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Found a working WebTV in a Reno storage unit, the remote still had batteries
I was clearing out my uncle's unit off Virginia Street last week and there it was, a dusty WebTV box hooked to a 14 inch CRT. Plugged it in expecting a brick, but it booted to the welcome screen and actually connected to my phone's hotspot after some fuss. The interface is so slow it took 40 seconds just to open the mail app, but somehow I spent 2 hours browsing old newsgroups on it. Has anyone else revived one of these things, or is mine just weirdly stubborn?
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ben_lopez252mo ago
Grabbing an old tech relic like that is always a trip, but I gotta push back on the "charming" part. That 40 second mail load time isn't nostalgic, it's a warning that the whole thing is one fart away from a full crash. You got lucky with the hotspot, sure, but that's a ticking time bomb of dead capacitors and outdated code. I'd say mess with it for a week, have your fun, then gut it for the CRT and parts before it dies on you mid-browse and takes your patience with it. It's a cool find, but stubborn is just another word for "not dead yet.
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