Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag. The honor of the first opening today goes to fellow video blogger friend. Could a friend? don't even have to say a last name? Everyone knows friend. Well if you don't subscribe to friends channel because she's awesome, fellow video blogger, co-host of the Dinosaur down with Bill herd, owner and designer of all the Friend Tone audio gear and space aficionado and the list goes on.

She's got an awesome YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed to it, you should do yourself a favor. Yeah, let's see what Frame has sent. It's gonna be something interesting no doubt.

So thank you very much friend, she's in Philly By the way, if people don't know and people are over season, they don't know Philly in the U.s. of course. So let's crack this open. Go! What is she sent I'm surprised at the amount of money it cost to ship something like this.

What is it? Wait, does it tell you the weight on there? I don't like it's a kilo or something like what? Over a kilo probably jumps up. Surprised at the cost the United States Postal Service Um, quite expensive. So thank you friend for sending medicine and to everyone who sends stuff because it does actually cost a fair bit. So let's have a look.

Hang on Should I smell it because it's probably vintage. Fran is really into vintage stuff and is she gonna have another hand typed type? You know, with a proper typewriter? No characteristic smell? Let's have a look. but well, we got here. What do we got here? Ha ha ha.

It's a that I believe is the Liberty Bell is it not I've I've seen National Treasure one of my favorite movies of course yes I know how corny it is but I do like it I Believe Yes, pass and stow. that is the Liberty bill. the Cracked Liberty Bell remove before use. Oh ok.

the genuine Liberty Bill which is in Philly Is it not? Or it was in Philly or something? I'm not entirely sure. Sorry, um, let's have a look. Yes, there is a note. there is a note.

Ah, postcard. there we go. is that Liberty Greetings from Philly A Carpenter's Haul Independence National Historical Site Here we go. let's have a look.

There we go. And yes, there is a hand tight letter I'm sorry Fran I forget what typewriter you use, but it's pretty schmick apparently and let's see what she is sent in here. All right here we go. We've got ourselves some vintage let's have a look.

Oh Oh wow, look at that chin on Genesis - old-school camera. Wow Let's check this puppy out. Never have one of these that is going to be a retro teardown. Tuesday Ah, fantast economics on that.

Don't mind that at all. Not too shabby Wow Old school and know none of this digital rubbish. Thank you very much. Let's have a squeeze through the viewfinder.

Oh yeah yeah. Oh very nice and friend doesn't disappoint. Look at this typewriter. Now if I was more of a typewriter aficionado, I'd be able to tell the particular type used here.

I mean is it like an IBM golf ball one? I Don't know, she's gonna scream at me sorry Fran I Don't know. Anyway, we have a gadget here. Yes, it is a high-resolution camera from the 1980s. The real I'm low latency monitor is amazing.

We'll check out this low latency monitor and it operates entirely with just available light. It's incredible. Doesn't need any power at all. It took decades for cameras to reach this level of resolution that these are 20th century cameras could achieve and I'm sure that I'll enjoy the one does that hold within? I'm sure we all will.

Let's do a 10 to minute teardown after we check it out. Thanks! Fran She's from the United States of America and playback is not instantaneous. Bloody 20th Century cameras I Don't know. Next up one from Dave Lee's good on your Dave East from the old dart and I don't think I need this paper packaging copy? it's a present I should might say get open No I'd a bit Okay, what's in here? Duct tape Beauty sealing minute duct tape.

Hope I can get as many views as that fat kid with the lightsaber on YouTube How many do you get? How many hundreds and millions? I don't know. no, it's young Anakin's oh no no, come on, bring on the new movie. Rigidly Trilogy. Oh me no this this did not happen.

No Merry Christmas Love your biggest fan thank you very much Dave um I Guess he figured I wouldn't open it until Christmas And yeah, based on my form, that's a pretty reasonable assumption. Look what we've got. We haven't had one yet. Tada Sinclair ZX Spectrum Yeah babe.

a real keyboard. Caution: Do not poke or jab people or animals with light saber. Oh and Dave sending this Sinclair ZX Spectrum Plus And we've had the ZX spectrum a couple of times on the blog before doing tear downs of that. but this is the Plus model.

Essentially the same as the previous version except it has some upgraded RAM I Believe even the board's interchangeable and the keyboard is of course different, but it looks good. but then you go to use it and this is quite simply the most horrible feeling keyboard I've ever used. I Think not so much in terms of the action of the actual key, but the shape of the key. What idiot came up with this? This is one of those classics seem like a good idea at the time.

