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another early morning electronics flea market here in silicon valley (West Valley College). we're so early the sellers haven't arrived yet.

oh cool an Intel 286 design kit!

TDS 420. smokes when powered on

board test fixture. I'm wondering what those tiny boards are in the lid. maybe temperature sensors?

old school router with a floppy drive

straight from Fallout

the smart clapper

neat old film movie camera

kind of a chaotic energy going on here

neat gauges that you might expect to find in a power plant

a Heathkit calculator with a Panaplex display

this card comes apart in two halves. very odd

wonder what these boards were from

oh a keyboard but just the board

vintage milk carton

some sort of early Apple chip kit.

expensive camera and lens

huh a cable for a NeXT machine

this toaster gets along with bread like a house on fire

caution: radiation from polonium is dangerous if the said material is ingested or inhaled. do not

piles of calculators

@tubetime Trying to peel my way down to the ultimate meaning of this post.

@tubetime

I think it’s legally old enough to smoke.

@tubetime Oh wow, that's really beautiful

@tubetime had to read it three times because I really got stuck at thinking like what the hell is a “heaLthkit” calculator 😆

@tubetime I heard you like cards, so I put a card on your card so you can card while you card

@tubetime neat, an antistatic brush

@tubetime I think that says "solid material" not "said material". Although I wonder what distinction the word might be trying to make. Is it safe to inhale and eat the dust? Or should we vaporize it first? :-) Yikes.

@tubetime Those are great antistatic brushes. I used one daily in the graphics biz in the 80s.

@tubetime I need stickers of that polonium warning to put on everything.

@tubetime
ooh... we've been using an old flopper for ages. IMO it makes the best toast!

@tubetime hey! My parents toaster!
Of course they didn’t go get a normal one. It was that thing!

@tubetime Those are actually in short supply!

@tubetime I would have to go home with that.

@proton @tubetime still has the San Jose Mercury News inventory tag on the other side

@tubetime Always wonder about the stories behind stuff like this. I mean someone assembled that and likely used the heck out of it. Those things were cheaper than a manufactured one, but still not cheap!

@tubetime I also have bunch of such gauges.

Not sure what to do with them, but maybe hook them up to Home Assistant to display some important data.

@tubetime this needs to be preserved if only for the excellent fonts

@tubetime wow! This would have been incredible for keeping track of multiple shows at the same time

@tubetime @lanodan Wow does that unit pass through power too???

@tubetime I wonder if there is some award if you can use all those plugs at once

@tubetime I was always fascinated by the backs of AV receivers..

@tubetime
Looks like they only used it to listen to AM radio.

@tubetime for the home theater geek who has everything!

@tubetime I don’t miss component video connectors, but back then I didn’t have to restart TV and components over and over again like today because HDMI is terrible

@tubetime So many years ago, when all I had in my bedroom at home with my parents was a little black and white TV, a friend offered me a little portable color TV that had been sitting outside under a covered porch with lots of other equipment for years. So it looked reasonable and I took it home. Inside seemed OK on cursory inspection.

I turned it on. It worked. For some definition of worked. It also had a terrible burning odor, and a black widow spider crawled out.

I didn't use the set for long.