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Horace posted:From 1984, an "illegal" cordless phone with a 1500ft range. "imagine walking your dog while talking on the phone". Make it even easier for your neighbors to listen to your calls! Back in the early 2000's my mom bought a 900 MHz police scanner with the primary purpose of listening to phone calls. It was kind of amazing how easy it was. Just continuously scan the 900 band and there would generally be 1, 2, or 3 calls going on any any given evening time. I set up a PC to have continual recording so I could just hit a button to start recording 30-seconds earlier. Somewhere around here there's a hard drive with a bunch of those recordings on it (though the idea of listening to private calls is less fun at 30 years old than it was at 13) I tried it off and on over the years and once 900 mhz phones went away, all you'd hear is the occasional elderly person that never upgraded. Eventually I started to hear cell-phone calls, but I was never clear if I was actually picking up a cell signal or if it was just people on cells calling a cordless house phone. Once or twice I got to hear an On-Star call from a vehicle, which was pretty weird. I still use that police scanner today to listen to regular police activity (somehow my city never upgraded to a trunked system), but I haven't scanned the 900 mhz band in a decade. I'm sure nothing uses it anymore. It's funny, if you look up Dak Industries, they're still using the same marketing technique on their products.
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Jan 11, 2019 15:51
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I had a particularly powerful set of walkie-talkies in the mid to late 90s that picked up on signals from something (or somethings) that we could never quite figure out. Sometimes it would sound like EMS, sometimes CB Radio, and sometimes normal phone calls. Endless summer amusement for a couple 12 year olds, though.
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Jan 11, 2019 16:07
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wa27 posted:Make it even easier for your neighbors to listen to your calls! Back in the early 2000's my mom bought a 900 MHz police scanner with the primary purpose of listening to phone calls. It was kind of amazing how easy it was. Just continuously scan the 900 band and there would generally be 1, 2, or 3 calls going on any any given evening time. I set up a PC to have continual recording so I could just hit a button to start recording 30-seconds earlier. Somewhere around here there's a hard drive with a bunch of those recordings on it (though the idea of listening to private calls is less fun at 30 years old than it was at 13) Oh, wow you just jostled loose a memory! I went on a trip home one weekend with a girl in highschool (boarding school) and she was from this tiny town wayyy out in the delta and all her mom and her friends did all day was sit on the porch swing and call each other to gossip on their cordless phone or listen to the scanner in on everyone else's phone calls. That and smoke meth. mactheknife posted:I had a particularly powerful set of walkie-talkies in the mid to late 90s that picked up on signals from something (or somethings) that we could never quite figure out. Sometimes it would sound like EMS, sometimes CB Radio, and sometimes normal phone calls. Endless summer amusement for a couple 12 year olds, though. We had a baby monitor when I was a kid that suddenly started broadcasting my uncle's voice. He was taking gibberish but it was clearly him. He lived just down the street so we ran down to see what was up and our Aunt told us he was at work. He was an air traffic controller. The baby monitor was picking up ATC.
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Jan 11, 2019 16:30
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tactlessbastard posted:He was an air traffic controller. The baby monitor was picking up ATC. That's reasonable enough - ATC voice is AM and usually sits at 124-137 MHz in the US and baby monitors also use that band. Lots of stuff does.
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Jan 11, 2019 16:45
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wa27 posted:
Imagine recording something at 1x speed in TYOOL 2019
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Jan 11, 2019 16:48
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wa27 posted:It's funny, if you look up Dak Industries, they're still using the same marketing technique on their products. quote:It’s a mystery. It may be a conspiracy. We may be being punished for the occasional sins of a few. Tons of Windows users have reported that they no longer have access to “Stereo Mix” or “What-U-Hear” on their computers. Since Windows 7, then in Windows 8, and now in Windows 10, we’ve lost our ability to record any sound we hear playing through our PC. I don’t know whether it’s a conspiracy or not, but I do know that it’s been super frustrating for so many music lovers like you and me. But I record from Stereo Mix all the time? It's how I grab audio clips when I'm editing m'podcast. Now, if your best solution for getting free music is "record it at 1x from Youtube, including every IM notification and Windows error sound", you might not be able to figure handle this incredibly complex process: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/39532/how-to-enable-stereo-mix-in-windows-7-to-record-audio/
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Jan 11, 2019 16:54
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My kids have a toy walkie talkie with a base station that picks up the school's bus radios. Dunno if it transmits on it haven't tried.
