In a long overdue follow up to the last entry on vintage junk, I present this Panasonic radio I purchased. The model appears to an RF-888 as far as I can tell.
I don’t know what year this device is from, but if I had to get I would say sometime in the ’80s. The orientation is a little weird in that all the knobs are on side and speaker is on “bottom”. Perhaps it was meant to be mounted to the ceiling a vehicle? If that were the case I don’t know what the removable shoulder strap would be for. There isn’t really a scenario where this thing could be setup for easy access to be knows for volume and other settings but also not blocking the left and right sides or muffling the speaker itself.
It actually has an impressive amount of features: AC and battery power easily swapped, multiple radio bands, an analog meter for signal strength and the thing I love most – big-and-bulky mechanical toggle switches. It does seem like a quality built product, as well.
I tried the device out and almost all the functions still work: I could pick up AM and FM stations (the “PSB” band I think doesn’t exist any longer). And that analog meter can still demonstrate signal strength.
I don’t actually know what if anything I could with this device besides clean up the outside and admire it. The only other option I think of is to embed a Raspberry Pi of some kind in it trying preserve some of the features. I don’t have know how or a great track record on this kinds of attempts though. I like the speaker though, that might actually be re-usable and I think it’s solid-state nature would render it re-usable. Probably the potentiometers as well. Hopefully it won’t end up in the bottom of a closet collecting dust.
From what I can tell on this beat-up labeling, this is the model information (RF-888). And I guess those holes are to ventilate heat. Not sure if that’s a good sign or bad sign when an AM/FM radio needs ventilation.
Opening it up
The inside of this thing is a about what I would expected: a of crammed in full-sized parts, although there is a microchip of some kind embedded in there (an…AM210?).
I don’t think I’d be able to use very many if any of these parts, or course. As much because so many of them are deteriorating as anything else. I don’t think very many of those wires are going to lost very much longer and the coil that I assume is for tuning RF frequencies seems to be barely held together, too.
It is kind of amazing they managed to cram as many components into a small space as they did, though. If you spot what looks like a washer on the left I don’t think that’s supposed to be there. I think it was holding on the antenna and fell off when I pulled off the back cover (and I pulled it out).
I don’t think I’m qualified to comment on the design of this thing as an engineering marvel. Nor do I think I could take the whole circuit board out and still manage to put it back together. I’m afraid that’d be a one way disassembly and I’m not quite ready to commit to that (otherwise I’d have an image of the back of the thing).
That might be that bad of idea though: take everything out, leave the outside intact and put it on display as “art”.
Epilog and notes: Upon a brief youtube search it appears this model dates back to 1974. So I was off slightly. Actually seems to be a lot of demonstration videos for this vintage model. Not sure if it has a cult following or just a lot of ebay sellers.
I also found this video that appears to be a restoration of the exact model. Which is amazing and unexpected. I might even watch it…
Other entries on “vintage junk” can be found under the “vintage hardware” tag.
Tildes on the side 