Sony DTC-700 audio DAT player/recorder

> ... VHS players rapidly became throw-away items – eventually nobody really cared if they only lasted a year or two.

I don't know if I'm losing my marbles, but I don't ever recall a time growing up when my family (or anyone else I knew) were buying a new VCR every year or two.

Early 2000s. My family used VHS until after the switch to digital TV. Not that we would buy one new, but if we found one at a garage sale for a couple bucks we would take it. Used to have a stock of 2 or 3 on hand at a time. They were all late 90's / early 2000s models that everyone was dropping in favor of DVDs, made as cheap as possible, and would quit working in about 8-10 months. Which meant I got to take apart the broken one - I recall taking apart around a dozen, but some of those were already broken and found in the trash.

Meanwhile, the "basement" VCR my dad bought new in '85 still works to this day, but that one was less programmable, so we always used the cheap ones to record off the air.

I vividly remember the day when at age 10 my grandfather let me disassemble a broken VCR. It is the day I learned to treat electronics with large capacitors with respect.

My lesson was a disposable film camera... The flash cap gave quite a jolt

I had this “great” idea to build a stun gun out of an old camera flashgun as a young teen.

Got jolted across the room and decided to quietly give up the idea, luckily before anything serious happened.