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- 07-27-2008, 08:25 PM #1The BobGuest
4phun <[email protected]> amazed us all with the following in
news:33a91ac8-1d3b-4705-a226-219ef5440e88@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com:
> Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
No.
› See More: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
- 07-27-2008, 09:04 PM #2LarryGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:33a91ac8-1d3b-4705-a226-
[email protected]:
> As a ham for many years over the last four decades I and that ability
> with some rather expensive wide band ham transceivers, then in the
> last few years I had satellite radio which brought some of that into
> the car. I now leave the satellite radio at home and when its
> subscription expires next January I am dropping it all together.
>
KI4JE? Is that you?
It says on KI4JE's ULS record there was no prior callsign before 2004. Did
you have previous calls and broken service??
Hey, you gotta put up that FruitFone toy and get off your dead ass to study
for Extra! They JUST changed all the questions in all the question banks
so don't buy anyone's obsolete study guides with the old question banks in
them.
Let's get that Advanced upgraded....far more important than arguing over
iPhones.
73 DE W4 Charleston South Carolina
(My pix on QRZ is what happens when you run 70KW on 40 meters...a long
story...(c
Never knew you were a ham, before....
Old fart....You're a year older than me!
- 07-27-2008, 09:59 PM #3LarryGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:33a91ac8-1d3b-4705-a226-
[email protected]:
> The iPhone isn't the first device to bring Internet radio to people on
> the go.
Far from it....We've been streaming Radio and TV for many years.
You'll soon find TV in the USA means only locally generated news because
of the DRM/Copyright insanity of the United States Corporation. Noone
is allowed to broadcast anything legally.
I'm sure on iPhone this is another by-the-month revenue streamer....
I'm having great fun with a new TV playlist that just came out for
KMPlayer on the N800 called World99TV, a KM Player plugin playlist
that's actually an app that upgrades itself from our Application Manager
with the rest. There's some great news stations like Sky News in the
UK, France 24 (in English and French), Russia Today in English, etc. on
the huge list.
A great video music TV station like MTV is from Russia called Mad TV:
http://mfile.akamai.com/45346/live/reflector.59936.asx
which sends you to the server's selected reflector. It even plays on
the slow EVDO sellphone data link, which most broadband TV stations
won't do, overrunning the 1Mbps pretty bad. Mad TV plays a crazy mix of
rap, hiphop, rock, some Russian groups, all run by VJs. They have a
constant contest where you text message your selection from the
finalists to be the next Mad TV VJ. The videos are pretty nice, but
with a few boobs showing that wouldn't make it on American TV...(c;
Russia Today is easy:
http://www.russiatoday.com/
Test your link to Russia on a Russian server with RTR Planeta:
mms://video.rfn.ru/rtr-planeta This one makes the tablet really busy
with its higher definition video sucking up most of the CPU cycles
rendering it and just crashes EVDO data links. They're playing a movie
in Spanish with Russian subtitles as I type this connected to my wifi.
KMPlayer lets you see a resizeable picture in a window, then when you
find the station you want, you press the full screen button on top of
the tablet to bring mplayer, which is the app rendering the picture, up
to full screen, adjusted to fit the full tablet screen in landscape
mode. It's amazing how clear the pictures are...but sometimes a little
jerky on the really broadband TV stations. Mplayer adjusts to processor
overrun by playing the station in audio priority with frame skipping.
It doesn't crash, but you see a series of still pictures depending on
how bad the overrunning is....(c; The more complex the movement, the
more jerky it is. Then, it seems to catch up for a period until the
next really fast moving action overruns the processor. Planeta is 8
hours ahead of us. They just put the clock on prior to midnight and are
now playing the Russian National Anthem with the new tricolored flag at
23:56.
I don't know how many stations are on World99TV, now. I got a new
upgrade and see more stations on it just the other day.
