I recently found a really old stereo speaker in my attic and thought it would
be cool to hook it up to my computer. The guy at radio shack mentioned
something about needing to have the amp for the speaker (tuner?) or it would
not work. Is there a way around this? Perhaps a way that I could use my
computer as my tuner? thanks...

5 responses total.

Your sound card probably already has an amp in it, but it's probably not 
a very powerful one.  Maybe five or ten watts, at most.  You won't get 
much volume if you plug a large speaker into it, but it will work.  Any 
cheap stereo with line inputs will probably work as an amp for it.

main thing to be careful with is that old speakers, and most speakers in
general aren't magnetically shielded. I've got an old set of Utah speakers
that will discolour a CRT from 10' away. As for the amp, poke around at a few
yard sales, since it's the prefect time of year for that, or hang around for
student move-out days if that hasn't gone past already. I found a perfect
little amp/tape deck combo that someone had tossed out. It's small enough
(about 10"Wx12"Dx5"H) to sit on the desk in the most unobtrusive way, and puts
out enough power to drive the 30" tall (and 30 year old) Magnavox 3-ways under
the desk. Enough that a good 25-35Hz tone will start dancing things off the
desk with the volume barely halfway up. :)
Much better than the 3 piece $40 subwoofer set I was using.

You've got speakers that will discolor a CRT from 10 *feet* away?  Wow.

Better not bring any floppies into that room.

Some really big (>19") computer monitors need degaussing every time you
rotate them, because the earth's magnetic field is strong enough to throw
off the color purity.

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