Two nights ago my spare Win7 laptop was on while I was working with the primary laptop. I look up and it has started the Win10 upgrade by itself. Bah, Humbug. Let it finish (as there's no cancel button.) Tried to get some old programs running -- a couple of hours later said to myself, why should I fight to get old reliable programs running? So started the "return to Win7 OS". After it was back to Win7, I installed the "GWX Control Panel." Kind of like using a plunger on the toilet to push out a blockage and throwing in some "Lime Away."

Early 70's my to-be business partner and I bought a Redcor RC70 (the company had gone bankrupt). As I recall it was 16K of 18 bit magnetic core memory. We wedded it with an Execuport portable TTY like keyboard with thermal printer and a star-wheel paper tape reader from Autonetics surplus store. I forget the source of the paper tape punch we started with. I then started programming in Fortran and assembly. It was almost impossible to get the Fortran compiler tape to load with the flaky star-wheel reader. We shortly replaced it with another Autonetics surplus item -- a 1000 CPS, stop on character, Ferranti paper tape reader. It was wondrous and continued to work for years. This was a mechanical marvel with pancake motors for the paper tape reels and it would shake the 6 ft, rack it was mounted in. You did not want to get your hands tangled in the reels -- it could inflict severe damage. Eventually we added a General Automation 18/30 (an IBM 1130 look alike) with (gasp!) 5 MB hard disk drives that we bought at a bankruptcy auction. We did a lot of paper tape code conversion for PCB drilling machines and flex layout software that I wrote mainly in Fortran with assembly used for the interface boards we did for the paper tape punches, pen plotters, and Teletype chain line printers. Not exactly a microprocessor, but quite a do-it-yourself project.

I also had the same problem and also hate the nickel and dime attitude of the cable. So I went with the Magnavox H2160MW9 A. This is a HDD/DVD recorder/player for the US market. (HDD, NOT a VCR) I've had it about 6 months and it works fine for me. It tunes and records both NTSC channels and digital over-the-air channels. I'm on FIOS, and you can't get around their subscription set top boxes -- bah humbug! But the minimal box outputs NTSC and composite video. So I feed that to the Magnovox. It includes editing ability of the recorded information on the HDD, and then you can record it on the DVD if you want. I just checked Amazon, and it may be an older model as it appears to be unavailable, but they show a MAGNAVOX MDR513H that looks like the same thing. When looking for this I think there were only two or three companies making a stand alone, non-subscription, HDD/DVD recorder/player, and I settled on this one.