Streamtuner is one of the many radio players from Linux ported to the
tablet. It automates playing Xiph and Shoutcast without the browser
loading the processor. There's thousands of stations and it has its own
Bookmark system to save your favorites to for instant access. Pressing
play and Streamtuner links the station automatically to mplayer. There
are a few TV stations on there, too, but it's mostly radio.
Man, the news just came on and there are some major floods in Russia on
the News....right up over the rooflines on houses! Those poor
people.... Aha! a huge earth dam failed! Everyone downstream got
washed away!...bureaucratic screwup I'll bet.
- 07-27-2008, 10:00 PM #4LarryGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
The Bob <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
> 4phun <[email protected]> amazed us all with the following in
> news:33a91ac8-1d3b-4705-a226-219ef5440e88@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com:
>
>> Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
>
>
> No.
>
Shoutcast pretty much did that 15 years ago....(c;
- 07-28-2008, 02:50 AM #5Guest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 27, 10:19*pm, 4phun <[email protected]> wrote:
> Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
Can a new embalming technology revolutionize death? Radio died in the
1960s, and it can't be resurrected. Radio, like television, used to be
programming supported by advertisements. Now it's advertisements
supported by the bare minimum programming required to make people tune
in. And in some cases - most of Clear Channel - even the so-called
"programming" is advertising - payola playlists. Satellite radio is a
ridiculous idea; how many subscribers would it really have if not for
bundle deals with new vehicles?
The only thing that keeps radio stations broadcasting is that drivers
can't watch TV (well, shouldn't watch TV anyway). I'd bet money that
driverless cars with TV sets at every seat position will come into
existence long before radio is "revolutionized" anywhere close to
being relevant again.
- 07-28-2008, 03:46 AM #64phunGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 27, 11:04*pm, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
> 4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:33a91ac8-1d3b-4705-a226-
> [email protected]:
>
> > As a ham for many years over the last four decades I and that ability
> > with some rather expensive wide band ham transceivers, then in the
> > last few years I had satellite radio which brought some of that into
> > the car. I now leave the satellite radio at home and when its
> > subscription expires next January I am dropping it all together.
>
> KI4JE? *Is that you?
>
> It says on KI4JE's ULS record there was no prior callsign before 2004. *Did
> you have previous calls and broken service??
>
> Hey, you gotta put up that FruitFone toy and get off your dead ass to study
> for Extra! *They JUST changed all the questions in all the question banks
> so don't buy anyone's obsolete study guides with the old question banks in
> them.
>
> Let's get that Advanced upgraded....far more important than arguing over
> iPhones.
>
> 73 DE W4 Charleston South Carolina
> (My pix on QRZ is what happens when you run 70KW on 40 meters...a long
> story...(c
>
> Never knew you were a ham, before....
>
> Old fart....You're a year older than me!
Yes I had previous call signs - all advanced for those years. I
remember listening to the first soviet satellite in the fifties on SW
using W3HEC radio. The EXTRA class required 20 WPM. I knew the theory.
I just never could achieve the degree of interest of say Tim We4U. His
attractive wife had to put up with some kids following her car while
holding up a sign with WE4U 2. Who needs a 4 digit call?
Fellow hams and I introduced the advantages of digital packet radio to
metro LE and emergency operations years ago during field day exercises
by operating packet next to their equipment using an old pre Nokia
800 tablet device, a Tandy Radio Shack 6 line 'computer', which was
state of the art for very small portable computing on that day.
Teletypes were favored for hard copy but too big to tote up there for
portable communications. My friends used Unix and CPM. Microsoft had a
basic language. I admired Apple but never bought one. Later Atari and
Amiga offered the best graphical interface. I sold a hacked Atari 800
for over a $1000 and a year or two later I would consider stuff like
that junk.
The reference to 2004 was when I merely renewed it for another ten. I
have lost interest in ham radio and only use it during severe weather.
This year I didn't even bother. I have mega bucks in radio equipment
(including several digital scanner radios) in my desk, garage and car;
in the car, it is in the trunk unused.
