A Vintage Telefunken Hi‑Fi System Saved From Rotting Away

Telefunken STS1 TT, STM1 AMP, Sony TC-199SD Deck, STP1 Preamp

So, the setup belonged to my dad, but it was sadly abandoned for years in basement, where other than collecting dust, it had been previously abused by me, as a 5 years old kid who liked to paint things with permanent markers.

Last summer I decided to give it a look. The amp capacitors exploded the first time I plugged it in, as a wrong fuse that had been previously installed, caused it to keep it powered on after the fault. I got it repaired from a very reputable shop. Preamp was luckily fine.

 

 

The whole setup was in such bad shape that no one would have ever tought to see it alive again. I was able to clean it so well by polishing the aluminum faceplates.

The turntable had a small issue with the start/stop mechanism: replacing the parts costed $150, but it was worth it. The cartridge is an Ortofon LMA5, and it sounds great,

 The Turntable

The arm

The only thing left to do, is replacing the amp power switch, as it is being temporary held in by a toothpick. It basically doesn't wanna stay in. Parts doesnt seem to be currenty available. 

Sadly, the deck was too far gone and parts aren't available anymore. It is now sitting on a shelf, waiting to be recovered. 

I bought a pair of used Kef Cresta 1 for $80. They are a great pair of bookshelf speakers, but you need to be careful not to push them too hard. I have also bought a Sony TC-199SD Deck on Ebay, but the shop from where I got it from had mistakenly set the motor speed wrong. They have luckily offered me a free repair, that's why I am gonna ship it back soon.

 

 

• Telefunken STS1 – Turntable
• Telefunken STM1 – Amplifier
• Telefunken STP1 – Preamplifier
• Sony TC‑199SD – Deck

How to Play Videos on a Monochrome iPod

Requirements

• Monochrome iPod with Rockbox firmware installed
• A computer
• A video file (240p or lower)
• FFmpeg or an online video converter

A note on resolution

Every monochrome iPod has a different screen size, so the resolution you need to set depends on your model. Using the wrong resolution will result in a stretched image or the video refusing to play entirely. Here are the correct resolutions:

• iPod Mini (1st and 2nd gen): 138 x 110
• iPod 1st, 2nd, 3rd gen: 160 x 128
• iPod 4th gen (monochrome): 160 x 128

How To

1. Get your video file

Start with the video. It does not need to be low resolution to begin with as you will be downscaling it later. If you are downloading a video from the internet, any quality is good since you are going to convert it later.

2. Downscale the video

This is the most important step. The iPod screen is so small that it can only handle very low resolutions:  you need to shrink the video down to fit. There are two ways to do this:

Option A: Using FFmpeg (recommended)

FFmpeg is a free command line tool that handles this perfectly. Once you have it installed, open a terminal, CD  to the folder where your video is and run :

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf scale=138:110 -r 15 output.mpg

Replace Video.mp4 with your actual filename, and replace 138:110 with the correct resolution for your iPod model I showed you before. The "-r 15" sets frame rate to 15fps.

Option B: Using an online converter

If you do not want to use the command line, sites like FreeConvert or CloudConvert can do the job. set the output format to MPG and resolution to the one for your iPod.

3. Convert to .MPG

Rockbox only accepts MPEG-1with the .MPG extension. If you used  FFmpeg, you are good . If you used an online tool, make sure the output format was set to MPG.

4. Copy the file to your iPod

Connect your iPod to your computer and place the .MPG file on the iPod.

5. Play it through Rockbox

Open Rockbox files menu and navigate to the .MPG file.
If the video looks bad or does not play just double check that both the resolution and the file format are correct.

DONE!

Blackberry OS reminds me of KDE, and there's a valid reason behind it

 

Maybe it's the icons? maybe the layouts? I don't know, but these two look like perfect companions.
Turns out both KDE and BlackBerry OS 10 use QT 4.8 as graphics toolkit. That means they share the same rendering engline, making them extremely similar in terms of blurs, animations, transitions and even shapes. Despite the two UIs being different, they share the same toolkit, making them perfectly coherent