Ideas where they would actually curve the top of the key in like this. Ah, that'll help with the ergonomics of you know you key won't accidentally slide off and hit the one next to it. Yeah, maybe in principle, but in practice it is horrible. How could any like you know? Fair enough coming up with the idea of it and then having a go in at producing that.

But then you'd go along and use it and surely you would go. That feels like like no, let's just not bother, but know somebody signed off on that Oh made in the Republic of Korea by Samsung There you go. Who would have thought designed by Sinclair in the UK though in Cambridge sorry and that's it. We're in like Flynn this is 1984 issue, by the way.

even though it's got copyright 1983 on there, this one came out in 94. I Believe. Anyway, look, this still got the that dodgy bracket on the regulator on the linear regulator over here. just got like afterthought.

jeez. Terrible mural for a Plus model. And there's the Ferranti Ula or uncommitted logic array essentially a PLD and a programmable logic device. and you can see the date there.

48 week 84. So this one was manufactured basically essentially I'll sold essentially early 1995 85 Sorry, Geez, back to the future and there's the Z80 CPU for your fishy and Oto's I Know there's a lot out there and interestingly, this one is like early 84, a tweaked 84. I'm surprised they had stock sitting around for that long because the Z80 CPU back then was like and hot stuffer would have expected it to go straight into a production products somewhere. So yeah, for it to hang around that long almost a year before it actually makes it into a product, That's rather surprising.

And there you go. Some of the RAM Actually, this dates it even further is into the first quarter: 85. So there you go: Seventh week, Fifth week: 85 STC don't they make like baked beans as well in the keyboard? While it might have those fancy pantsy keys on it, it's just basically the same membrane as what was used in the previous one. It's just got better key types.

That's all. this still conductive rubber backed onto the membrane. So yeah, spongy field. So thanks David for sending that one in.

I Think we've had our fill of our ZX Spectrum stuff for now mailbag. What do you think? Next up, one from Martin Clements that rings a bell. Is he having a second suck of the south? All right. I know he's from Livingston in Yes.

Livingston in the United States of America Let's check this puppy out and see what he's set in. I Love a big package for heart. Nothing better than having a big package material and always use that for packing. So I'm always packing the same and stuff I've got a postcard presumably from Lima Thanks very much for excellent show! I Have been a fan since 2012.

thank you very much. You know love to catch up on um that's recently cleaning out he's airplane hang up as she do I was cleaning my now just the other day you know and he came across these old things. Let's check him out. Wow it's a 300 I never Matic Yeah, it's the Never mattock.

excellent that'll make a good two-minute tear down a hen Oh a polo GPS Check it out aircraft GPS System that'd be pretty state-of-the-art in relative terms I guess and Martin's from Montana There we go. nice-looking Montana When I go there, look at that and he's sent in these from his own personal hangar. Well thank you very much. What we've got here is an old analog autopilot the 318 fo Matic Yeah, you can rely on that puppy Oh Brilliant.

So check that out. that's I don't know the age of that, but jeez, that's got to be that's got like 70s or something written all over it. And then we have a more Oh Apollo one. This is a Loren receiver so we'll take a look at that and then we've got a GPS receiver down here.

That's the once again, it's a Moro brand, a polo and ejector button. He checked a button. hello, no he checked the button there I Just pulled it out. Check it out.

it's got a Garmin Ah fly Bree Laughs Library. As in library. but it's library. Get it.

data card. Oh there you go. So this must have I presume my GPS waypoints and things like that for you. No, because there's no mapping capability on here, right? So it's not like you know it's gonna draw.

You know, maps and give you outs and things like that, right? But um, it did have I Presume: even though I know nothing about aviation would have the GPS waypoints for like all airports and things like that. so you can like call up the nearest airport and you know all I'm talking like small airports and things like that. So there you go. It's actually fairly recent 2012.

They still make these things because, you know, yeah, I presume to get a GPS are qualified for aircraft use even if you do have to qualify. And then you know lots of planes are still going to be using these old units, so they probably still maintain stuff like that this even today. Even though it's you know these things are absolutely ancient, they still. they probably cost a pretty penny as well.

Return expired data cards. Here you go. Yeah, I Don't think we'll return that, but there you go. That's a it's a library data card for a presumably a Garmin GPS ordered Garmin Just actually make the data cards and the waypoints and things like that and this is genuinely a Moro or whatever.

Let's I don't know. Two minutes here, down on each one. And here's inside our old school: 300 a Novo Matic Look at that. Um, it looks like potential.

