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LifeSunDeath posted:also congrats on becoming a Dick Smith Man. I worked my way up to eventually jump to Jaycar and had a DSE book and transcribed all the component part numbers to Jaycar part numbers for a cross reference system. This is a good/great series about the history of electronics in Australia. Includes Tricky Dicky and Gary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xu154715CE
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Apr 23, 2022 14:49
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Apr 23, 2022 22:18
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"Thanks for coming in for the photo shoot. Just put in this latex catsuit and wait over there" "What is this for again?"
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Apr 23, 2022 22:24
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Broadly speaking it is now amazing how Amiga gaming had really only died a couple of years previously when Ultima Online was in beta (well alpha at that point) Sorry, Ultima On-line
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Apr 24, 2022 00:13
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Every single issue of PC Format at a certain time looked like that. Weird tech+girl mixups made it look more like FHM for years.
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Apr 24, 2022 00:43
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I wonder what the world's non-best-selling PC leisure magazine looked like
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Apr 24, 2022 01:00
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 I remember each issue being about the size of a phone book.
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Apr 24, 2022 01:26
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I loved grabbing a random computer rag at the grocery store back when they were mostly 100+ page behemoths.
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Apr 24, 2022 02:00
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Yeah but like 60 pages were poor quality paper advertising MAC DIRECT WAREHOUSE *NEW* MACCLONE!
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Apr 24, 2022 02:04
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I've been looking through scans of old electronics magazines lately for inspiration and IMO the best parts of old tech magazines, especially ones from the 70s and 80s, are the ads. Ads are weird in that they are annoying when the magazine is new but a lot more interesting when the magazine is old - they add a huge amount of historical context that would be missing without them. It helps show what the "state of the art" was like and what sort of prices that stuff went for new.
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Apr 24, 2022 02:31
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I was gonna say, I loved the ads, I liked seeing the new cool stuff that teenage Jim silly-balls could never afford.
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Apr 24, 2022 02:34
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:I was gonna say, I loved the ads, I liked seeing the new cool stuff that teenage Jim silly-balls could never afford. Remember the best buy/ circuit city/ etc ads in the Sunday paper
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Apr 24, 2022 02:37
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poo poo I still remember pawing at the ads for 33MHz 386DX PCs from manufacturers like CompuAdd and Zeos, something I wouldn't get my hands on for like a year yet. I would be able to make SO MANY 3D PIE CHARTS according to the simulated screen images
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Apr 24, 2022 02:48
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As a part of helping out with cleaning out the old computer store where the monitor cover and Netscape Navigator came from, I also got this: A Commodore MCS 820 dot matrix printer, aka Okimate 20. The manual makes it very clear from the first page that throughout the manual it will be called the Okimate 20, I guess to save Commodore money from having to print out a completely new manual.  I gave it a clean down, got rid of the dust and grime it had built up over the years. It powers up fine, but I do not have a ribbon for it. It appears this printer was only sold in Australia.
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Apr 24, 2022 04:50
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BattleMaster posted:I've been looking through scans of old electronics magazines lately for inspiration and IMO the best parts of old tech magazines, especially ones from the 70s and 80s, are the ads. Ads are weird in that they are annoying when the magazine is new but a lot more interesting when the magazine is old - they add a huge amount of historical context that would be missing without them. It helps show what the "state of the art" was like and what sort of prices that stuff went for new. What made the 80s and partially 90s interesting was that there were lots of incompatible unique systems. The product landscape was a lot more interesting when you'd have Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Apple II and Mac, Amstrad CPC and what have you all being relevant computers at the same time. And when you bought one you really made a decision that locked you down. So even back then I loved to read ads about some mysterious computer that had a totally different hardware and software from my computer. Current computer landscape is just millions of minute variations of a Windows computer + Apple. And millions of minute variations of an Android phone + Apple.
