Check out this WEIRD tech I found at Free Geek Twin Cities! 

4:16 I'm amazed they managed to fit a whole ass pinball machine into that Mac!

That is the most "help me I had an uh oh" sound to ever come out of a computer 😂

Your guess on the captel phone is pretty spot-on. My grandparents have one and someone or some software transcribes captions while the phone call goes otherwise as normal

I work for CapTel as a Caption Assistant. You are exactly right. The person with the phone would be able to read when the other person would say.

Yep. My shelf stereo had a 48 disc changer on it. But what was even more epic about it was how you could hook it up to a PC and use it as a freaking CD-ROM drive changer too! It was absolutely insane! It hooked up with a janky early SATA cable, iirc. Man, I miss that thing. I really do. It was such a good piece of gear.

I hecking want the dual DVD enclosure RIGHT NOW. I would have a perfect use case for it in one of my machines.

I used to work for Captel for many years. We had to copy what we heard from the conversation exactly using Dragon Naturally Speaking into our headsets, and we had to manually type in things like swear words, because Dragon would not recognize them. It was an ok job, except some phone calls lasted hours and you had to hand off to someone else if you needed to go to the bathroom, take a break, etc.

"i think this mac has a problem." "Yup." I think that mac begging to end his cruelty.

These videos make me so jealous that you have this available. The only thing close to me is Goodwill which mainly has 15 year old DVD players and that's about it as far as electronics go.

Funny how perspective shifts when you grew up with something. That Sony CD changer/stereo is just a slightly different model from what my grandparents had, so it looks completely normal to me.

the dual DVD laptop disc drive is actually genius! I want one for my retro Win XP PC!

@5:45 I was the proud owner of a similar Sony 60-disc changer system from maybe a year later, which *also* supported CD-Rs full of MP3s. $300ish new at Fry’s. I had over 400 albums loaded onto that sucker.

The ketchup phone seems like something for This Museum Is Not Obsolete

I'd like to put a modern, decent work PC in to one of those PowerMac's. I always wanted a Mac growing up and I got to use that shape PowerMac in college. Loved it.

That computer sounded like it was counting change.

The ketchup phone is the natural companion to the burger phone.

I like this video, it's almost a substitute for LGR thrifts 😂

That's not a quicksilver, it's a cleverly disguised TARDIS and the cloister bell is sounding! :D

that pc sounded like it ran on gears

Yes, that CapTel phone does just that, displays captions for phone calls! The cost of the service is covered by a federally funded program, and it's just to help people who are hard of hearing. We had one for my grandma, it helped a lot. You're making me want to make a trip to the Twin Cities with this video, and I haven't had the time lately to visit Free Geek!

Imagine watching someone getting mad at a phone call and hanging up by slamming a novelty ketchup bottle phone on the table.

Sonnet still makes mac mini rack cases that are cool but damn expensive. Despite xMac mini server being the name they advertise it for non server uses too, specifically mentioning that you could install a RME sound card with a daughter card while still leaving one pci-e slot for other stuff.

That ketchup phone reminds me of the cola phone covered by dankpods last week😂

I have never seen a rack-mounted server drawer with that much empty space in it. Usually, every cubic millimeter is filled with something.

Man, I'm jealous of the stuff that's still widely available in US thrift stores. Good luck finding any of that here outside the rare online auction or our Craigslist. I haven't even seen a computer in probably 5+ years in the three thrift stores I frequent and we definitely don't have something like Free Geek.

One thing i saw there back in december was something that looked like a tower PC, but it had like eight 5" drive bays. I imagine it was simply an enclosure for hooking up a ton of scsi drives to an external PC, but I've been curious about it ever since.

5:34 This brought me childhood memories. We used to have a Pioneer XR-P770F at home. It had a 25 CD rack hidden behind the front panel I loved to look inside of as it was the coolest thing ever to me. I remember having it from sometime 1997-98 until my mum got rid of it sometime in 2007 as its front panel buttons responded erratically and she didn’t see any point in fixing it.

twin cities the gold mine that just keeps on giving

I'd have definitely bought the 2 laptop drive to 5.25 converter back in the day, but IDE is dead. Also it sounds like someone put a pinball machine in that tower mac.

you know who would love that mac server? Jeff Geerling

Ah, those A4tech dual wheel scroll mice that ended as an evolution dead-end main feature ha ha. Best wishes.