Is that that board? There looks like informally coded, but anyway, a whole bunch of vertical won't rise the boards which contain most of the circuitry. There's a little bit on the bottom down there now as you can see the bottom side. Old school, just a hand taped artwork. No date code yet.

but check out all the adjustments on here. Woah! Hdg gain? No. whatever. that is no idea.

Anyone know how these analog auto pilots work? I've got no clue. Looks like we got some sealing though around there, is it? So there's little luck. those trimmer pots are sealed. So no, actually, no, they're just screws.

I Thought they might have been trimmer pots, but they're not. They're just screws holding in these data cards. Ah, let's take him out. and Wow I Totally called it look 1970s.

Wow! This 70s 17th week 76 Wow for a 1458 Op-amp I Unbelievable And every autopilot must have a triple 5 timer from 1974 for the win! Wow Hold on to your hat. We can beat that. Look at this triple fire timer here. look 50 First week 1973 thank you very much and a 741 Op amp from 1973.

Brilliant for one six from 74. Eyes is great stuff and check this one out. I Reckon someone's had a go at this 401 six because if you have a look on the back, the soldering is different to the others. Look, look, it's just.

it's not. No, it looks like it's been hand redone, doesn't look like it's there, and you can see the flux residue doesn't look like ass. original white wave soldering. So yep, it's been repaired now.

Final card in there is a summon app. There you go. They label each board lovely look there it is. so mean app.

So that is a really nice plug-in design. They just plug in, go into these vertical pin headers here and then they've got these plastic strips on the side too. You know, boards, separators to what space them apart? that is. That's a It's a lovely design, You know it's nice and mechanically robust.

Ik I Can understand why. You know this sort of constructions done in nut planes and that's gonna last a long time. Bet your bottom dollar I'll tell you what. I'm keeping these boards because these have got you know, really classic, dated, early triple five timer and seven, four one and other chips on them.

Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, definitely don't toss those out there. they're a piece of history. Now let's take a look at this: Lauren or Lauren Receiver I'm not sure how you pronounce and I'm not in the industry, but yeah, this is a basically our pre GPS navigational aid.

It would pick up the transmissions from Lauren our transmitters like you know, spread throughout the country around the world, and from that measuring the time differences, you can calculate your position. but it's basically being not completely superseded by GPS. But probably you know old aircraft are still have it. they probably have it as a backup.

I'm not sure if they're maintaining the Lauren our transmitters and things like that, but yeah, if the GPS system you know goes down for some reason no war starts or something and they shut it off, then yeah we can. You know you can still navigate using this I'm not sure what the accuracy of us something like this is, you know if the system is, but it really get you to the nearest airport within visual range of the nearest airport. definitely. And you can land.

So yep, let's take a look. I Got no idea how any of this works at all, but there you go. Bearing and range and all sorts of stuff made in the United States of America Oh, look at this. Oh digital.

That's a digital side. anyway. driving of course. there's going to be an analogue board down the bottom for the receiver, but that's driving the display and doing probably doing that.

You know the time, any calculations, and everything else and we'll take a look at the processes. A keeper. It's got a yard. Oh, that's a rechargeable set.

No. Is it I Don't know. but no lithium battery in there that it? That could be cactus. We're talking 1983 here.

Look at that. and the chips are dated mid 83 as well. So yeah, but it's in. it's in good Nick look at that.

That's a nice design, nice and reliable. I Like that classic 808 E5 for all you fan boys out there. And of course the 8 to 5 5 down there. there's how eeproms.

Oh, we've got some memory. it's all happening Wow Look at the analog section. isn't that beautiful. Nicely laid out, nice and modular.

Lots of look. I mean here we've got some more big inductors here and caps. So what are these are these? like? bandpass filters and things like that? I'm not sure. the frequencies and everything.

You know, all sorts of whatever it is, but jeez, there's lots of them. Look at that. So a ton of stuff and it's all. Look at this.

It's all like sequential. So there's like multistage stuff happening everywhere. Some are 30 80 op amps and what's under here. Actually, if you have a closer look down in here, my guess of what's happening here, right? we've got, you know, selectable filters.

and then we've got some transistors down in here, here and here. So obviously these transistors well I believe are used to switch in various LC filters here. so that would be my guess of what's going on. Maybe similar thing happen in here as well.

Oh, that's a bit uneventful. I Thought it would be some sort of you know is being you know, frequency Yavin eyes docile later or something like that I don't know. it's just the switching power supply. Oh, and some of the transistors in here MPF 65 21 That's just a amplifier so nothing fancy.

