Fascinated with Goofy Stuff: Cartrivision

For some reason, vintage electronics fascinate me.  

There's a lot of hobbyists who collect antique radios, including ones that date back to the 40's.  I have an RCA Victor, this is the one, but mine looks nowhere near this good:

 

It belonged to my Dad, and still picks up a signal, is loud as hell, but the dial window is busted up.  It's going nowhere due to its sentimental value, and is kind of an arguably attainable dream to get the window area renovated.

I also have a couple 1960's solid state radios that still work, including a Telefunken that blasts major tube volume, and a solid state Panasonic that's on the cover of a certain Wilco album.

But that's it.  I'm not really a hobbyist in that department.  I tried some repair work in the 90's but was unsuccessful in making it all work.  Pretty hard to be an electronics hobbyist without some knowledge of repair and schematics.  I tried, read several books, took some units apart, but as simple as the old ones are in theory, to the layman, monkeying around in that wiring isn't necessarily as easy as all that.

But old radios are gorgeous and I guess that matters for something.  They don't make them like that anymore unless they're style replicas, and those are an inexpensive way for people dipping their toes into vinyl to get started listening to the records.  Most of the others besides the ones mentioned that I myself had are now gone. 

I'm off subject a bit, though. 

Antique radios are a popular hobby and examples of them litter the internet, and often refurbished ones are available for purchase at mercantiles all over the country.  

It's the stuff that's forgotten, lost to time, and maybe even out of place that fascinates me.  Like this Polish auto shop using an old Commodore computer that probably has next to no storage.

Check it out.

But what about Cartrivision?  For some reason this dinosaur fascinates me. It's even the focus of a documentary about the 1973 NBA finals where the only footage of game 5 was found on one of these cartridges, which actually popped into the back of your television. 

Lost & Found '73 Knicks Championship Tape Excerpt: Intro from chris fiore on Vimeo.

Fascinating right?  Some guy put himself through the wringer attempting to free the images of Game 5 from the clutches of this ancient media format.  Oddly, this documentary doesn't appear to exist on the internet.  I would love to see the whole thing. Maybe one day, as I'll keep trying streaming.  

Isn't it ironic that a documentary about technological wizard trying to get a basketball game off of a dinosaur tape becomes somehow lost in the ether?

At one time, somewhere in Wisconsin, an intact television with a Cartrivision unit was sold on eBay in Wisconsin:

Click.

Wisconsin Computer Club.

You could also get pre-recorded movies on Cartrivision, but I have no idea what they would cost, especially in relevance to today's dollar, but I've read they weren't cheap.  They were big clunky tapes that had two levels inside that the tape rolled on, but it looked like a singular unit.  If you want to go deep, check this out.  I warn you, though. There's 3 lengthy parts, and it goes into several deep directions, so you'd have to spend some time with it.

To summarize, though, I didn't even know this format existed until I read about the basketball game's documentary.  A 2013 New York Times article (April 5) brought it to my attention.  Cartrivision has a cult following now, but it's really fringe on the edge of vintage electronic buffs and for good reason.  The players are big and clunky, they're not necessarily inexpensive, and require some handiwork and elbow grease to reach functionality.

But, I guess my point is still that I'm just fascinated by what gets left in the dust of time as the clock ticks along.

Here's a link to a very informative and detailed Cartrivision site that looks pretty vintage itself, after all, it's host is Angelfire.    Cartrivision.

And another site steeped in technological information: Cartrivision Info.

I'm not the only one interested, I just don't have the know-how or the access, but I can still be fascinated.