Cellular radio is a more practical link to NWS in Peachtree City.
Digital text on a iPhone is far less painful during an emergency and
digital works when AT&T's voice network is overloaded to the point of
being unusable . I have full Doppler radar maps, remote video, and
other neat stuff that only a year ago was impractical to carry at all
times. All that required my laptop. The iPhone is the first useful
inexpensive tiny substitute for a laptop, other than your N800.
IMHO a ham license means nothing today, it is too easy to obtain, just
as they have dumbed down our school system to pass those who can not
read or write.
Most of the hams I know have died or become inactive too - sonny boy.
- 07-28-2008, 04:01 AM #7Guest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 28, 5:45*am, "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> *[email protected] wrote:
> > Satellite radio is a ridiculous idea;
>
> Hardly.
>
> But you've never experienced it, so you wouldn't know.
What can you get on satellite radio that you can't get - with FULL
control of your playlists and no recurring fees - on your iPod?
I was given a Sirius radio with the "lifetime" subscription, turned it
on for a while, scanned the offerings, found nothing better than my
own playlist choices, and gave it away to someone else. Exactly as
with television: nothing worth tuning in.
- 07-28-2008, 06:30 AM #8LarryGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
[email protected] wrote in news:d89431f6-cf09-4e31-bca3-a80c257d6818
@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
> Can a new embalming technology revolutionize death? Radio died in the
> 1960s, and it can't be resurrected. Radio, like television, used to be
> programming supported by advertisements. Now it's advertisements
> supported by the bare minimum programming required to make people tune
> in. And in some cases - most of Clear Channel - even the so-called
> "programming" is advertising - payola playlists.
Radio has not fully collapsed into Clear Channel oblivion, yet. A good
case in point is a station online, and on 94.3FM in Seymour, Texas,
KSEY.
(If you want to listen to cowboy music, you need to be in cowboy
country.)
The station is owned by the son of the original owner, now, and he works
very hard to keep KSEY serving Seymour and his international internet
audience. Seymour, in turn, supports the station, wholeheartedly. The
mayor even has a spot welcoming the internet listeners and inviting them
to come to Seymour.
In the afternoon, after school lets out, the station is turned over to
the high school kids interested in broadcasting and they run it for a
few hours on regular shifts. The kids also run the station during all
kinds of high school sports programs by remote broadcast. It's very
amusing to listen to them fumbling their way through trying to keep
talking while the football team is standing around. (The Seymour girls,
recently, whupped up on a rival team in baseball. They had no trouble
making the audience excited during that game...(c
At night, the station runs on a classic country net many Texas radio
stations use, the best time to hear more music and less spots. The
station does very well in the day as there's quite a bit of local ads
and PSAs between songs. (By the way, lunch from Meals On Wheels is at
noon at the Senior Citizens Center and everyone is invited....$2.99
When was the last time your lunch was $2.99? Under 55 pays slightly
more.)
Give a listen to an old family-owned radio station run the old fashioned
way. It's only 24Kbps mono as the music is all mono from the old days
of Texas Swing and Hank Snow. Country music, not Redneck Rock...goes
with Lone Star Beer! There's a promo spot that says something like, "If
you don't hear it on the jukebox at your favorite bar, we don't play it
on KSEY."
http://www.radioksey.com/
Streaming is from Shoutcast's server farm in 4 formats with lots of
bandwidth. Streams 100% on Alltel EVDO, even in the boondocks.
That Texas drawl is still alive and very well in Seymour....(c;
- 07-28-2008, 07:19 AM #9LarryGuest
OT was Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:591a50ef-1c7e-4df4-97a3-
[email protected]:
> Fellow hams and I introduced the advantages of digital packet radio to
> metro LE and emergency operations years ago during field day exercises
> by operating packet next to their equipment using an old pre Nokia
> 800 tablet device, a Tandy Radio Shack 6 line 'computer', which was
> state of the art for very small portable computing on that day.