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Jan 11, 2019 17:44
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The entire 1984 DAK catalogue is online here: https://archive.org/details/1984-Fall-DAK-Catalog. Phone modems, a pocket autodialler, a hands free console phone thing, a voice controlled phone. You've never seen so many gimmicky landline phones. There was also an answerphone with a very cool "toll saver" feature, which wouldn't answer until the third ring if you had no messages, so you didn't have to put any coins into the payphone.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:17
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How come there was always 6-8 weeks of shipping?
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Jan 11, 2019 18:51
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evobatman posted:How come there was always 6-8 weeks of shipping? 6-7 weeks processing, 1-2 weeks shipping. The sales office might be far away from the warehouse, or the seller might be dropshipping poo poo to your door. Whole towns next to airports in the US are dedicated to the mail-order (and later as-seen-on-TV and dropshipping) business, with many tax exemptions for companies and their employees. Establishing a tiny warehouse/office in town for the distributor and having orders shipped "through" it might make delivery take a while, but you can save more than enough money in taxes to cut prices for the customer.
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Jan 11, 2019 21:19
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madeintaipei posted:6-7 weeks processing, 1-2 weeks shipping. The sales office might be far away from the warehouse, or the seller might be dropshipping poo poo to your door. Whole towns next to airports in the US are dedicated to the mail-order (and later as-seen-on-TV and dropshipping) business, with many tax exemptions for companies and their employees. Establishing a tiny warehouse/office in town for the distributor and having orders shipped "through" it might make delivery take a while, but you can save more than enough money in taxes to cut prices for the customer. I was under the impression the inflated processing/shipping times were also in place to make the most use of legally-allowed delays in order to place order funds into interest-generating accounts and wait to actually send product until the last possible moment.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:07
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Probably has to do with purchasing to pad it out to make as large a purchase order as they can to match the sales orders of a bigger timeframe. Then sure, the idle money can make interest while they get better volume pricing if they can set it up like that and they don’t need it for operating costs or cocaine.
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Jan 12, 2019 01:08
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Laslow posted:Then sure, the idle money can make interest while they get better volume pricing if they can set it up like that and they don’t need it for operating costs or cocaine. Much like in banking, cocaine is the operating cost.
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Jan 12, 2019 01:25
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Don't worry, long range cordless phones aren't tech relics everywhere!Wikipedia: DECT Standard posted:The maximum allowed power for portable equipment as well as base stations is 250 mW. A portable device radiates an average of about 10 mW during a call as it is only using one of 24 time slots to transmit. SENAO SN-6610 long distance 15KM cordless telephone posted:Output power:base 6W / handset 1W Speaking of scanners, it's probably come up before but WebSDRs are always fun for a bit, e.g. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901. The closest you'll get to a phone call is in the amateur bands though.
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Jan 12, 2019 02:02
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Trabant posted:Much like in banking, cocaine is the operating cost.
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Jan 12, 2019 04:18
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Everything about these is cool and good except the use of a display script typeface in all-caps here 
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Jan 14, 2019 16:24
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Jerry Cotton posted:I was walking down the street with a goon once and he stopped to talk to some guy and afterwards I asked him "who was that?" and he said "oh Purple Motion you know?" and I was like whoaa daaamn. Where was this? I assume in glorious Finland, particularly considering your next story, or was it in some sort of parallel Purple Motion-universe I also laughed to think back to Bomfunk MCs. I infuriated a Finnish dude once long ago when I posted somewhere asking if anyone else had heard this awesome new German hip-hop track "Freestyler" (that is how I was introduced to it, I made no judgments on the accent myself) Powered Descent posted:"ha ha ha, good luck, meatbags"
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Jan 14, 2019 18:04
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Dr. Quarex posted:This post blew me away so hard that I had to build up my courage to respond Nothing glorious about Finland. I live in Finland Proper (as opposed to the Republic of Finland) which is where BinBum MCs originates from. I and my goon friend who is much more knowledgeable about the demo scene bumped into Purple Motion on Yliopistonkatu in Turku (this city). e: I'm pretty sure I know someone who know's Darude but I'm too drunk to think about it, sorry.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:07
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Powered Descent posted:A year and a half ago, I went on a road trip to see the total eclipse that went across the US. We lucked out with a clear sky, and the eclipse was mindblowingly awesome. But immediately afterward came the infamous coast-to-coast traffic jam as a few million people all poured out of the narrow path of totality to go back home, along roads in rural areas that simply weren't designed for anywhere near that volume of traffic. Ha. Somewhere I have a screen grab of a nationwide traffic map from google maps. You can clearly see a swath of red, coast to coast on all of the highways leaving the zone of totality. I will try to find it.