More Free Geek videos please!

I miss Free Geek Twin Cities so bad! Always so much fun to wander around and look at all the obscure tech.

I don't know why, but I really wanted that combo dvd drive setup. That was pretty neat.

5:20 - A friend of mine had THREE of those 200-CD changers connected together! Wow, have things changed!

That PB video mod is kinda impressive. And that phone would be a great way to catch up with a friend… oh you’ve heard that one already. Wonder if that was on the box?

I think there might be something wrong with this computer! * Turns it on * Slot machine and pinball table sounds * Plugs it off, looks at it Yup.

That Mac was hilarious, must've been a diesel! The 200CD Sony was a nice bargain, I think the Pio receiver underneath it as well.

At around 6:00 - my sister used to have a 50+1 CD Sony shelf system. I cannot remember the model number for the life of me, but basically it had this carousel system that always held one disc in the actual drive and the rest would be held vertically in the carousel. Very neat system. Surprisingly good 3-way speakers bundled with it, I have no clue what ever happened to it. I would guess it came from anywhere between the early-mid 90s and maybe 2001-2002 at latest.

I wish we had these stores in Australia. By the way my D-82 and D-88 both working perfect inc the LCD. I even restored the original lead acid battery.

4:28 - I thought you found a funky custom Pachinko machine.😄

I actually had a dual-wheel A4Tech mouse. And it was pretty convenient, actually. In all honesty, I wouldn't mind a second wheel on my present-day Logitech M510.

I had one of those disc duplicator things in a Dell tower back around '06-'08 timeframe. I seem to remember it being an option . And yep... I made a ton of copies of stuff!

mutated mouse .... also known as x-mice

I was always curious about those xMacs but the prince point was just too high for playing around . I was extremely skeptical about the reliability of that PCI-Thunderbolt bridge, especially when picking a random PCI card off the shelf.

9:38 shoutout to the person who did that mod back in the day, that's super slick looking.

Heinz phone is perfect, if you want to catch-up with an old acquaintance. Also, I really thought that one Mac was a, mechanical instrument of some kind, in a Mac case. Like a barrel organ.

That PowerMac rattling was hilarious! :-D

wow, if i ran a dvd pirating operation in 2004, that dual laptop drive enclosure wouldve been SICK.

I want that MacMini Rack Server! Thats Fresh as Hell! That DVD Duplicater would have been awesome back in the day of my DVD & XBOX......Backups....

I can confirm CapTel services are based out of Madison WI here. A live person is transcribing the second parties voice to text for the hearing impaired recipient. My friend’s wife worked there and I even interviewed there for a college summer job.

I had (and still do have somewhere) a shelf stereo system similar to that back in 1996-1998, it's a Pioneer with a 25 disc changer and 5.1 Dolby surround, sound along and a remote control along with some other very cool features... It was a very good system!

Oh man, that HP 9000/710 next to the Dell with the gigantic subwoofer brought back bad memories (we had them in a computer lab). What a terrible keyboard layout.

Oh wow, that Dell ith the THX speakers. I used to LUST over this in computer magazines when I was in high school. I would buy it in a heartbeat.

At 07:30 this is a Captel for people with hearing loss, CapTel works like any other phone - plus you see captions of everything the caller says.

I had that mouse and it was my favorite to this day!! The back and forward buttons on the side made it awesome!

Those old stereo systems are so cheap its tempting to head there from here! I wish we had a place like this in Florida!

I don’t remember why but I do remember looking into that Sonnet enclosure when I was dealing with a Mac fleet. Hi fellow Minnesotan!

Lmao what a hack job of a rack "server". I loved this episode, so much comedy

The ketchup phone looks like something maxwell smart would use….

