I like new stuff. I think most people do. But I also adore old stuff. Stuff that maybe doesn’t work as well as it should, but has the potential to be great again.
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Our farm sold recently, which meant that the stuff I had stored there had to go…somewhere. Nearly everything went into a skip – I hadn’t seen it for 20+ years, and hadn’t missed it, so figured it was best to just dump everything without looking at it. Some boxes, though, triggered memories, and I figured it was a good idea to have a peek inside.
One of the things I found was my Walkman. It didn’t work. But it made most of the right noises, so I figured it couldn’t be too broken. Armed with a small #000 Phillips head driver, I opened it up to have a look. It was surprisingly easy to pull apart. Four screws, and the back came off without any plastic tabs to accidentally break off.
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Inside was the drive-belt. Stretched and broken.
I had a look on ebay, and quickly found a supplier of new drive belts for the Walkman, and for under $10, one was on its way to me from Slovenia.
It arrived a couple of weeks later, and now I have a fully functional Walkman again.
Repairing stuff is awesome.
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