>
Wow. Ask around the packet bunch about the ROSE system. I owned the
packet ROSE digipeater in the Charleston area for many years, first atop
a telephone tower near St George, SC, then sharing a paging antenna fed
with serious hardline at 560' on top of a candelabra owned by Dial Page
in Moncks Corner, SC. It connected to the ROSE system in Augusta, 24/7
and we had solid links to Atlanta and beyond, if you knew how to connect
to it. My digipeater was also interconnected at my shack with "Network
105" on 14.105 Mhz packet, 24/7 at 500 watts to an omni 20M vertical on
a solid metal ground plane. VE8RCS, the northernmost amateur radio
station in the world, said my signals on Net105 were stronger than the
Japanese who dominated their reception.
There's a reason for being on Network 105. I was the first ASCII
teletype station in the 4th call district, being on the air 15 seconds
before it was legal to transmit ASCII at 110 baud, as fast as our
equipment would go at the time. We had a network of old RTTY ops who
conspired to put ASCII on HF and were all transmitting in our respective
call districts 15 seconds before it was legal. Until that point, noone
ventured above 14.100 into the "Canadian Phone Band" we were not allowed
to use SSB in by the reactionaries in the FCC controlled by the ARRL old
farts. That changed that day, dispite intense QRM from Canadians trying
to drive us out of the band on 14.105 Mhz. ASCII RTTY soon became
packet radio and is still being used just above 14.100 by everyone on HF
packet, today. The Canadians soon relented and joined the packet
community. VE1AMA started Network 105 as a common place for packeteers
to meet, a sort of calling channel to find friends monitoring the
frequency. It's still swapping packets, today.
When ROSE finally died out, WB4APR came on the scene with the APRS
navigation packet system. I was its first SC station from the 550'
tower covering from near Myrtle Beach to Savannah inland to Orangeburg
with APRS. At home, a 24 hour crossband link to 10.151 LSB, just barely
inside the 10 Mhz new ham band, provided worldwide APRS digipeating and
crossband digipeating to spread your position and info packets to the
planet. My 500W HF crossband digipeater was moved from Network 105 to
the new frequency the day my APRS station on VHF went on the air. It
remained on APRS for many years before I got bored with it. A local
club provides APRS digipeating and internet link to findu.com now.
The internet has replaced ham radio, here. There's just too much
fascinating new things to do on it. I only occasionally turn on my
station, listen to them STILL *****ing at each other about being on
someone's favorite frequency, fighting like kids in a sandbox, then I
turn it back off for another year, too disgusted to play. Flamers on
Usenet are rank amateurs compared to the drunken animals on 80 Meter
SSB...(c;
I gave all my packet stuff to some new ham kids years ago just getting
started. One of my favorite ham radio things to do is to give away
equipment from the dying ham generation to the next generation. Going
to a hamfest is LOTS more fun if you take a really expensive HF station
left by some ham that has died and display it at the hamfest's club
table with a signup sheet to find the "Youngest Licensed Ham" at the
fest. Noone has died, recently, but a few years ago I gave away a
$22,000 Kenwood station, HF/VHF/UHF/all modes from the AC plug to the
TH6DXX/4 VHF yagis/4 UHF yagis on top of a 70' crankup/tilt over tower
to a 14 year old boy near Columbia, SC. He was the youngest ham who
could lay his license in my hands, much to the dismay of some really
greedy old bastards who signed their names and calls to the list. Hell,
some of them were 70 years old! All hams should pass their stations to
the next generation of hams when they leave the shack for the last
time....It's only fitting. Ham radio isn't about collecting money at
hamfests.
