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Spikeguy posted:Oh yeah. I got one of these back in 2001. I still have it today and it still works. The best thing about this was you could program anything into it. I had a catalogue of maybe 100 deep math formulas, chemistry solutions, physics formulas and of course games including Mario Bros. Kingpin and Snake. It was the poo poo. My first one was stolen so my dad decided the best way to make sure no one mistook it for theirs, he used a soldering tool to burn my name into the back casing. The powers of graphing calculators are great,. I remember getting a newer one when the first Playstation3 softmod was released. You could program it to do the correct triggers over the systems USB connector. It's been many years since that so info might be sketchy. Here is a video of a TI-84 doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOSpCoCmOns http://brandonw.net/ps3jb/
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Sep 3, 2016 14:45
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Never had a graphing calculator but my Casio scientific one works great to this day with the original battery (I assume the tiny solar panel helps). I know Dave/Eevblog's been done to death, but I want to point out this loving thing he just got in the last mailbag:  It's a GPS unit from 1991 Supposedly it cost over a grand and took up to half an hour to get started sometimes, but still that had to be pretty mindblowing back then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB-fUf3pc94&t=1489s This one was broken but he attempts to repair it in a more detailed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az4B2o4Kcsc. There's also a page with more photos and data: http://retro-gps.info/Sony/Sony-Pyxis-IPS-360/index.html
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Sep 3, 2016 21:00
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mobby_6kl posted:Never had a graphing calculator but my Casio scientific one works great to this day with the original battery (I assume the tiny solar panel helps). Yeah, 20-30 minute lock it excruciatingly long these days. But he did get it back up and running.
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Sep 3, 2016 21:04
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The TI-82 I had was acquired before our school started with graphic calculators. It dropped my average score something fierce (why memorize when I can just code a few lines, enter the variables and get a solution oh poo poo not allowed on exams ffffuuuucckkkk) but it did get me interested in programming, even though the 82 had only a weird form of BASIC where you had to choose commands from a list and no (official) assembly support. I coded a wireframe isometric 3D engine on it that worked entirely on basis of specifying coordinates in the form of radians and scalars and it had to blank the screen every time before the next image could be drawn. I didn't know about matrix transforms back then, otherwise I could've made it much easier, probably faster and actually 3D. I saw a TI-92 a few years later which had a bitching Harrier-like game on it, but they practically stuffed an entire Amiga 500 in there as opposed to the gimped C64 in the TI-82.
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Sep 3, 2016 21:55
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mobby_6kl posted:I know Dave/Eevblog's been done to death, but I want to point out this loving thing he just got in the last mailbag: Funnily enough, I was just about to post handheld GPS devices in here: This is a mid range Garmin:  It has a 240x320, non-touchscreen screen, no wifi, no phone data, barely enough memory to allow it to upgrade, is single function, runs off AA batteries and costs over £125 Compare with my £100 smartphone that does everything that it does, plus, well, is a smartphone. And the maps are free to upgrade, updated more often and better than the garmin ones. EDIT: and thanks to phone technology, it's faster and more accurate than the Garmin. spog has a new favorite as of 00:44 on Sep 4, 2016 |
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Sep 4, 2016 00:41
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spog posted:It has a 240x320, non-touchscreen screen, no wifi, no phone data, barely enough memory to allow it to upgrade, is single function, runs off AA batteries and costs over £125 That's an unironically great feature list
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Sep 4, 2016 00:43
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They still get used in certain niches, Military, backcountry outdoors, etc. For some of the same reasons: Your phone probably can't take the same beating and keep ticking, and doesn't run on AAs. Bet you the battery life is orders of magnitude better as well.
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Sep 4, 2016 00:44
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Got another  new thingy in the mail the other day: It's a Monroe "MonroMatic" 8N-213 electromechanical calculator. Works perfectly as well. Haven't had the time to record it in action yet, though. There's one notable difference between this one and other models that I own. Monroe went to some effort to make the machine use fixed-point arithmetic, so if it's set up correctly you won't need to worry about the decimal placement regardless of which tasks you're performing. This thing also cost the equivalent of a car in its heyday. 