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Apr 24, 2022 07:14
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Armacham posted:Remember the best buy/ circuit city/ etc ads in the Sunday paper Remember those regional classifieds papers?  We had the ViaVia here. It completely disappeared from my memory until i read your post. They were essentially just the classifieds sections of normal news papers, but much bigger and split up per region or city of the country. With the internet getting more popular, the paper version started to get less and less popular until it was eventually shut down. For a while they continued digitally before Ebay (and the dutch version Marktplaats) essentially monopolized the stuff in the early 2000s. I bought a lot of electronics from people advertising in those little papers. What to me was quite spectacular (as a kid in the 1990s), is that you could also advertise on Teletekst/Ceefax in my area. Teletext was digital information sent in the blanking interval space of an analog TV signal. You could transmit 999 pages of 40x25 text or low res graphics.  My regional broadcasting network would offer classifieds. You'd call the office, or fill in a little return mailer, and your advertisement would be put on their Teletekst classifieds pages. At home, you'd (for instance) punch in number 300 to access the main page with a list of categories, then something like 310 for the computer category, and then it'd serve you 10 or 20 pages (automatically rotating through them) of short, tweet length advertisements from people selling computer stuff. If you've never tried Teletekst, click this link: https://nos.nl/teletekst It's the fully functioning, daily updated Teletekst system of the NOS (dutch public broadcasting network). They keep updating it because people still use it. It's even accessible via digital HDTV receivers. I think lots of people use it because since the digitization it's fast and there are no ads/cookie popups/whatever. It's just the barest minimum of information needed to stay up to date with the news.
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Apr 24, 2022 10:54
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LimaBiker posted:Remember those regional classifieds papers? Finnish national TV still has the teletext service in use also. It rocks. https://yle.fi/aihe/tekstitv
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Apr 24, 2022 11:15
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And apparently there is a broser based teletext editor! This video was just posted today and shows someone editing a teletext page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBGaNFCPJC4 The editor: https://zxnet.co.uk/teletext/editor
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Apr 24, 2022 12:52
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There are a few of them around. http://edit.tf/ is another good one.
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Apr 24, 2022 13:13
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Armacham posted:Remember the best buy/ circuit city/ etc ads in the Sunday paper The fry's electronics one was the best.
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Apr 24, 2022 13:48
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Qwijib0 posted:The fry's electronics one was the best.
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Apr 24, 2022 17:31
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This entire thread is "  : The Thread" I would give my left nut to get my hands on some of these useless loving magazines and my wife would hate it but I would read them until they fell apart.
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Apr 25, 2022 18:41
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Norway had a few of those mail order catalogues with random electronics and technology - varying in quality from normal to "AliExpress but on paper in 1996". The most spectacular one included goodies like "buy a flying car as a kit", though I have no idea what happened if you ordered one - he seemed serious. The webpage is still up and it is glorious(-ly horrible): https://www.arngren.net/
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Apr 25, 2022 21:19
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I always wondered what you would actually get if you set away for one of those "plasma cannon - plans $19.99, full kit $299.99" ads in magazines from the 80s to 90s. Or whatever ridiculous thing that sounded too good to be possible.
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Apr 25, 2022 21:22
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It was probably some crappy attempt at a hovercraft. You used to see plans for one advertised in Boy’s Life. I used to get this magazine for kids put out by Consumer Reports, called Zillions. They bought the plans and tried to build it. The conclusion being that it was a piece of poo poo, and there was no way kids could build it on their own. Edit: There was this Defeat the Dark Side sweepstakes put on by KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell to advertise The Phantom Menace back in ‘99. I’d been thinking about it recently and went and watched some commercials on YouTube. One of the prizes was a “speeder”, or a hovercraft dressed up to look like Flash Speeder. Google hasn’t really pulled anything up about anyone who actually got one. I’d love to know how lovely and cheap they went with it. 
