On 12/03/2011 13:11, Adrian C wrote:
On 12/03/2011 10:45, Adrian Brentnall wrote:

For anybody who's interested - the electronics part of things is this
Velleman kit

http://www.velleman.eu/distributor/p...iew/?id=380100

which provides an easy way to carry 8gb (for me) or up to 32gb of mp3
music built into a small speaker cabinet with a dryfit battery -
giving an operating time of hundreds of hours on one recharge.

Part of my Market kit - so needs to be fairly rugged g

Probably not as rugged (uses a hard drive), and the items for this
project have long since dried up, but I made one of these before the
Apple iPod came out. It still works today and the playback sound quality
is rather good...

http://www.pjrc.com/mp3/

Looks like the forerunner of the Vellerman kit....
Same principle though....

Not sure hdd would be such a good idea - the kit needs to stand up to
the 's*d it - I'm cold, it's raining, there's not customers and I'm
going home' syndrome - which tends to results in a rather less 'careful
& precise' attitude to packing the van at the end of a market... g

Same reason pro band stuff ends up in enormous flight-cases -
your average roadie feels the same at 3am after the gig!

Recently I've started collecting highend 80s ghettoblasters. I feel one
could do with an MP3 heart transplant with the above gubbins.

The velleman kit works very well.
It's possible to 'program' it - so, on switch-on, my module just sets up
the usual parameters, chooses a track at random, and starts playing
(which is what I wanted it to do)
The dryfit battery also lasts 'forever' between charges -
Mk1 of the kit used a little portable MP3 player, the same speakers and
battery and a dual-ic PA - but the MP3 was always needing recharging....

With the new kit, recharging is so infrequent that I'm going to add a
volt-meter to remind me to do it !



Another DIY project on the back burner, is a ghettoblaster made of wood,
decent speakers and a car stereo for the electronics, or more probably -
the processing and storage guts of a laptop.

nice!


There is a hip hop / martial arts film staring Forest Whitaker, "Ghost
Dog: The Way of the Samurai", that features one of those DIY efforts. It
looks kinda cool.


Haven't seen that
Adrian

On 12/03/2011 14:29, Frank Erskine wrote:

Radio Shack was their house brand, IIRC, and still is on the US of A.

Visited one of their shops in the US sometime ago. Seemed a bit low on
peg boards displays, and they were selling a lot of other brands and
generally looking a bit bland. The large catalogue is online, and
electronic bits are to order & expensive ;-(

As is (was?) also Realistic and Archer.


Got quite a nice "Realistic" 3-way tape deck source/monitor switch
discounted when they were shutting up here, fully regret not buying more
as it's a useful bit of kit still in use that I've never seen cheaply
elsewhere.

In me youth, I remember gawking at their catalogs and flyers, at
wonderful 'badge engineered' stuff. Sometimes it wasn't hard to spot the
original manufacturer - I remember Awia made a few of the cassette decks.

Oh, yes - Like most spotty kids of the time, I was a member of the
'battery club'. Free battery once a month :-)

An interesting Train spotter fact ...

The Tandy Subway
http://www.flickr.com/photos/limebye...7623394182793/

--
Adrian C

On 12/03/2011 15:17, Adrian Brentnall wrote:
On 12/03/2011 13:11, Adrian C wrote:

There is a hip hop / martial arts film staring Forest Whitaker, "Ghost
Dog: The Way of the Samurai", that features one of those DIY efforts. It
looks kinda cool.


Haven't seen that
Adrian

Here's a picture of that box.

http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/look/look-ghost-dogs-car-stereo-turned-boom-box-058118

Ok, on secong glance it looks a bit ruff 'n' ready - but me likes the
concept.

--
Adrian C

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:22:03 +0000, Adrian C
wrote:


Oh, yes - Like most spotty kids of the time, I was a member of the
'battery club'. Free battery once a month :-)

I've still got a Tandy battery club card!

--
Frank Erskine

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:22:03 +0000, Adrian C wrote:

On 12/03/2011 14:29, Frank Erskine wrote:

Radio Shack was their house brand, IIRC, and still is on the US of A.

Visited one of their shops in the US sometime ago. Seemed a bit low on
peg boards displays, and they were selling a lot of other brands and
generally looking a bit bland. The large catalogue is online, and
electronic bits are to order & expensive ;-(

"Rat Shack" is quite a popular name. I still smile whenever I walk past
our local one - most of the inventory seems to be phones. I don't even
know if they have a components section - the store's very narrow and
deep, and I've never dared venture into the back.

As is (was?) also Realistic and Archer.

Got quite a nice "Realistic" 3-way tape deck source/monitor switch
discounted when they were shutting up here, fully regret not buying more
as it's a useful bit of kit still in use that I've never seen cheaply
elsewhere.

I'd forgotten that name. I think I still have a Realistic reverb unit in
storage back in the UK.

cheers

Jules

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:29:11 +0000, Frank Erskine
wrote:

As is (was?) also Realistic and Archer.

"As is" is was what they put on the sales receipt for damaged
packaging / discounted / returned / cosmetic defect items.

I think they thought that it somehow exempted them from the Sales of
Goods Act or whatever was around in the 70''s


--

On Mar 12, 10:26*am, John Williamson
wrote:
D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
John Williamson wrote:
Terry Casey wrote:

I thought you were talking about potentiometers - not wafer switches!

I was.

Though I remember, possibly wrongly, both being available.

Yeah, same here. Although mention of tandy got me wondering. I did use the
little tandy store on the corner of bank street in Ashford - so it's possible
I got something from there (they sold RS stuff IIRC?)

Radio Shack was their house brand, IIRC, and still is on the US of A.
Tandy was the UK shop branding.

Used to be a little cave of electronic goodness when I was a kid - with a
couple of keen guys behind the counter who were always willing to help
and spend time with kids who wanted random electronics components.

Same with the one in Stafford.

They went broke shortly before Maplin atarted to grow from their
original Southend area store and mail order operation.

Tandy shops were still very much in existence until well into the 80s,
and after Maplin started expanding.

I suspect even now that Maplin only sell components because the other
stuff subsidises them and the original enthusiasts are still in charge
at head office.

Sold out years ago, that's when it went downhill. I gave up on Maplin
after experiencing their first attempt at on-line ordering.

MBQ