We've got a 2 N 67 27 that's just a high power switch, a basic letter and that's about it. So yeah, I don't see anything in the way of RF transistors. so I reckon they're doing some switching switching. The field is in and out, so that's a solid bit of aircraft engineering from you know, the early to mid eighties.

Very nice and it's still work today. It would be ultra reliable and yeah, no worries whatsoever that's just through him. Now this Apolo Gps unit. be interesting to see the date of this thing, whether or not it was.

you know, post 2000 when Clinton turned off the US selective availability and basically gave you know super precise GPS Navigation to everyone had started the geocaching movement and everything else. So that's when it really boomed and took off. If it's pre that, but you know you're still even with selective availability, you still had like a hundred meters or 200 meters. You know accuracy or something like that.

so you know that once again would have been good enough. probably similar to the Lauren type system, perhaps in terms of accuracy once again, and they get you, you know, near enough to the airport and then you can land the damn thing because you can see the runway so you know it would have been good enough. But let's take a squiz and bingo There it is. Once again, Very neat, very tidy, very professional and no surprises for finding a are separate and receiver in here.

they would have just used you know a receiver from the experts in the business. In this case it's a Jrc is that Japan Radio Corp who make the transistors and various things? I'm not sure unless there's another Jrc that do that, we can have a look at that ha she H8 chipset. but this jeez. this would have been real old school receiving notice.

12 channel parallel rubbish. No siree. Bob And from the date codes in here, we're talking not 93 94. So there you go.

94. maybe made in 95 or something like that at the latest. After a small search I couldn't find any info on that main chipset there at all. So I'm not gonna not sure what's going on there.

bigger socket, a drum of course. and there's the Hitoshi H8 with Lithium backup on there 901 Certain I know one is that to be replaced expires Oh no, no one or was it replaced 901 I assume it was replaced and there's inside out can I've got some Muir Otter Oscillator an errata oscillator out there. Fourteen Point four Meg up there don't know who the manufacturer though and in NDK sorry and whoa, look at that puppy. Love those packages.

that's an RF if there are Fi C RF I am probably RF preamp if there ever was one. So yeah, like Power In Out, that's basically what those things are. and on the back of that board, we've got some good old Six two Two Five six. so Li yep Six two two five six S turns G's that brings back some memories.

use plenty of those back in the day and yet nothing special. just awesome mark passive stuff on the bottom although into this was under another metal can by the way are which when in these slots here at that's rather interesting. that trace there. does they go off to there or is that just flapping around in the breeze? It's the fly buddy GPS Awesome name.

Copyright 1994 and we got state of the art 8 OC 186 thank you very much PLC see package Love it. Oops we need to put a resistor in series without but without backup battery. What? man. So that's pretty much all I expected in there.

We've got some digital processing to get this serial. It will be a serial output coming from this old-school GPS Module I'd Love to get some data on this I Don't think it's like a 12 channel? think that could be. Don't know if they had that back in 1994? is it or not? But yeah. anyway.

um yeah, it would not be nearly as sensitive or nearly as multi-channel or you know, nearly as advanced as today's modern GPS Receivers not even close like it's not even using like a big thing. Back when you know 2,000 hitting selective about you know the surf chipset was one of the major ones. You know it's it. Looks like it's whatever.

this thing's doing some sort of digital processing and Hitoshi H8 that's it. There's no. you know this thing might be a custom ASIC perhaps, but I you know I don't know what's going on there, but yeah, and nothing like the advanced arm surf chipsets like they had in the years falling. So thank you very much Martin for sending in this gear.

That's been an awesome set of tear downs. This is a video. This mailbag video is turned into a teardown video. You know, a teardown.

Bonanza So it's fantastic. thank you very much. Martin That's an interesting look. Some aircraft stuff that aircraft engineer flight instruments that we haven't seen on the blog before.

Awesome! Next up one from Straw Yeah good on your Matt he's from Geraldton in Wi Western Australia that is for those who don't know. Bender Geraldton Nice place. Squeeze what he said. Heavy weighs a fair bit.

Got it. Note: I want to read the note. Spoiler Targus Bag Hey, you got it. It's a lucky is it? I assume it's a LAPI little lock.

12-inch job is it? Oh no, Oh oh oh is. hang on. There's always black. Something has disintegrated.

Absolutely disintegrated. I Don't know what the hell happened there, but uh oh. it's all has it all. Come off there.

It's all. Come off the curly cord. Yeah, all right. Yep, yep, it's falling apart.