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Jan 15, 2019 04:30
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Jerry Cotton posted:Nothing glorious about Finland. I live in Finland Proper (as opposed to the Republic of Finland) which is where BinBum MCs originates from.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:31
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Jerry Cotton posted:Turku (this city). How are things over at Moomin World?
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Jan 18, 2019 23:42
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Farmdizzle posted:How are things over at Moomin World? A Russian couple once asked me how to get to Moomin World. When I told them I had no idea the man was all "oh you're not local". I told him I'm very local which is why I have no idea how to get to Moomin World. (Which isn't in Turku.)
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Jan 18, 2019 23:48
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Horace posted:The entire 1984 DAK catalogue is online here: https://archive.org/details/1984-Fall-DAK-Catalog. Phone modems, a pocket autodialler, a hands free console phone thing, a voice controlled phone. You've never seen so many gimmicky landline phones. There was also an answerphone with a very cool "toll saver" feature, which wouldn't answer until the third ring if you had no messages, so you didn't have to put any coins into the payphone. Man I burned so many hours reading DAK catalogs as a kid. I swear I remember that ILLEGAL PHONE ad too and was like Holy poo poo dad we must get this!
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Jan 19, 2019 03:26
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I actually had one of these and played Descent and Forsaken with it. At the time, I thought it was neat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtRqgszxZlg
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Jan 19, 2019 05:28
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Inspired by the DIY electronics thread, in which I mentioned that I have a new oscilloscope and am currently shopping for an old CRT one for ... reasons. I have a problem with collecting old tech that is better suited as boat anchors these days, for example: This is an old photo, since then I've got another small Selectric I (black, same width as the blue one here), a big Selectric I (beige) and a big Selectric II (green), as well as a few more manual models, both desktop and portable form factors (Everything shown here lives in a briefcase except for the IBM and the Royal in the left column, second from the top, I took them out for the photo because with the lids on they wouldn't fit on the table). The small Selectrics crapped out and I tossed them (or at least the internals, I kept the cases around for awhile for potential PC casemods but lost them during one of the moves since then) because gently caress trying to fix that. I've opened up a mechanical watch (Vostok Amphibian) and got it running again after a gear retainer broke and the gear fell off, but I took the case off the little blue Selectric, and NOPE. The black one was DOA (the steel belt that makes the golf ball spin around and do its thing was broken) but it was cheap and I wanted the case for a project I never got around to doing.   All the others work perfectly fine, and I use them to fill out forms whenever I'm handed a paper form that says "Type or print...", mostly the big Selectrics (even though I have to use a pair of circlip pliers to get the ball for my preferred typeface on and off because the little lever on top of the ball is broken off, but those keyboards and spinning golf balls are just so goddamn satisfying, clicky computer keyboards are a poor approximation of that feel) and the little black Remington-Rand* portable. *More related to the electric razors than Remington guns, though both the typewriter and shaver companies were spun off from the arms company around a century ago, IIRC. In other news, the grey Smith-Corona electric portable in the upper right corner has a key labeled "power-space" which does ... exactly what it says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofOiDB36khU Also, closeup artsy photo of the Selectric printhead, for those who don't know of it  It really is almost exactly the size of a golf ball. The little red moon is the handle of a tiny lever that I forget the function of, and don't have one of the machines handy to look at and remind me what it does.
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Jan 21, 2019 04:31
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Duet of the Broken Hard Drives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZGCp4ZowMg UxWbill's channel is great, he's kinda rambly and long winded but he's a nerdy nerd. One of us!
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Jan 21, 2019 05:07
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Inspired by the DIY electronics thread, in which I mentioned that I have a new oscilloscope and am currently shopping for an old CRT one for ... reasons. I have a problem with collecting old tech that is better suited as boat anchors these days, for example: That is so cool. Thanks for sharing! Neat to see those things all working (well except one I guess  )
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Jan 21, 2019 05:20
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Gonz posted:I actually had one of these and played Descent and Forsaken with it. At the time, I thought it was neat. I saw the video yesterday and the idea seems pretty good, at least in theory. I'd really love to try that thing. Though I imagine it must put some serious strain on the hands in a gaming situation where you have to take action quickly against enemies. Must be perfect for more calmer circumstances and for professional use, like CAD, as mentioned in the video.
