Time for another trip to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, dear readers! This installment of “Found in the Garage” leaps from the ancient days of the reel-to-reel recorder to . . . the ancient days of the first CD player!
What you see is a Hitachi DA-1000, which evidently was The Bomb of 1st gen CD players. It may not be capable of playing home-burned CDs, but it is old enough to buy you alcohol, dating back to around 1983. Here’s some guy’s video of it in action.
(Note: I may still have my Toshiba home DVD player from 2000 somewhere, but I’m sorta hoping that I managed to lose it a few years ago.)