73
Larry
PS - I used to take a 1500 watt Drake station to USS Yorktown (CV-10)
and operate the club station WA4USN from the hangar deck of the "world's
largest ground plane", one Saturday a month, to the delight of the Boy
Scouts from all over the country who were staying aboard. Lots of ham
radio badges to those kids resulted from the WA4USN operation. They
were most impressed by the sight of graphite-plated Amperex 3-500Z's
glowing a dull red running a kilowatt on RTTY on 20M...(c;
A couple of friends and I ran my home station, KN4IM at the time, in the
RTTY Roundup, single station, multi-op, high power (1500W). We set a
new SC contact record which stands today, were 1st place in SC and the
whole Division and took 9th place on the whole planet.....with a
Butternut HF9VX vertical mounted in the center of my metal mobile home
roof ground plane....no towers, no beams....(c;
POWER IS OUR FRIEND!
Don't forget - RF IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!
- 07-28-2008, 07:57 AM #10Guest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 28, 9:36*am, "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Where did you get all your music, anyway? *You bought it? *Aha. *Soyou
> DID spend the money.
I rarely listen to music. I have my iPod full of days and days of
vintage radio programming from www.archive.org - The Whistler,
Suspense, Escape, The Saint, Calling All Cars, This Is Your FBI, The
FBI in Peace and War, Adventures in Research, Yours Truly Johnny
Dollar, ... ... ... Years and years of programming freely available.
I would much rather have to set up a playlist once every few months
and know I won't have to endure someone else's idea of entertainment
dribbled out at the speed they think appropriate and intermixed with
the crap they think will lure additional subscribers.
- 07-28-2008, 09:15 AM #11Guest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 28, 8:30*am, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Can a new embalming technology revolutionize death? Radio died in the
> > 1960s, and it can't be resurrected. Radio, like television, used to be
>
> (If you want to listen to cowboy music, you need to be in cowboy
> country.)
How does that song go, "Save a horse, ride a cowboy"?
> The station is owned by the son of the original owner, now, and he works
> very hard to keep KSEY serving Seymour and his international internet
Well, this is all very nice and this locally-palatable content is
[part] of what radio used to be about - however these sorts of
stations are fairly rare. Most radio stations are just MP3 playlists
attached to the Internet on one side and a big tower on the other.
Original radio programming is also quite rare compared to yesteryear
(I don't count talk radio, I'm referring to professionally produced
radio plays and documentary content).
Radio has really been marginalized by television; like I said, it's
mainly used in niches where people can't be staring at a screen, for
safety or other reasons.
- 07-28-2008, 02:53 PM #124phunGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 28, 9:57*am, [email protected] wrote:
> On Jul 28, 9:36*am, "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > Where did you get all your music, anyway? *You bought it? *Aha. *So you
> > DID spend the money.
>
> I rarely listen to music. I have my iPod full of days and days of
> vintage radio programming fromwww.archive.org- The Whistler,
> Suspense, Escape, The Saint, Calling All Cars, This Is Your FBI, The
> FBI in Peace and War, Adventures in Research, Yours Truly Johnny
> Dollar, ... ... ... Years and years of programming freely available.
>
> I would much rather have to set up a playlist once every few months
> and know I won't have to endure someone else's idea of entertainment
> dribbled out at the speed they think appropriate and intermixed with
> the crap they think will lure additional subscribers.
I have Gigabytes of OTR. XM, the best, and Sirius, repeat their
limited selection every six months or so which makes no sense because
there is an immense amount out there.
One of the easiest ways of collecting this is to do a search of the
iTunes store for FREE, podcasts, OTR, westerns, etc. things like the
keywords you used. See the podcast to never auto delete and let iTunes
build your feed. Then create a smart playlists to harvest your finds
and automatically transfer them as your selected channels to an iPod.
That beasts XM 163 and XM164 hands down. Given enough thought I could
recreate a better satellite channel for any thing currently up there
using INTERNET tools and iTunes. For the live stuff I would use
various iPhone apps mentioned earlier for streaming. I just cut my
podcast directory down by two thirds as some of that stuff I will
never listen to or look at and it still says 3088 items 55 days 12
hours 35 minutes and 37 seconds in 49.98 GB! And that grows and auto
deletes old stuff all day long. Who needs satellite radio when you
have an iPod or an iPhone?
