If you look closer at "recycling," it usually means toxic stuff like electronics get shipped to the
third world and taken apart for the base metals. You can do minimal googling and find many reports
by reliable media about parts of China, India and Bangladesh that are totally toxified by cheap junk
thrown out after minimal use in western countries. People are free to choose, so I'm not telling
anyone what to do. For my own personal space on the planet, I prefer to buy fewer pieces of higher
quality electronic stuff and then use it forever or sell it used or give it away to someone who
wants to use it (I prefer selling, both because it generates cash for me and also because putting
out some cash is an incentive for a buyer not to just toss something when they don't need it
anymore, because he has placed a value on it by paying for it). Cheap electro-junk sold at big-box
stores is, by and large, neither reliable nor repairable. Bottom line, it's better not to generate
the waste in the first place (and better not to waste the resources and energy making the cheap,
useless, quickly obsolete stuff).
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "robert wasserman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
Well at least around here, municipalities charge for items now to insure correct recycling and then
have free drop off days where they get paid for recycling or at least free, some of it going to
reuse. The only problem with this is items are being dumped anonymously or being black bagged into
land fills again to avoid being charged.
Getting back to Boom Boxes, I still use the guts of the last boom box I bought new about 20 years
ago, a JVC 3 piece, as amp controller of a relative's TV setup. The ones I still use are all from
the curb or bought for no more than a dollar or 2. Same for clock radios. The tape or cd players are
often the first part to go bad but the radio is the important part for me for most of them, I have
found a few with working player mechanisms. A few trips to NY ago I did pass up on a nice old Sony
large tape boom box with recording meters, looked like it might have worked, no power cord and took
way too many batteries, was a little crusty on the edges, and too many small areas to check for
bedbugs/cockroaches. Probably was worth hundreds in clean working shape, way too big and heavy to
fit in my carry on... I did get a working small first model Mackie mixer and a patchbay in a
cardboard box on a curb in NY late last year, those I was able to open up and clean and check and
they fit in my carryon. The box looked half empty and on the same block I saw a street person with a
large older Yamaha rack amp on the top of their shopping cart, must of grabbed the heavy expensive
looking this off the top of the box!
> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:47:43 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Hi Robert:
>
> I do the same thing! It's criminal what people throw into landfills. There was a time, now mostly
> passed, when people were "upgrading" their PC's every couple of years. I had access to an empty
> office in the building, so I would collect up anything put out for bulk pickup that looked of any
> reasonably recent vintage. I could usually get parts from 3 or 4 boxes and make one work. I'd then
> donate that one to any of the many local schools or libraries who were happy to have them.
> Sometime
> in this century, the federal government started pouring money down the pipe for schools and
> libraries to get the very latest computers (whether they needed them or not), so it got to where
> no
> one wanted them anymore.
>
> I won't even get into CRT televisions, I just cringe when I think of all the lead and mercury
> needlessly dumped into landfills just because someone thought they needed to have a mega-TV to
> watch
> hundreds of channels of nothing. Well, the credit card companies are very happy any time anyone
> wastes money, so I guess it's good for commerce.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "robert wasserman" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 2:48 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
>
>
> Back in the day, most analog TV's and audio equipment I would find on the curb could be brought
> back
> to life, at least for awhile, by going in and changing out the soldered in fuse. Obviously
> sometimes
> the fuse blew because of internal problems, but often was caused only by AC surges from the
> outside.
> But yes, many times the transformer was blown and went back to the curb, labelled with the
> problems
> I found for the next curb shopper.
>
> > Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:42:52 -0500
> > From: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> >
> > Hi, Frank,
> >
> > As I understand consumer safety regulations, if you provide an
> > externally accessible fuse holder you still must have an internal,
> > soldered-in fuse that is not user changeable. I believe it may be of
> > higher value than what is in the user-accessible holder, but it still
> > must provide protection against the unit burning up. In the past that
> > was sometimes taken care of by installing a fusible link in the power
> > transformer that would render the transformer inoperative and you'd have
> > to replace the entire transformer. There have been different variations
> > of this over time, and different scenarios are probably acceptable, but
> > having a user-replaceable fuse as the only protection is not considered
> > protection at all. Even if the codes did not require it, I would suspect
> > the manufacturer's risk analyst/attorney would...unless the attorney was
> > an outside one looking for more defence work <smile>.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Richard
> >
> > On 2012-01-31 10:15 AM, Frank Strauss wrote:
> > > I discovered that the fuse was
> > > soldered in. It's toward the back left. It indeed was blown. I cut it
> > > out and put in a fuse holder/fuse from Radio Shack. The radio has worked
> > > well since then. I am puzzled why they would solder the fuse in. I guess
> > > they want you to send it back for repair.
> >
> > --
> > Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
> > Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
> > http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> > Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>
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