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CP Electronics

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CP Electronics

The communications people of the Cariboo. We provide Internet, VHF, UHF, Cellular and Satellite communications for all your needs.

08/27/2026

Hello everyone! I hope you’re ready for this weeks instalment of CP’s “Old Tech of the Week” post because we found something pretty cool tucked onto the bottom of a shelf in the back this week. That’s right it’s an RCA CLR ProWonder Camcorder from 1985-1986!

Now I hear you kids asking “what on earth is a Camcorder?” Well believe it or not before smart phones had ultra HD cameras installed in them, even before digital cameras existed, Camcorders were how important events and family memories were recorded and saved. The ProWonder weighed over 6 pounds with a battery pack installed, which meant you had to carry it on your shoulder. You’d get quite the shoulder workout just taping your kids birthday party!

To see what you were recording this unit actually sported a miniature black and white CRT television tube, and since it recorded directly to an installed VHS tape, playback was as simple as popping the tape out of the recorder and into a VHS player! No fancy adapters or editing equipment needed!

It also sported an early form of auto-focus technology, which used infra-red lasers to judge distances and automatically focus the image. These were the be all end all of home video technology at the time, although they carried quite a high price tag!

Did you or your parents/grandparents use one of these beasts and pull it out to record at every potential family memory opportunity? Let us know!

Until next time!

08/14/2026

Well it’s time again for CP Electronics’s “Old Tech of the Week”!

Today we’re going back to 1999 with this Optimus Vox Cassette recorder. Released in 1999 under Radio Shack’s Optimus brand, this little recorder featured VOX, or Voice Operated Transmitter technology. This handy tech automatically started recording when it heard a voice, and paused during moments of silence. This helped to save not only on tape space but also battery life. It could run on both AA batteries and a 6v adapter.

With features like a built in microphone, an external mic jack, and a dedicated headphone jack alongside its sleek and lightweight plastic frame it was made to be functional, accessible, and durable enough for every day consumer use. And it has those nice clicky, tactile buttons, something that you don’t get nowadays recording audio on a smartphone.

As a little bonus I also found an entire box of brand new, unopened cassette tapes, a rare find indeed!

Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time!

07/30/2026

Hello again! It’s time for another episode of CP’s “Old Tech of the Week!” Today’s offering isn’t as old as some but is very interesting nonetheless! That’s right we’re looking at a smartphone released in Nov 2010, the HTC 7 Surround.

One of the first devices to use Microsoft’s new at the time Windows phone 7 Operating System, this little phone was part of the era of smartphone hardware experimentation that was common of the early 2010’s. This phone’s big gimmick was the slide out speaker, allowing the phone to slide open just enough to reveal a large speaker grill. To compliment the speaker it also had a built in kickstand to easily turn the phone into a miniature boombox or media player. With its Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD Surround capabilities, it produced a surprisingly good sound for such a small device.

A fun fact about it: while it did not feature an expandable memory slot, teardowns revealed that its internal storage drive was actually a MicroSDHC card, well hidden on the motherboard! Crazy stuff!

Do you remember this phone and its innovative Windows Phone Tiles interface? We’d love to hear about it!

Until next time!

07/16/2026

Hello again all! It’s that time again for CP’s “Old tech of the week!”

Today we have this throw back, an Admiral 7P35! Long before smartphones and Bluetooth speakers, this was how you took your music on the go!

Made by Admiral Radio & Television Co., this was a portable tube radio that hit the market right after WW2 in 1947. It used 7 AM circuits and could be powered either on a massive battery pack, or plugged into the wall.

Vacuum tube radios worked by using heavy internal tubes to take an invisible radio wave from the air, then amplify it, filter it, and turn it into a powerful electrical current that can move a speaker cone. Analogue technology is pretty fascinating!

Do you remember the distinctive sound of these old tube radios? We hope you liked this one and hope to see you next time!

07/14/2026

Hello again! To apologize for missing a few old tech of the week posts I’m here with a special bonus episode of CP’s Old Tech of the Week! I visited my childhood home this weekend and got a gander at a few things my parents had squirrelled away. Therefore today we’re looking at this vintage General Electric SF2106VYE CRT television set!

Produced some time in the 1970’s or 1980’s, I couldn’t find an exact date, these television sets utilized CRT, or Cathode-ray Tube technology. This particular unit appears to have only broadcast in black and white as well. Unlike today’s ultra thin pixel based television sets these were completely analogue. Inside the glass vacuum tube, an electron gun literally fired beams of light against a phosphor coated screen at high speed to construct an image, line by line. They got these images by tuning into free, over the air live broadcasts, the same way AM FM radios still work today, utilizing an antenna.

These broadcasts no longer exist, but CRT televisions are actually making a comeback thanks to retro gaming! Modern television sets introduce digital lag that makes classic 8-bit and 16- bit pixel games look jagged and blurry. Plugging old consoles into a CRT set, however, means that the natural phosphor bloom softens those pixels, making retro games look the way they were intended to look back in the day. Plus there’s still something so satisfying about those clicky analogue rotary switches. The downside though was there was no remote with these,it was usually up to the kids of the house to get up from the couch and change the channel or volume back in the day!

Do you remember watching Saturday morning cartoons on one of these sets? We’d love to hear from you!

Until next time!

06/25/2026

Hello and welcome back to CP’s “Old Tech of the Week.”!