Drive under trees on any county road between metropolitan centers
where there are no terrestrial repeaters and tell me you love mobile
satellite radio with a straight face. Will it work in the mountains,
valleys, and deep canyons of the USA?
It will not even work right without those repeaters around Atlanta
GA. The FCC in this weeks order told them lose the repeaters and pay a
fine for operating fixed broadcast radio stations under their
satellite license.The quality of perceived service is going to drop
sharply if that happens.
IMHO satellite is doomed as former customers wake up to better
choices.
- 07-29-2008, 08:56 AM #13Guest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 28, 4:53*pm, 4phun <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have Gigabytes of OTR. *XM, the best, and Sirius, repeat their
Me too I am thinking of putting a small media PC that's been
gathering dust in my lab into my car so I can have everything in
there, rather than just the 8GB in my iPod. I'd like to ditch the
factory CD/radio too; my car has a very annoying sound system, which
won't "remember" that I left it in aux input mode. It always tries to
start up in radio or CD mode. The very first thing I do when I turn
the ignition key is thump the AUX button; it's a completely automatic
motion for me now
> One of the easiest ways of collecting this is to do a search of the
> iTunes store for FREE, podcasts, OTR, westerns, etc. things like the
Won't that give me content in AAC format though? I like to have
straight vanilla MP3s.
> That beasts XM 163 and XM164 hands down. *Given enough thought I could
> recreate a better satellite channel for any thing currently up there
The other thing I've considered doing is buying a scrap tombstone
vintage radio housing and putting an MP3 player inside it with all
that old programming.
> IMHO satellite is doomed as former customers wake up to better
> choices.
IMHO it was never a good value proposition for consumers. If the
lifetime service fee was say $99 and included in the equipment price,
it might have a bigger userbase. But apparently there are some
specific uses where it makes money, e.g. muzak. Big companies have
their own radio channel, essentially; they can have a single set of
audio programming all over the country.
- 07-29-2008, 09:41 AM #144phunGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
On Jul 29, 10:56*am, [email protected] wrote:
>
The podcasts are delivered in the format you asked for them in. I get
three magazines in AAC format, my choice, all the rest of them are
audio Podcasts in MP3 or video which is MP4. OTR is MP3.
AAC is a file protected format so you can not change those files to
something else.
There were one or two podcasts that came in an incompatible video
format. I just unsubscribed as it was too much trouble to locate the
files and convert them to iPod format. BTW you can set the default
conversion format to MP3 or AAC or what ever.
One change iPods made for me is there is no need for a CD changer
anymore. I can rip a complete CD using iTunes in about four minutes
and chuck the CD.
- 07-29-2008, 11:35 AM #15LarryGuest
Re: Can The New iPhone Revolutionize Radio?
[email protected] wrote in news:cf1ed6f5-aacb-4e70-9652-
[email protected]:
> The other thing I've considered doing is buying a scrap tombstone
> vintage radio housing and putting an MP3 player inside it with all
> that old programming.
>
>
A friend of mine owns Hale Kuike:
http://www.halekuike.com/
an Altzheimer's home overlooking Honolulu.
I met him through the antique radio newsgroup when he came looking for a
way to play old radio shows in his new library at the home.
(Altzheimer's patients remember 1947, they just can't find their
street.)
One of the radio restorers in California restored a beautiful old
Crosley you see proudly displayed on David's homepage above. I asked
him to add a speaker input and make sure it had a permanent magnet
speaker so we could make it speak when the radio, itself, was off,
making it look like the radio shows were coming out of the radio, not a
nearby speaker. He did a great job, even adding extra pilot light bulbs
so the radio dial is lit during the MP3 playing.
