Tag Archives: electronics

Personal

Installing a sound bar!

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I just brought an LG SK1 sound bar for my LG TV and when it arrived it didn’t come with an optical lead! Surely when the only two options are Bluetooth with newer TVs and optical for the slightly older ones like I have you would of thought they would of supplied you with an optical lead.

So out I went to John Lewis to buy one. I got back and connected it up! Or so I thought I had done it all properly. I couldn’t work out what I was doing wrong so I phoned up LG customer support and went through all the options on the phone with him.

Nothing was working, he asked his boss and the reply was… have you taken the caps off the lead!!

OMG! I did not know there were two tiny caps on the end of the lead, nothing was written on the box nor was there any leaflet in the box for the lead telling me there were any caps on the ends to be removed.. For all the technical problems I thought I was having it’s down to… simple not taking all the packaging off!

I had to turn off the built in speakers on the TV, but at least I got better sound quality for watching movies and such.

Electronics

The part loss of our electronics industry

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During the 80’s and early 90’s there was a lot of inventive people playing around with a new found love in electronics. They would take peices apart to study how they worked. Then with an old broken radio they would see what went wrong and attempt to repair it. Or fail because one vital part accidentally broke.

At this period in our history stores sprang up with the answer to many people’s questions. The likes of Tandy and RadioShack would supply you with the resistors, microchips that you needed. 

These stores have since disappeared from the high street. RadioShack moved to the Internet, Tandy eventually disappeared, I think it got swallowed up by Dixons-Currys group. Now just known as Currys.

So the small trade in computer components went online. There was a small part of this large industry where a small circuit board would be recycled into its parts. 

  
People would unsolder its parts and sell them online to other enthusiasts to use in a project. Or simply sell the whole board. 

But now after just a few browses of eBay, it’s clear to me this part of recycling is on its way out.

Parts are cheap to buy new in bulk. There are better, smarter chips brought online and now people are just interested in extracting the gold and other materiel to make a profit.

And the invention on the computer game might be one point to ask. Did you prefer taking that radio apart or prefer playing Super Mario!?

A once interesting industry diluted and an education of how things work gone. More modern technology prevails. We are still forever inventive in our ways. But the simple peices of electronic equipment seems no more.