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  • Rafa 🦤ipxfong@mastodon.sdf.org
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:02 PM

    @jztusk
    There was one at the hardware store when I was a kid. Nobody used it anymore but I loved playing around with it and looking at the old tubes.

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  • Kristoff (ON1ARF)on1arf@mastodon.radio
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:06 PM

    @IPXFong @jztusk did not certain of these tubes need hunderds of volts to operate?
    DId it also test that or did it just test basic electric continuity?

    (Sorry if this is a stupid question)

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:17 PM

    @on1arf @IPXFong

    I think it just used low voltage/current to detect complete breaks.

    Thinking back, I feel like I've been told that CRT displays had a huge capacitor in them, and the idea of your average TV owner opening one up sounds awfully dangerous.

    Oh well, generation "riding the the back seat of the car without seatbelts while the parents smoked away in the front seat", I guess.

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  • Rafa 🦤ipxfong@mastodon.sdf.org
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:15 PM

    @jztusk @on1arf
    My memory is a little hazy but this would have been the late 70s. The machine was dusty and they didn't care that I was messing around with it and the tubes so I don't think anyone was using it anymore. I imagine it just wasn't worth the trouble of hauling it away.

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  • Kristoff (ON1ARF)on1arf@mastodon.radio
    Jan 20, 2026, 9:40 AM

    @jztusk @IPXFong Yes,, that where the days:

    “In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
    ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:12 PM

    @IPXFong

    There was one in the grocery store where I'd go with my mom to do the weekly shopping! I don't think I ever saw anyone use it, but it wasn't abandoned enough that they'd let some kid just play around with it.

    (I mentioned this yesterday to a friend who was also born in the 1960s, and he gave me such a "what the heck are you talking about?" look that I thought I'd check to see if anyone else remembered them. Thank you for making me feel less delusional. 😅)

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  • Fork Level Zero [KJ5ELX]:donor:FuturisticRobert@infosec.exchange
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:59 PM

    @jztusk lol I'm in my mid 40's and I have one of these under my workbench. I used it before to determine I needed to replace a high-mileage triode in an all-American-six radio I was restoring.

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  • Fork Level Zero [KJ5ELX]:donor:FuturisticRobert@infosec.exchange
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:10 PM

    @jztusk in my defense I've been obsessed with radio and electronics and their history since before the whole "retro" thing came into vogue. It has to do with growing up surrounded by broadcast engineers and their collections of strange and wondrous magical boxes that plucked signals out of the air with glass bottles that glowed.

    Radio is magic and you cannot prove otherwise.

    Someone I follow boosted your post and I saw both the challenge and the picture of that RCA tube tester, and couldn't resist chiming in.

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:16 PM

    @FuturisticRobert

    You're taking to someone who has a still growing collection of slide rules. 😆

    Also, to address your last paragraph, this has unintentionally turned into me trawling for new accounts to follow. Glad you took the bait. 😄

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  • Mastodon Migrationmastodonmigration@mastodon.online
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:19 PM

    @jztusk

    Not only saw them. Used them to fix the radio and TV. If the TV didn't work. "It was probably a tube." And dad would open the back of the set and unplug all 5 or 6 tubes. We'd carry them to the hardware store in a paper bag and use the tube tester to figure out which one was blown. Buy the replacement. Head back home full of hope, and replace all the tubes plus the shiney new tube. Invariably it worked and the TV fired right up. Howdy Doody!

    Inside a 1960s era TV
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  • Mastodon Migrationmastodonmigration@mastodon.online
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:42 PM

    @jztusk

    Actually the first thing to do was to pull all the tubes and plug them back in. The most likely thing was a loose or intermittent connection on one of the pins. If that didn't work it was off to the hardware store tube tester.

    That's also why people would hit their sets to jiggle the connections.

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  • Mastodon Migrationmastodonmigration@mastodon.online
    Jan 18, 2026, 7:52 PM

    @jztusk

    Another fun old electronics story from the 1970s. Had a Kenwood 6006 amplifier. It stopped working, so took it to the stereo repair place. The guy determined it was a capacitor which he replaced. It worked for a week and failed again, so took it back. Guy said probably a bad lot of capacitors and replaced all 20 of the same ones. The amp is still working today.

    Picture of Kenwood 6006 amplifier
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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:00 PM

    @mastodonmigration

    I remember when people used to get the drive chain on their cars replaced at like 120k miles no matter what, because that's about how long they'd last and having them fail on the road was really bad.

    I am slowly learning that capacitors are the timing chain of electronics: after X years, if you've got the device open just automatically replace them - the odds of them failing are pretty high.

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  • Glen Tglent@aus.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:33 PM

    @stuartl @mastodonmigration @jztusk The valve TV sets had that warning. The manufacturers wanted owners to call a TV service person rather than electrocute themselves on the high voltages used for the valve plates. But many handypersons would follow the instructions in their archived copy of a monthly 'mechanics' magazine and at least try to re-seat and replace valves prior to booking an expensive visit.

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  • Matilda T. ZombieQueenmatildazq@mas.to
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:18 PM

    @jztusk very vaguely familiar; I feel like the furniture store where we got our first top-loading VCR might have had one, but I think it was decorative, rather than actually in use.

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  • Dave Brazedavidbraze@mstdn.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:19 PM

    @jztusk
    as a teenager in the late 70s, i worked at a wholesale and hobbiest electronics shop that had one. i used it for my own stuff and helped customers with it, as needed

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  • NazaniNazani@universeodon.com
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:23 PM

    @jztusk Not only have I seen one, I've seen a guy pull up to the hardware store in a dog sled to check his tubes. He had one hell of an antenna.

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:58 PM

    @Nazani

    Good Lord! Do you mind saying when and where this was? Because "dog sled" was not something I expected people to include in their response to this.

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  • Jimjimmorack@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 8:37 PM

    @jztusk Seen and used. Tubes in radios, tubes in TVs. My Dad showed me how to use it. Almost 72 now, so it was 60 years ago, gave and take.

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:00 PM

    @jimmorack

    Makes sense. I'm a spry 63 (😆), and I saw them, but they were gone by the time I was old enough to have used one.

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  • jz.tuskjztusk@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:02 PM

    @jeffska

    I'm a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and the Radio Shack Battery-Of-the-Month club.

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  • Plausible Human BeingLovingFalloutLondon1954@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:46 PM

    @jztusk @jeffska

    I recently threw away my old analog Radio Shack VOM. It served me well for 5 or 6 decades. I replaced it with a Klein digital but I don't like digital VOMs because they display non-zero values when there shouldn't be any voltage present.

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  • Plausible Human BeingLovingFalloutLondon1954@mastodon.social
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:44 PM

    @jztusk

    Oh hell yes! Eckard's Drug Store in Eastgate Shopping Center across from the A&P. I can't count how many times we pulled the tubes out of our Zenith color television and tested them. We kept that set working for a minimal cost for many years.

    Would you call it enshittification when a manufacturer sells a modern television set that is in no way modular and in no way serviceable? If it fails, it goes to the landfill? I do.

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  • Aaronaaron@zadzmo.org
    Jan 18, 2026, 9:44 PM

    @jztusk There used to be this massive industrial surplus vendor in Dayton, Ohio, called Mendelssohn's. They had an entire room of just vacuum tubes, and one of these machines to ensure you weren't buying a dud.

    Closed permanently a few years ago and is now being turned into fancy loft apartments. I miss that place.

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