We downloaded OTR off Usenet for months onto a 250GB external hard drive
with a huge variety of OTR to play. An old Win98 HP box is located in
the special cabinet someone else made to house it. The door on it is
fake so the patients can't get to the computer to screw it up. The back
of it has a hidden door with cooling holes in it to access the computer
to make it go. A little 5W amp module with a volume control protruding
through the side of the cabinet allows them to adjust only the volume.
The playlist is immense on WinAmp using RockSteady audio volume leveling
plugin so the differences between show recordings comes out the speaker
at all the same level. A little UPS solved the power outage reboot
problem because to simplify operation, the system runs 24/7 off an
internal 250GB "running harddrive" using the external as backup storage
so we don't lose it all. Ol' Win98 runs for months without reboot only
booting WinAmp and a plugin. It doesn't even have a keyboard or monitor
attached as it's unnecessary. To turn the radio "ON", they simply
increase the volume from zero and it's already playing, which it does
from about 5AM until midnight every day, the most popular recreation at
the home. "Green Hornet" episodes are all the rage, last time I
checked. Winamp plays randomly so they don't get bored listening to 800
episodes of Gunsmoke in a row...(c;
Your idea is a great one....I did it myself as a PORTABLE!
I stumbled upon a 1939 Motorola 41D 4-tube portable radio in near mint
condition in a thrift shop. They couldn't play it because they couldn't
buy batteries for it so sold it to me for $10. I run it off two
alkaline D cells in parallel to extend the filament power runtime to
about 100 hours. High Voltage DC comes from TEN 9V alkaline batteries
clipped end-to-end in series to get the 90VDC for the plate supply.
EVERYTHING IS ORIGINAL, even the 1939 Motorola-branded tubes! It has
never had a part replaced in over 69 years! The only part that failed
was the real leather handle, which just fell apart in my hand. I know
someone in the leather business and she made me a handle that looks just
like the original.
I, too, added a speaker plug. Radio Shack used to sell these little
stereo computer speakers labeled Optimus AMX 18 (cat # 40-1404). Inside
it is a really nice little half watt per channel IC stereo amp that
takes only a whisper of power at idle from 4 AA 2.8AH ni-metal hydride
rechargeable batteries. I removed this amp from the cabinet of one and
plugged the speaker into the already installed speaker jack for the
external speaker. Both channels of the MP3 player input jack are fed to
the one side of the amp with two 1K resistors to isolate the channels
for the player in series with the audio to a common point, the other
side unused. Any MP3 player will work, but I had some old faithful hard
drive MP3 players including an Archos Studio 20, 20GB player, which is
loaded with OTR to play on it.
Being portable, it's great fun to carry with you, entering a place with
"The Shadow" or "Gunsmoke" already playing on this old radio, just like
it did when the radio was new in 1939. The MP3 player will play about 8
hours on the massive 2.8AH ni-metal hydride cells I replaced the dead
original cells with. It's a crowd gatherer any place I've ever taken
it....people crowding around listening to the 1947 World Series, as it
happened, Game 3. Someone posted a whole bunch of really old World
Series baseball games to alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.radio-oldtime long ago.
All of them are loaded onto the old Archos player.
Because the radio's batteries are lots smaller than the original, I
built a little shelf for the amp and Archos over them in the battery
compartment. The worn out screws that held the huge loop antenna wooden
back of the radio to the main box have been replaced with cabinet latch
magnets and matching plates and a little cloth handle at the top makes
opening the radio to show it all off just a tug on the handle to lay the
back aside to get to the controls and switches. The player and amp just
lay there, nothing's mounted.
Finding an old PORTABLE radio makes a great OTR player you can carry
with you....sit up next to you in a diner or bar and provide hours of
real entertainment to an astonished crowd. "Tom, turn off that TV, will
ya? We wanna listen to the '47 World Series from Gillette!"
Just for reference, Gillette only interrupted the game with commercials
about 4 times per HOUR, not like they do now every 6 minutes, ruining
the show.
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