{"id":9,"date":"2006-03-23T18:36:13","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T02:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/?p=9"},"modified":"2006-03-23T18:37:51","modified_gmt":"2006-03-24T02:37:51","slug":"rube-goldberg-is-alive-and-well-in-the-gold-honda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/?p=9","title":{"rendered":"Rube Goldberg is alive and well in the gold Honda"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few months back, the gold Honda’s cassette deck died.<\/p>\n

I listen to audio books from KCLS<\/a> in the car. Romances<\/a>, westerns<\/a>, and others<\/a> requiring no thinking of any sort.<\/p>\n

So, the dead cassette deck was a very serious thing.<\/p>\n

What to do?<\/p>\n

Well, logic says that throwing less than a hundred bucks at Fry’s<\/a> would solve the problem.<\/p>\n

But …<\/p>\n

Such an opportunity!<\/p>\n

Inspiration, and, if I may humbly say so, a stroke of genius, made two things clear:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Old things were lying around the house, doing nothing. (not meaning the Honda’s owner, mind you.)\n<\/li>\n
  2. The gold Honda was, how shall we say it, not worth the C note. Let’s examine the evidence:\n

    \"Gold<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \n

    So, here are pictures of the simple, no-cost replacement for that broken cassette deck:<\/p>\n

    First, the equipment must be plugged in to the lighter socket:<\/p>\n

    \"Gold<\/p>\n

    And, for the parts we have:<\/p>\n

    \"Gold<\/p>\n

    Let’s review this simple arrangement:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Power – a good inverter comes in handy. Producing plenty of 120v power from the cigarette lighter socket with, uh, some little fan noise. … OK, a lot of fan noise. But, hey, it’s in a car, so who can hear it? Anyway, it feeds to the…<\/li>\n
    2. Power strip – you never know what you might want to plug in to the car, after all. (I tried a refrigerator once. It didn’t work.) And since we’re talking about sophisticated electronics here, you cannot have too many over-current breakers in the circuit. Plugged in to the power strip is a …<\/li>\n
    3. DC converter – We need DC power, so an old Radio Shack<\/a> universal AC-DC converter does the trick. It powers …<\/li>\n
    4. The cassette deck itself – We can’t forget this item, can we? Luckily, stashed away in a forgotten box were a couple of these old things – probably older than the car, this one is. It plays the audio to …<\/li>\n
    5. Headphones – Finally, there must be a way to hear<\/strong> the audio.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      But wait!<\/p>\n

      There’s more!
      \n<\/strong><\/p>\n

      This picture was taken after Scott borrowed<\/a> the FM transmitter<\/a>. Too bad. That noisy, battery-eating device was truly the perfect way to complete the circuit back to the car’s radio.<\/p>\n

      And, too bad this picture does not show the battery-powered, noise cancelling headphones<\/a> that should<\/strong> be used in such an advanced audio system as this one. They are in the glove compartment.<\/p>\n

      So, kids, if your car’s sound system fries, just come to us here at Kludge Central. We can get you going for double anything you’ll pay on the street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      A few months back, the gold Honda’s cassette deck died. I listen to audio books from KCLS in the car. Romances, westerns, and others requiring no thinking of any sort. So, the dead cassette deck was a very serious thing. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tranzoa.net\/~alex\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}