Casimir Radon has a new favorite as of 21:35 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 21:29
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Speaking of hovercraft, I remember that short period of time in the... early 90s I wanna say, where *every* kid wanted those radio controlled hovercrafts they advertised on TV and were like $200 or so. I remember one kid near me had one and I saw him use it in the room where the local scouts would congregate at, and even at that age I realized it's something I would tire of extremely quickly. e: it almost certainly was a Tyco Typhoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vtvb2ZJzC0
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Apr 25, 2022 21:52
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCvnYNIZO6s I had this as a kid. Batteries ran out real fast and all the button that “launched” the car did was slam both motors into reverse. Which kind of made the car flip but you could do the same thing on your own.
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Apr 25, 2022 22:11
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I feel like that is every RC vehicle. You play with it for a bit, realize its limitations, do everything you can do with it and then it just sits collecting dust.
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Apr 25, 2022 22:17
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My brother got an RC helicopter for his birthday one year. Well, actually what he asked for was a kit that didn't have a motor or RC components included, and it's never been put together. I think this was when I was in high school so it's been maybe 15 years at a minimum.
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Apr 25, 2022 22:19
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D34THROW posted:This entire thread is " But your wife hates you anyway?
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Apr 25, 2022 22:23
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The real cool kids had one of these  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzYep84PwFk e: man, that awful, awful noise. Really takes me back and I'm glad modern electric RC is as good as it is Cojawfee posted:I feel like that is every RC vehicle. You play with it for a bit, realize its limitations, do everything you can do with it and then it just sits collecting dust. an actual frog has a new favorite as of 22:36 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 22:31
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those little gas powered ones are badass as heck and they have leagues for them like bowling night and everything
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Apr 25, 2022 22:33
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People modifying PowerWheels with full size car batteries will never not amuse me.
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Apr 25, 2022 22:37
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Speaking of Arngrens and hovercars: https://www.arngren.net/moller.html . Yes, it's in Norwegian (with horribly broken UTF-8 vs iso-8859-15 encoding, even) - I don't feel like that really changes the experience much.
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Apr 25, 2022 22:37
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There is a great documentary about buying and building one of those "back of comic book" submarines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18-Z5LBQD8
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Apr 26, 2022 01:30
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EL BROMANCE posted:Speaking of hovercraft, I remember that short period of time in the... early 90s I wanna say, where *every* kid wanted those radio controlled hovercrafts they advertised on TV and were like $200 or so. I remember one kid near me had one and I saw him use it in the room where the local scouts would congregate at, and even at that age I realized it's something I would tire of extremely quickly. You say that, but I had an original tyko typhoon. I played with it regularly for years, till one day I flipped it and one of the tail props broke and I couldn't replace it or fix it.
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Apr 26, 2022 02:47
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an actual frog posted:The real cool kids had one of these Nitro was a necessity of its time back in the 80's and 90's when both batteries and electric motors were absolutely terrible. It was the only viable way to make decent power. With the advent of LiPo batteries and brushless motors though, there is zero reason to run a nitro vehicle at all today. The sound, the mess, the tuning, the re-tuning when the ambient temp changes more than 3 degrees, ugh
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Apr 26, 2022 05:18
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Computer viking posted:The webpage is still up and it is glorious(-ly horrible): https://www.arngren.net/ 
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Apr 26, 2022 05:35
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My Nitro 1:10 got to a grand speed of 80KM/H a moment before hitting a rock and veering into a gutter, completely destroying it. I ended up with Electric 1:10s and boy they were fun. A lot of Hobbyking/Aliexpress parts and overvolting resulted in a complete weapon that decimated all.
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Apr 26, 2022 10:20
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my favorite thing about Arngren is that he clearly paid someone to do that single drawing in 1983 and then just used it everywhere forever. Brand recognition! check out https://archive.org/details/FrithjofArngrenKatalog1983/page/n5/mode/2up it's a fun read, especially the computer pages for the state of the art Commodore 64, Intellivision and some other weird stuff I've never heard of. Browsing the physical store is a fond childhood memory, that place was like a norwegian Radio Shack. I wonder if he could have staid competitive if he had hired someone to do a sane webshop... 
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