doesn't work. I just find it really impressive that it is nearly 40 years old and works just fine.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Those speakers do look nice with that setup.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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WTF, how do you even power speakers that big with only 5 watts?

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 8:23 pm WTF, how do you even power speakers that big with only 5 watts?
I can't believe they are only 5 watts! They seem like something that would come out today as a retro stereo. You know that crap that kind of gives the look of an older device but is made very cheap and has nowhere near the performance of the original device. I feel like I'm missing something and they can't actually only be 5 watts but it says it right there on the back of them.

Here are the speakers I'm using

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I don't know if 45W is considered a decent rating or not but these completely blow away the big ones! They have very good bass where as the big ones had hardly any at all. I used to have a subwoofer hooked up with them but then I switched to my JVC RX-701V receiver and it doesn't have an output for a subwoofer. After I hooked them up I realized I didn't really need the sub as they have plenty of bass for me without one.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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A few recent pickups from Wednesday August 25th 2021.

First is a Audiovox VBP 2000 portable VCR with built-in screen and speakers.

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I actually already own one of these. It is most likely posted in this thread or the lost one from before we lost our posts. (Luckily our usernames survived!) I actually used it in the car a couple of times. Once when I was going to Microcenter which is about 70 miles one way I had it hooked up and had Back to the Future 1&2 playing. I had the audio from it hooked into the car radio via a cassette to 3.5mm adapter and had the VCR itself positioned in a way where I could glance down and see the video if I wanted to. I was mostly using it just for fun but after that I put it up and when I got it out a few years later it would no longer work properly. It still powers up but it eats up the tape. This one was only $3.50 and works great. At that price I couldn't pass it up!

Next is a Zoomer Kitty!

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I actually have bought one of these in the past as well. The previous one was orange and was missing the tail and one of the legs was kind of broken. I ended up giving it to my girlfriend's dad and he loved it. He would use it to mess with his real cat. lol This one was only $2.80 and has the tail and works perfectly. For $2.80 why not? I plan on using it on my cat to see how she reacts!

Third we have what I think is the neatest item.

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An old General Electric cassette player/recorder! I know what you're thinking, "What is so interesting about that? You probably already own like 10 just like it" And you are right. There isn't all that much interesting about the machine itself, except that it still works and the belt is still good despite it probably being around 40 years old. The interesting bit is what was attached to it.

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A TEL-300 Telephone Recording Control. I have never seen one of these before and couldn't find any information about it online. It has two wires that go from the TEL-300 into the cassette players Microphone and Remote input. It also has a third wire which is a standard phone cord. I haven't tried it yet but I plan on testing it out soon. Since it has a cord that goes into the remote on the cassette player I wonder if it automatically starts recording when a call is received then shuts back off after the person hangs up? That would be really cool and would have been quite an interesting device to own back when everybody had a land line.

*UPDATE I tested out the phone recording device and it works great! I don't have a real landline but I do have one of those Straight Talk home phone boxes that use standard phones. It has two phone jacks on it. So one jack goes to the cordless phone and the other one is plugged into the phone recorder which is plugged into the cassette recorder. As soon as the phone is picked up it starts recording and then when it is hung up it stops. It may be old technology but I think it is pretty dang cool! I would have had a lot of fun with something like this back in the 90s.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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So I've been messing around with a couple of old video projectors lately. I picked up a Compaq MP1800 in the original bag with remote and all the cables for $7.
Not my picture just one I found.
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I plugged it in at the store and it came on and was displaying "check video cable" so alright it works! I was excited to get it home and mess with it. I get home and plug it in and it displays the "check video cable" message again. I hook a VCR up to the composite input just to test it out and I'm not getting any video. From then on the check cable message doesn't appear. The lamp turns on but nothing is actually displayed. I tried all the different video connections and could never get an image. Now when it turns on it shuts itself off after 30 seconds to 1 minute or so. The lamp comes on and it seems like it is starting up then at one point it seems like the lamp tries to get brighter and that is when it shuts off and all the buttons flash amber. My guess is maybe a bad capacitor but it seems like there is no real way to take it apart to get to the internals. Oh well it was only $7 and honestly the bag alone is worth that.

So since I was wanting to mess around with a projector I went and get one I had bought somewhere around 2013 or so. So about 8 years ago. It is a Sony VPL-VW10HT, when I first bought it I tried it out and the image had black lines through it and it said to replace the lamp. So I put it away after that and didn't mess with it again until now. So I set it up and hooked a DVD player into and yep same problem black lines and the lamp message. I kept messing with it and I noticed that after it runs for awhile(15 minutes or so) the lines go away. Sometimes the image is clear after that and sometimes it has these yellowish lines going vertical in the picture but they aren't as noticeable as the black ones. So it surprisingly works. I hooked my modded Xbox to it since it has component inputs and it looks OKish but the colors are off. It seems like the left side of the picture has too much green and the right side has too much red. I don't know much about projectors but I doubt these issues are related to a worn out lamp and is most likely some kind of electronic problem. Here is a picture of a similar model projector.

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It is much older than I thought. It was first released in September 2000 for a whopping $6,000! Apparently it was one of the first projectors to do 16:9 and support 720P and 1080i.

I uploaded a video of it in action showing how it starts out with the black bars and gets better after it runs for awhile. You can really notice the left side green ride side red issue I mentioned when it gets to Rocky.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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$6k, wow! Amazing how pricey some of that stuff used to be.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Picked up a Sony STR-DE135 Receiver for only $4! I got it from a local flea market. It looks like somebody pulled it out of a garage or something and didn't know anything about it or how to test it so just put $4 on it. As you can see in the first pic it was pretty dirty.

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But a quick cleaning and it looks fine

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I just hooked it up to test it out and it works great. You'd never find one at Goodwill anymore for that much. If they had that exact receiver covered in dirt and everything it would be at least $15. Recently a local Goodwill moved into a new location. The new store is where a JCPenney used to be. I see no reason why they needed to move but it is a much bigger location. I went in for the first time last week and yeah they had a ton of stuff. Loads of electronics but there was one big problem. The prices were insane! Nobody is going to pay that much for that shit. 80s VCR for $15 which I can almost guarantee doesn't work. They had this need looking cassette radio but it was I think $7 which isn't horrible except that it didn't work and the cassette deck was filled with dirt and pet hair!

I ended up buying one thing that was overpriced but not terribly so and that was an old TV boombox.
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It works fine but it didn't in the condition they were selling it in. When I plugged it in at first it made this horrible high pitched squeak from the speakers and the volume slider did nothing but give loud bursts of static. I took the switches off and cleaned them out with contact cleaner and then it worked fine. If they are wanting top dollar for this old shit then they need to do stuff like before selling it.
They had some surround receiver for 15 or 20 dollars that used speakers with a proprietary hook up and no none of the speakers were included. It was basically worthless.

I went back another day and all that electronic stuff was still there. I did end up buying a few records and laserdiscs. They had the laserdiscs mixed in with the records. I had a total of 12 records and laserdiscs and they are $1 a piece. The person ringing up the stuff was new and rang them up as 45 records so they were only 69 cents a piece. I didn't correct her since this is shit somebody was going to throw away anyways.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Nice!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera(Jan 8,2021) wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 5:29 pm
I also picked up a pair of Logitech G430 headphones. They were $5 ($3.50 after discount) I have to say they sound pretty damn good!

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I found another pair of decent headphones today for $5. Focusrite Scarlett HP60 MKII

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They sound decent but I think I prefer the G430s. Still for only $5 they are nice to have as a secondary set.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Not bad for $5.

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