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Sep 4, 2016 20:00
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Forktoss posted:Back to TI graphing calculator talk! I love my TI-86 with a burning passion. Our high school math class required everyone to have a graphing calculator, and the school's calculator of choice was a spindly, toy-like Casio, which they sold out to students for 100€ each. I got my dad's old TI-86, laughing at the others' screens full of dead pixels and stupid interactive vinculums while I wrote all my divisions out in pages-long lines like a professional. I will champion this old war horse to the bitter end. TI actually pushed an update to the TI-84 series a while back to add fancy math typesetting as an option. Once again, I'm really just surprised it took them so long to do a 'refresh'. The core design is solid, but adding a higher-res screen for easier-to-read text and color so you can tell two lines apart was a welcome change.
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Sep 4, 2016 22:10
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Spy_Guy posted:Got another How much did it cost now?
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Sep 5, 2016 00:16
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Spy_Guy posted:Got another Oh man, please post a video cause I can't really figure out how that's supposed to work just from that picture and it's fascinating me. Why so many buttons???
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Sep 5, 2016 17:52
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WeX Majors posted:Oh man, please post a video cause I can't really figure out how that's supposed to work just from that picture and it's fascinating me. Why so many buttons??? I am guess that each 1-9 column is for each digit of a number. and the decimal can be moved between them in those little windows. I'm just guessing but thats how I would start mashing on it if I had to learn quickly to fake it.
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Sep 6, 2016 08:34
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Sep 6, 2016 08:44
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Rambling Robot posted:How much did it cost now?  x 29. Some fair bit of change, but it's in extremely good shape, so I definitely feel like I got my money's worth out of it.WeX Majors posted:Oh man, please post a video cause I can't really figure out how that's supposed to work just from that picture and it's fascinating me. Why so many buttons??? I have one recorded now.  Just gotta put finishing touches on it and it'll be good to upload. I'll post a link here when it's up.Humphreys posted:I am guess that each 1-9 column is for each digit of a number. and the decimal can be moved between them in those little windows. I'm just guessing but thats how I would start mashing on it if I had to learn quickly to fake it. Yep! They're ones, tens, hundreds, etc. from right to left. The little window thingies are just indicators and the actual fixed decimal placement is done by the top buttons and the slider by the lower sets of numbers. Amazing thing of engineering, really.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:00
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Spy_Guy posted:
You got that a LOT cheaper than I was imaging! EDIT: Someone a while ago mentioned ReactOS so I downloaded it and thought before I delve into it I would see what youtube has to offer: Behold - frustrations in computing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Jp-WIxZxQ Humphreys has a new favorite as of 11:27 on Sep 7, 2016 |
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Sep 7, 2016 09:31
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I had one of these, because they were cheaper than the Game Boy. The screen is hinged so you can tilt it a little. The screen was kinda blurry and the games available for it were poo poo. I eventually got a real Gameboy. re: framerate chat from a while back, I liked how Gerry Anderson's shows, such as Thunderbirds, used high speed cameras to create an illusion of size. These were shows that employed marionettes, scale models and pyrotechnics. They recorded all action sequences with vehicles and buildings at high frame rates, with the models moving (or exploding) really fast. After the recording was slowed back to 24 fps, the movements looked really smooth. Things like water droplets, flames, smoke, dust and flying debris in slow motion A bunch of people got crowdfunded to make new Thunderbirds episodes in the old style, using the same techniques used in the 1960's. It's terribly impractical and labour intensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eAR-LGk30I
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Sep 7, 2016 13:33
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Stick Insect posted:I had one of these, because they were cheaper than the Game Boy. The screen is hinged so you can tilt it a little. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSXhpseKoOw
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Sep 7, 2016 15:36
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WeX Majors posted:Oh man, please post a video cause I can't really figure out how that's supposed to work just from that picture and it's fascinating me. Why so many buttons???  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNwzS0VOy1E A tad long perhaps, but I tend to wanna cover everything about a machine. Hope you like it!
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Sep 7, 2016 21:13
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Spy_Guy posted:
extremely loving satisfying clunks
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Sep 8, 2016 04:28
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Video's on my home computer, but I went to the NSA cryptography museum near Baltimore and they had a pair of Enigma machines you get to play with. Every key press has to spin a rotor, so you have to push down hard on each key with a big clunk and ringing noise when you release it. Even if you didn't have to write down which lamp lit up with each key press, there'd be no way to type quickly with one.
chitoryu12 has a new favorite as of 19:02 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2016 13:31
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I went to a museum where they had a ton of these mechanical calculators and it kinda highlighted (highlit?) a problem I have with tech museums in general: I can only look at so many exhibits before I want to see them in action. I realize if you let people play with them freely, someone would break it, but the way it is now, I can go to the museum and get kinda bored or I can watch someone explain the thing in-depth for half an hour on youtube. They also had a ton of old synths and again all I wanted to to was hook those fuckers up to an amp and drive the other visitors away with robot farts. All they had to play around with was a really quiet theremin. Whoop-dee-doo.
