that's like, 10 confederacies. you should put up a statue dedicated to your microwave
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Except this thing was actually useful and did some good for all those years lol!
There's probably a ribbon cable from the membrane. You could try buzzing out the keys and making one or adapting an ordered standard part
I also have a microwave from the 80s, got it from my dad and he bought it when he was young.
I hope it never dies. I love the Star Trek-like touchpad and the beautiful CCFL display. 😍
It's a Panasonic as well, I even have the ridiculous microwave cookbook somewhere, which contains a lot of really bad meal photos.
we had one from the early 90s or 80s also panasonic, it last 30+years, then we bought a newish one few years ago, and it died in 2 years. it was the famous overheating one, that looks likes it catching onfire it was 100$, and then it suddenly stopped working lol. the current one we spent a little more and it was working fine.
My mom still uses the Panasonic microwave that she bought in the '80s.
Meanwhile, I've been through four microwaves since 2000.
Nooooo rip, Zappy did a good job
Sadly your next one will be but a child when it dies.
43 years is legendary—Zappy lived a full, honorable life 🫡
The furnace in my house dates to 1987. It just survived another cold winter. My plumber says a new one would use about half as much gas and that parts are no longer available for the old one. I wish I knew whether to believe him or not.
Gas furnaces from 1987 when new could convert 75-80% of the chemical energy in gas into heat within your house. They lose some efficiency over time, but not that much - I would expect it's still getting 70-75% of the chemical energy converted into heat within your house.
The maximum efficiency available today is around 96% on the same metric. If you need 100 units of heat today, you are burning 133-143 units of gas. With the best possible furnace efficiency today, you would only need to burn 104 units of gas, which is 22-28% less - certainly not "about half".
There are multiple special requirements for the best possible efficiency, and they are more expensive, both to purchase and to install. You might be able to save money on bills, depending on gas rates in your area, and the total cost to purchase and install a high efficiency furnace. I can't really answer that without a lot more information.
As for parts availability, there should be a model number and a manufacturer indicated on it somewhere. These days, most things service professionals have access to are also listed on the internet for sale. That one is easier to convincingly check.
Yeah, I'm inclined to think parts are available but my plumber would never bother looking for them. The guy I was going to rent the house to said he had tons of spare parts for my kind of furnaces and I was prepared to give him a break on rent if he kept it going. Unfortunately I didn't get the house renovated in time for him to move in (and I'm still not done) so I can't really expect him to do anything for me.
Newer ones can be a lot more efficient, but the high efficiency ones aren't just drop-in replacements either because they require additional piping to the outdoors which can be a big issue depending on where in your house the furnace is located.
Is the heat exchanger still intact? No cracks? If it's cracked get rid of it before the carbon monoxide gets you. We went with a heat pump and will not return to a gas furnace.
No cracks in the heat exchanger. I have a CO detector mounted right by it in the basement (for whatever that's worth).
Ask another HVAC company about your options and benefits... See if they say similar things... Most likely given that it's almost 40 years old vs The efficiency improvements are probably across the board on new models... And see if the numbers match
Don't trust the HVAC guy, you know, who wants to sell more HVAC
But do trust another random HVAC guy who wants to, in fact, sell more HVAC
???
Bruh everyone wants to make money selling you shit. They only person who will want you to buy nothing is you.
I get where you're coming from, but it's kinda isolationist and sad. Distrust profit motive, but try to trust people when you can. I don't want to make money selling this guy shit, for one :)
I can see how it could come off like that. I mean I generally trust the HVAC man's opinion on everything except whether I should buy HVAC services.
It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It
Personally I advocate for self-education. It might have been difficult to discover the refrigeration cycle, and invent the furnace but it won't take you more than a few hours to learn enough to check your own equipment. Or how to check the brakes on your car. How to find a leak.
It's quite liberating to be able to tell that they're full of shit. That isn't your Car's Air filter, or that your AC needs a capacitor not a $15,000 full replacement but that you'll be buying it from someone else.
Knowledge is power ✊
I care. My condolences for your loss.
Made in Japan! RIP Zappy.
remember PYREX, they went cheap and using soda lime glass laminated instead of borosilicate. pyrex vs PYREX, its still being sold in the EU. there are borosilicate glassware from other brands, but none of them seem to match Pyrex, just better than the soda lime variants.
OXO is just very overpriced borosilicate, if you are interested probably the closest to PYREX. i did seem some pyrex lunch containers are borosilicate?
You should get a 4-in-1 microwave/airfryer/convection-oven/broiler. I have one and I have not looked back.
All things end, such is life. It's like the river carries water; only when it flows downhill it makes space for new rain.
Haha thanks, my GF had her 43rd birthday as well on the 24th, so at least she beat a Japanese mini nuke.
There's a way to rewire that with either a toggle switch, or using the door switches themselves (3 switches, by law).
Lol I was actually thinking of jury-rigging something together to trigger the dead buttons. I can still set the timer for anything under 9 minutes and 99 seconds, but the "ten minute" button and the "Engage" buttons are stone dead, even when checking the continuity with the tester. I've already got the panel out and will probably fiddle with it this weekend if I got time and see what I can do. I'm not letting my baby go without a fight...partially because I don't want a new microwave, partially because I'm sentimental, and partially maybe I'm just a little bit mental.
Just be careful if you open it up, because I've heard microwaves have capacitors inside that can hold a lethal amount of electricity for months or years since the last time they were plugged in
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We recently had to replace a $500 Electrolux microwave that was only 11 years old. We mistakenly thought that brand was supposed to be higher quality :(
My mom had a microwave that lasted for decades. I left home in '81, so it was bought prior to that. She was still using it when she passed in '16. That thing was huge. I remember that before my dad would sit down to the table to eat, he would open the door on it to just the right angle so he could continue watching the TV in it's reflection. The only thing wrong with it was the top and bottom rows of red LED lights had quit shining which made it a little tricky to tell how much time was left on it, but that never bothered my mom. Also, they didn't have turntables in them back then, so you had to frequently turn the food. Mom bought a wind-up platform that you'd sit the food on and you could hear it in there ticking away while it slowly turned your food. She had to give up about 2.5 inches of height for it, but that oven was so big it didn't matter...
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