Every so often, I like ride through Elmwood business park, looking for things that businesses have thrown away.  It just so happens, I've been wanting to rebuild E.R.I.C. 2.0 (my wall mounted jukebox, as seen in my avatar).  I pulled behind a row of businesses, and found this next to one of the dumpsters -





According to the label, it's a General Electric model H-116 radio.  I did some research, and it was made in 1939.  As you can see, it had some water damage to the bottom 6 inches, but all in all, it's in pretty good shape - considering it's 70 years old!  Here are some more shots -












All the electronics are shot to hell, so I'm going to gut it and refinish the veneer.  I'm then going to install E.R.I.C. 2.0's CPU inside with the powered speakers mounted behind the grill.  Since the display is gone, I'll probably just put a piece of opaque plexiglass over the cover, and illuminate it from the back with some while l.e.d.s. 

     Now, here's the challenging part.

     Since I want to continue to use my touchscreen monitor, and it clearly won't fit where the old display was, I'm going to fabricate an enclosure to go on top of the box.  I've been doing some searching on Google images for a 1939 GE television, and this is what I got -



This baby came with a whopping 5" screen, and you had to attach it to an existing radio, so you could tune in the audio through that one.  Now, my touchscreen is 17", so it will have to be a tad bit larger, but I'm hoping to get the same result.  Naturally, I've got to make a Windows start-up screen that will fit the style and era.  I'm a little disappointed, because this is too recent to be steampunk'd.  I'll have to start researching art deco design now.  As usual, this project will probably take a lot longer than predicted, but the price was right on this thing.