Today we’re moving a little bit closer to modern day to look at this iPhone 5s. I know this might not seem like it belongs here in old tech, but as it was released in 2013, making it 13 years old, it does qualify! It was also a pretty groundbreaking phone when it was released.

Released alongside the iPhone 5c, it had almost the same dimensions as its predecessor, the iPhone 5, sporting a compact 4 inch display. Despite the similarities, the 5s had a few new features, some of which are still widely used and are taken for granted today. It was the first phone to feature a 64 bit A7 chip, making it much faster than its predecessor. It was also the first smart phone to have a fingerprint sensor, built into the home button. The TouchID system Apple still uses today was launched on this device. The iOS 7 operating system released along side it was also the first to introduce Apple’s AirDrop system as well as iTunes Radio.

The phone was so popular, that Apple actually supported it through a whopping 6 major versions of iOS, taking it all the way to iOS 12!

This one might be new enough that some of you probably remember having one of these! If you do we’d love to hear about it! Until next time!

06/18/2026

Welcome back to CP Electronics’s “Old tech of the Week”!

Today we’re really going back in time to have a look at this Northern Electric Pleasure Chest model 51. Created between 1932 and 1934, these radios and other so called “Treasure Chest” radios of the time were designed to resemble small pirate chests or colonial sea chests. Made during the Great Depression these were created to be eye catching and inexpensive compared to most larger household radios at the time. Similar style radios were brought back into production during the 1950’s to appeal to the kitch decorating style popular at that time.

Northern Electric, which was started in 1895, was a Canadian electronics manufacturer based out of Montreal. They began producing radios in 1922. Interestingly, according to a warning sticker on the inside dating from 1932, a licence was required to install, service, and even operate a radio such as this at the time. Crazy to think about!

We hope you enjoyed this step further back into time with us, and no, this is still not the oldest radio in our collection! See you next time!

06/11/2026

Good afternoon all! For today’s installment of CP Electronics’s “Old Tech of the week” we’re going in a bit of a different direction to look at old storage media. Specifically the 3.5 inch floppy disc.

No kids those aren’t 3D printed save icons! Floppy discs were the go to storage media of the 1970s to 1990s, comprising of a thin, flexible storage disc inside of a protective plastic case. They were used for direct storage, back ups of computers, and for transferring data from one computer to another. Previous types of floppy disks were just that: floppy. They had a thin plastic case and were much larger. In 1981 though the 3.5 inch floppy disc was created by Sony. It’s hard, rigid protective case and smaller size gave them a distinctive advantage and were adopted by many computer manufacturers in the coming years. Apple computers even chose the 3.5 inch disc drives to be installed in their new line of Macintosh computers in 1984!

Early versions held a total of 161.2 kb of data, but by the end of their use that amount had jumped to about 1.44 mb once the HD version was released. However, once writable CD Rom drives came onto the market, along with the invention of the portable “thumb” drives and larger computer drives overall, they became mostly obsolete by about the year 2000.

I’m sure some of you remember using these back in the day. I know I sure did! I had a rainbow pack of brightly coloured discs that I used to store all of my school work on…yes I’m that old! We hope you enjoyed this one and we’ll see you next week!

06/04/2026

Hello all! Sorry we missed a week but we’re back with this cool vintage Automatic Electric Spacesaver Monophone Wall Telephone.

This phone appears to date to between the 1940’s to the 1950’s and was considered very compact for the time, hence the Spacesaver title. They were a rotary phone meaning you rotated the dial depending on the number you were dialling then waited for the dial to rotate back. While rotating the phone would make a number of clicks or pulses corresponding to the dialled number which would then tell the telephone system which number it was supposed to be. And yes it did take a lot more time to dial with this pulse dial system than with today’s touch tone system, but I would argue it was a lot more satisfying! Rotary phones were actually still used up until about the 1990s when they became largely obsolete.

This unit was meant to be mounted on the wall as its body is extremely heavy for its size, and came equipped with a handy side mounted cradle for the handset to rest on when not in use. It was designed to be rugged and durable, for commercial or utilitarian use. We believe that this exact unit was mounted here in the shop for a very long time. It even came equipped with handy everyday local phone numbers, some still familiar, others not so much.

Do you remember any of these phones or businesses? We’d love to hear about it if you do!

That’s it for now, we hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and hope to see you again soon!

05/21/2026

For today’s episode of CP Electronics’s “Old Tech of the Week” I’ve pulled this Realistic Concert Mate 8 boombox style player.

Produced in the mid 1970s it boasted not only AM FM radio audio, but also had a built in 8 track radio all combined in one compact portable unit. ( 8 track tape pictured for scale) It also featured independent left and right stereo controls and tone control. It included a headphone jack, a 12v DC adapter jack, and could even be powered by batteries making it a versatile little player.

8 track tapes were at the peak of their popularity when the Concertmate 8 was released and portable boomboxes like this were loved for those wanting on the go listening.

We hope you were brought back in time with us again today and that you enjoyed this episode. We’ll see you again next week!

Address

298 2nd Avenue North
Williams Lake, BC
V2G1Z8

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5:30pm
Tuesday	9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday	9am - 5:30pm
Thursday	9am - 5:30pm
Friday	9am - 5:30pm

Website

http://www.cpelectronics.ca/

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