When a captcha causes you to have a semantic debate about whether or not a motorcycle and dirt bike count as "bicycles". (I decided no, and clicked on "skip".)
Windows has shipped with 3 main GUIs (or shells). The first was Windows 1’s (1985) text-based MS-DOS Executive. This was replaced in Windows 3 (1990) by the icon-based Program Manager. Later, Windows 95 (1995) debuted Explorer, which included the famous Start Menu & Taskbar. 💪
Another web site that's a time capsule: Computer Video Editing magazine shut down in December 2004, but their web site is still online. https://www.computervideo.net/
One thing I didn't mention is that those "professional" video conversion services that are using this piece of junk are also using it to capture footage from MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders, through composite -- because apparently it's too hard to learn what a FireWire cable is. 🤦♂️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NuquTDhjGY
so for the past month i've been leaving old vhs movies on in the background while i work
i noticed that several tapes had faded audio that got worse over the course of the film, with a lot of humming in the background, to the point of being inaudible after a while. a few web searches suggested either a worn out vhs tape (which I feared), or a poorly tracked vcr (I adjusted the tracking, which didn't improve anything)
i did notice that my older JVC vcr never had the "stereo" light on when playing back movies, and had a suspicion:
so holy crap, til: most VHS tapes past a certain age have two audio tracks: an analog mono track, and a stereo hi-fi track
when the vcr can't track the stereo hi-fi track properly, it switches to the analog mono track on the edge of the tape.
my vcr was always downgrading to the analog track, which on several (ex-rental) tapes had degraded due to mishandling and abuse (being at the edge of the tape path)
i picked up a Sony SLV-778HF today for $20 just to see if switching VCRs would make a difference.
holy COW is this a huge improvement over my old 80s JVC vcr! not only did it pick up the stereo hi-fi track on all of the "bad" tapes perfectly, but it improved the video so much that it looks like a dvd.
@vga256 I've also encountered some homemade recording which only have a Hi-Fi audio track -- no linear audio at all. So if you played them on a mono VCR, or one with misaligned/worn out heads that defaulted to the linear track, you'd just get silence.
It somehow escaped my notice until now that in 2021, the FCC finally allowed CB radio users to transmit FM as well as AM and SSB. In addition to reducing static and improving audio quality, it also serves to filter out all the truckers yelling vile language into overmodulated microphones. https://www.ccjdigital.com/technology/article/15114521/fcc-approves-fm-mode-for-cb-radios
@dannotdaniel@TechConnectify You're thinking of MicroDrives. But there were also 1.8-inch hard drives, used in portable media players and camcorders. Or, if you were Creative, you just slapped in a normal 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, to make a rather chunky MP3 player, about the same size as a portable CD player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPb6pzAM7mA
The first female Rock 'n' Roll singer is unfortunately someone you've probably never heard of: Bonnie Lou. She had her first rock hit in 1955. Bonnie passed away in 2015 at the age of 91. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabPMT3Dm-A
My favorite e-waste place (Earthbound Recycling in Eureka MO - I don’t even live in the state but I go when visiting family) has an in-box IBM 5150 with MDA monitor and keyboard. It looks like the bottom tier spec one that doesn’t even have floppy drives.
No damage from the earthquake here in NJ, although the office building I was in at the time had quite a shaking and was temporarily evacuated. Then later at home there was an aftershock which I initially thought was something falling because it was just one quick jolt.
I'm typing this from an SSD that I took out of a PC that died on me, and put in another PC with a different motherboard, CPU, graphics card, etc., which is not possible. But after a few BSODs, Safe Mode boots, and many driver installations later, it's now running as good as old.
