Obsolete and Broken

I realise that for most of the country the digital TV switchover has long gone, but it has just happenned here. And as well as the BBC confusingly moving us East overnight (from "South" to "South-East"), it has spelt the end for my trusty old TV.

I bought this second-hand for £60 from Granada Rental when I was a teenager, it looked dated then so I reckon it is probably at least 25 years old. But it worked and was in daily use (in our kitchen diner, I won't pretend it was our only TV!) until the switchover. Now not only does it not have an analogue signal to find, as it has no Scart socket let alone HDMI or whatever, it has no way of getting a picture!

I did have a set-top box that it could be tuned into, but when asked to retune after the switchover the (also rather old) digi-box scrambled itself and now won't respond. Newer digital tuners seem to rely on Scart. So a perfectly functional TV is rendered useless... I wonder if any museums are interested?

 

While our working TV became oblsolete, our laptop which was not in my view in any way obsolete, stopped working. It would appear the hard drive has failed.

The trouble is that hard drives are quite pricey at the moment, and I'm not sure I could get it all working again. Now how much is it worth spening on a 3-year old computer? So on Monday evening I was kicked out the house and told not to come back without a new one ...

So what, you are thinking, is the point of this post, apart from my whining? Well, these issues have distracted me from useful modelling the last week or so. Hopefully I'll be back on track soon.