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Jan 21, 2019 05:40
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Vanagoon posted:Duet of the Broken Hard Drives You can pretty much categorize every vintage tech youtube channel as "slickly-produced emulation of Techmoan or LGR", and "guy in his garage filming on DV tape, whose style hasn't evolved since 2008". The latter category are some of my favorite channels out there. UXWBill can be a bit grating when he uses 5 times as many words than he should to say something, but his videos are comforting to watch. I think VWestlife has the same sort of feel without the rambling. He's my favorite channel of that type. Lately I've been into AkBKukU's videos and they're great. Very well produced and informative. I'm surprised he doesn't have more subscribers.
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Jan 21, 2019 05:46
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Selectrics own - my mom still has a fully-functional one with a few golf balls in her garage. My first experience typing was on a Selectric, and I still judge keyboards by how closely they resemble in form and function a Selectric keyboard. Nothing quite replicates the thunk and then nice warm purr of turning a Selectric on and getting to work.
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Jan 21, 2019 08:38
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Inspired by the DIY electronics thread... Can you link that thread please? I was kind of hoping there was one here so I could stop harassing people in the retro gaming thread.
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Jan 22, 2019 04:27
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I'm not about to try linking it with the awful app, but it's currently in the top 5 in the DIY forum, called something like "release the magic blue smoke: the learning electronics megathread". edit: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2734977
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Jan 22, 2019 10:18
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Chillbro Baggins posted:typewriters Here's my Selectric and its balls:  It is a beautiful machine and I love it. It was sold to me as dead, but I got it working nicely. That was until recently, when it started making that 'cracked pulley' clicking noise, so it's out of action until I can muster up the energy to sort that out. In the mean time I have an Olympia SM2 (x2), SM3, SM4, SM5, SM9 and a Splendid. Plus a Remington Quiet-Riter, so everything is going to be okay.
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Jan 22, 2019 20:11
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That's a beautiful machine and I'm glad it has that happy little corner. I thought I read once, though I can't seem to find it now, that because of the way the Selectric was designed, it could be plugged into a terminal and used as a printer. I hope it's true, because that's so cool. edit: quote:"Selectric typewriters did, of course, become popular as data-processing terminals. Selectric typewriters were faster than any other low cost serial printer of the time, and the platen didn't move from side to side (which the Electromatic and Friden did) so it could more easily take continuous-feed paper. https://mindmachine.co.uk/products/04_Manuf_IBM_Typewriter_01.html an AOL chatroom has a new favorite as of 21:12 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 21:08
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The most amazing Selectric story is this one: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/, In which the USSR spy on the US embassy with an ingenious bug.quote:A total of 16 devices were found inside typewriters that were in use during at least 8 years at the US Embassy in Moscow and the US Consulate in Leningrad.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:06
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Horace posted:The most amazing Selectric story is this one: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/, In which the USSR spy on the US embassy with an ingenious bug. Cold War era bugs from either side always amazed me. If it existed, someone tried to put a microphone/camera in it. I think my favorite bug was The Thing which used early 50s tech to create a bug that only was active when it recieved a very specific frequency, making it extremely difficult to detect while in use and a potentially unlimited shelf life since it didn't rely on an internal power supply or conspicuous wires.
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Jan 23, 2019 10:27
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Slippery posted:Man I burned so many hours reading DAK catalogs as a kid. I swear I remember that ILLEGAL PHONE ad too and was like Holy poo poo dad we must get this! DAK is back, though Drew Kaplan isn't associated with it any longer. Still sells the same kind of overpriced poo poo and gimmicks. https://www.dak.com/
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Jan 26, 2019 01:25
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Don Gato posted:Cold War era bugs from either side always amazed me. If it existed, someone tried to put a microphone/camera in it. I think my favorite bug was The Thing which used early 50s tech to create a bug that only was active when it recieved a very specific frequency, making it extremely difficult to detect while in use and a potentially unlimited shelf life since it didn't rely on an internal power supply or conspicuous wires. And to think that nowadays everyone just willingly carries foreign-controllable cameras and microphones with them everywhere they go
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Jan 26, 2019 11:01
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So I was listening to Deltron 3030, and when the track The Assman 640 Speaks came on, I thought "hey, Assman 640 would be a good username", and I did a web search to see if there are already hundreds of people using that name, and learned that it's actually a dictation machine from the 1960s with a turntable. I didn't know such a thing existed, but I guess it explains how that track sounds - they must have used one. Link: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102668125
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Jan 26, 2019 13:30
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uli2000 posted:DAK is back, though Drew Kaplan isn't associated with it any longer. Still sells the same kind of overpriced poo poo and gimmicks. Oh awesome, thanks!
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Jan 26, 2019 19:04
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