The curly cord to this phone. Is it one of these satellite phone things? Yes, yes, it is old-school satellite. The greatest design is it. And check out this puppy.

Matthews Sent in a headset. look an old-school satellite phone. the rain and Thrain sounds like a bunch of lawyers. Hmm.

Anyway, made in Denmark I Don't want my Danish viewers Terrific. So what we clearly have here is the receive it like a pop-up antenna. I Like this microwave radiation beware. What the hell isn't it like? Is it actually a mic? Is this actually I don't know.

Actually may not be a satellite. It might be a directed microwave link, a microwave phone or something like that. Anyway, clearly the antenna up here. We've got ourselves a little RF patch cord which goes down to here so this would be the receiver and or you know what, the transceiver down here and then just the phone with the cord which went all crusty.

All the plastic on that just went completely cactus. So two minutes teardown might take more than two minutes. But yeah. Wow Check out inside the antenna, it's got some sort of spongy.

Yep, it's got spongy type material in here and Tada now. I Guess it looks I'm just some copper sheets embedded in the front there. What the? Oh, look at this secret. RF Voodoo.

Here we go look at this. Anyone know anyone want to hazard a guess exactly how that works Any microwave? RF Antenna Experts in the house. We've obviously got our antenna point here and then it's branching off controlled impedance lines. This would be a specific dielectric back in here.

he bet your bottom dollar and then basically it splits off. We've got four patch antennas and once again, we've got various other like, you know, these are different impedances for I Don't some sort of, you know, impedance matching? It's not like we're doing any, you know, real filter in there or anything like that. But anyway, we've got ourselves four separate patch antennas like that. Very interesting.

why? What advantage does that give? But wait. hold on. Yeah, it gets more interesting. Flip that out and tada.

I Expected just to see a coax going from here to here. but no. look. Well got ourselves a transceiver in there and these are interesting.

Hmm. look. do not eat. Okay, so what Are they? Some sort of desiccant modules or something? perhaps? And there we go.

There's under the can there. Yes, we've got some Irish stuff happening in here. Big RF power transistor there. by the looks of it.

Oh yeah, yeah, we've got some filtering. Got some mud there. Probably some bandpass filtering happening in here. There's our coaxial antenna output I Really like that.

How that? just you know it matches up to that. That's really jazzy. and once again, we've got another. We've got some more filtering happening in there and look, Ah, none of this.

PCB rubbish. Look, We got ourselves some nice little and tweaked inductors in there. Check them out. Well I Tell you what.

These lawyers are trained and trained. really know how to do some engineering. That's nice solid die-cast Casey Oh yeah, look at this. Ah, it's a thing of beauty.

Look at that. So obviously what we've got here's some battery pack which our Matthew had to remove. Unfortunately, they're not there once again. this is our obviously our DC to DC convertor comes in here.

it generates all of our voltage, just goes over all sorts of digital stuff. We've got an Analog Devices DSP down here and it looks like we've got some sort of program in not you know SIM card thing which I goes in here. Then we've got the lower level transceivers in here as well. and then just yet.

digital processing and a speaker and not much else - its serial out, whatever. and then the phone outlet as well. Were for the handset and Bob's your uncle and there's nothing fancy pantsy happening under those shielded can set nicely delineated into the separate modules there. Very neat.

I Mean, this is, you know, even with the budge up there, this is you know this is real professional design. They really know what they're doing here. You go to analog devices DSPs No surprises for finding something like that in there doing all the audio processing and stuff like that Looks like we have ourselves a power amplifier using the die cast alloy case down here. that's nice and a cutout in the board.

Screw down and it has some heat sink compound on the back of that. I'll have a big thermal pad, big single inline package. Turns out this puppy down here from St the L, 3,000 and I'll link in the datasheet. It's a slick whatever that stands for.

Anyway, it's a line interface. a basically ringer circuit design. interface to the telephone lines are pretty advanced little beasts. It's really very purpose specific device, so thank you very much.

Matthew That's an interesting beast. If I can actually get some info on it exactly like satellite phone, microwave, phone, transceiver thingamabob, shoe phone, whatever it is, try and link it in. or if you've got like a manual for this thing or something like that, please let us know. Thanks! Matthew So I hope you enjoyed today's mailbag.

For everyone who sent stuff in, it wasn't many, but it turned into a teardown and bonanza. Awesome. If you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up. Discuss it down below all that sort of stuff.

Support me on Patreon, Buy my t-shirts you know all that sort of stuff hush Youtubers have to say to survive. Catch you next time you.