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Sep 8, 2016 13:43
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My Lovely Horse posted:I went to a museum where they had a ton of these mechanical calculators and it kinda highlighted (highlit?) a problem I have with tech museums in general: I can only look at so many exhibits before I want to see them in action. I realize if you let people play with them freely, someone would break it, but the way it is now, I can go to the museum and get kinda bored or I can watch someone explain the thing in-depth for half an hour on youtube. Yeah, they should at least have a video display along with things like that that shows it in action.
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Sep 8, 2016 14:05
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Museums that target children seem to be a bit better in that regard - I have no shame in going through the interactive children's exhibits.
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Sep 8, 2016 17:23
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Spy_Guy posted:
I couldn't stop myself from saying aloud "oh, yeah, that's the stuff" when it started working. Super satisfying to watch in action for some reason.
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Sep 8, 2016 17:29
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 Courage! 
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Sep 8, 2016 20:02
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What Apple doesn't want you to know is that you can upgrade your current 6/6s up to 7 spec for cheap: http://appleplugs.com/
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Sep 8, 2016 21:13
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My Lovely Horse posted:I went to a museum where they had a ton of these mechanical calculators and it kinda highlighted (highlit?) a problem I have with tech museums in general: I can only look at so many exhibits before I want to see them in action. I realize if you let people play with them freely, someone would break it, but the way it is now, I can go to the museum and get kinda bored or I can watch someone explain the thing in-depth for half an hour on youtube. Good museums do this either by amassing tons of originals or creating replicas. Like the National Video Game Museum. The Center for Popular Music will record drat near anyone playing music on an original wax cylinder machine if they ask nicely. Here's a crappy video, lots more on the CPM Facebook: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yCTVsTlygeQ joshtothemaxx has a new favorite as of 23:33 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 23:27
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mobby_6kl posted:What Apple doesn't want you to know is that you can upgrade your current 6/6s up to 7 spec for cheap: lol it’s funny because sexual violence symbolism
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Sep 8, 2016 23:47
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mobby_6kl posted:What Apple doesn't want you to know is that you can upgrade your current 6/6s up to 7 spec for cheap: Careful with that joke, it's museum-grade. Or maybe it just feels that old because yesterday it got posted more times than there are people on the planet.
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Sep 9, 2016 00:10
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Having just had a bluetooth speaker go utterly nuts and refuse to work until the batteries had drained and it was recharged, I'm not inclined to agree with them right now.
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Sep 9, 2016 02:43
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I really don't know how they're going to spin this one as anything but a blatant cash grab, the idea that the 3.5mm connection is obsolete is underpants on the head crazy.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:30
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Lizard Combatant posted:I really don't know how they're going to spin this one as anything but a blatant cash grab, the idea that the 3.5mm connection is obsolete is underpants on the head crazy. It's a combination cash grab and 'silicon valley tech bro circlejerk hating old formats even though they work perfectly loving fine'. Progress for the sake of progress' sake.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:41
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I hate that Apple removed the jack, not because I will personally miss it, but because no one will shut up about it.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:47
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But this is the obsolete technology thread and a company is trying to convince everyone that a daily used piece of tech is obsolete. You might want to sit this one out.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:57
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Lizard Combatant posted:But this is the obsolete technology thread and a company is trying to convince everyone that a daily used piece of tech is obsolete. You might want to sit this one out. Fax machines. 
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Sep 9, 2016 04:01
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XYZ posted:Fax machines. The fax machine was replaced with something cheaper, easier, higher quality and more efficient.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:09
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Lizard Combatant posted:The fax machine was replaced with something cheaper, easier, higher quality and more efficient. Well you would think that.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:14
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BattleMaster posted:Well you would think that. I'm not on trial here!
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Sep 9, 2016 04:16
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Lizard Combatant posted:But this is the obsolete technology thread and a company is trying to convince everyone that a daily used piece of tech is obsolete. You might want to sit this one out. Apple sounds like they would fit right in with the posters in this thread complaining about GPS, Mp3 players, physical media of any kind, printers, and the (nearly but not quite obsolete) fax machine.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:36
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Lizard Combatant posted:I'm not on trial here! Actually, you are. *bangs gavel*
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Sep 9, 2016 05:36
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