7:05 - "Dont' Power On" tells you all you need to know LOL

I actually owned that Sony 60 disc changer. (Not that exact one, of course.) I’m fairly certain it was either a JCPenny or QVC gift by a family member. If I recall it had gear issues and would get stuck often.

4:25 LOL! That Power Mac sounds like a pachinko machine!

My grandma had something like one of those shelf stereo systems that could hold a ton of CDs. I can remember the brand or the exact amount of CDs. This was in the mid 90s.

Might as well. Keep up the good work and, as always, stay safe!

My dad has had that ketchup phone since the 70s! Also I'm pretty sure my college roommate had that 60 CD changer. Looks very familiar.

I wish we had that store in my area

This was great Colin, thanks

I would be spending like crazy if there wqs such a store where I live. I'm jealous.

That Dell speaker system is an Altec Lansing ADA995. It really, really rocks. Limited connectivity nowadays, but it's a quality bit of kit.

Dude, the 50.00 dell w subs is worth it. that would be a bangin MP3/winamp unit.

I wish we had a free geek or something like it where I live in northwest Arkansas. Love this style of content from you man!!! Keep it coming!

The jankiness is because they reused the same thunderbolt bridge board that was in their Sonnet Echo boxes. Why respin the bridge board when you can just build up three different products with the same bridge boards as demand requires? Sure, they could have done a different design on the riser card, flipping the thunderbolt ports internally, but then they would need to include another thunderbolt cable extension for the passthru port.

8:30 My mother had one of those! I think I might still have the RAM... for some reason? I recall playing 3D Pinball Space Cadet on it, with the giant matching blue CRT.

I expected literally anything inside of the Quicksilver except something as mundane as that. But hey, at least it boots

That Apple pc sounds like my first car.

These are some of my favorite videos. I need to visit this place.

The CD-Tape combo doesn't have a headphone jack. There is one port for a remote, one for Mic and one for Aux.

4:35 - It's running a pinball sound-emulator program!

I work IT for a company that captions telephone calls for the hard of hearing CapTel is one of our competetors. You're right though. We have captioning agents who recieve one side of the conversation then captions it into another program which then sends it to the phones screen similar to the one you see here. But that phone and ours should also have wifi built in, so they can use eather wifi or ethernet hardwired for the captions to work. The captions aren't instant there is a 3 to 5 second delay from the time they are said to the time they show up on the screen.

Not just a sub-woofer, a THX certified sub-woofer. I wonder how much extra Dell had to dish out for that badge?

honestly would love the stereo speaker setup that the dell dimension had

I can't help but think that laptop drives had to be slower than regular desktop burners. EDIT: Also, I love the idea of the ketchup phone sitting on someone's kitchen table and their cat comes over and knocks it "off the hook" haha what a nightmare.

I really wish we had one of these in Michigan.

8:48 A GIANT SUBWOOFER

On 09:06, on the left side of the Dell, there is an AT Case machine, it is just like my first computer. I'd buy that, but I'm Sweden ='( Nice stuff! I love those exploration videos.

Those captel phones were popular with sbc ameritec and ameritec back in the day we had them at goodwill in Appleton WI

4:50 It sounds like popcorn popping

At 6:15 it looks more like clear lamp cord you'd buy to rewire a table lamp not speaker wire.

Great episode. More like this please 😊

My school had that EIKI 7070 sound system!

8:00 For some reason I thought it would be a third person signing on the screen for the hard of hearing caller.

Very jealous that there isn't a store like this around me, there isn't much electronic preservation going on around where I live. Might have to make a trip up to the twin cities sometime

I wish I had know about or this store existed when I lived in the twin cities! I would have been in there every weekend!!

Those mega CD / DVD / Blu-ray changers are great but a recipe for losing their original boxes.

5:00 - oh dear lord please make it stop!

That dual laptop DVD combo 5 1/4 unit screams Dell all over the place.

The sonnett chassis are very common still.

4:25 that's not a computer, that's a pinball machine

I bought a Pioneer 25 disc mini system (with dual cassette decks at the bottom) in 1996 or 1997, and am planning on servicing it to put back into service (albeit mainly for listening to music from my plex library).