Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

For some reason I love the audio on VHS. Something about the "crispness" just sounds nice.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2012 03:28

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:37

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Stuporstar posted:

Too many boring-rear end phones, not enough strange post-90s technology.

Here, have some Zeiss Projectors.

This one's a Mark IV. I remember it from my city's Planetarium as a kid. When I was six, I called it the "giant ant." Sitting in the dark, I watched that thing's shadow move more than the stars it projected. It hummed and whirred as it tilted on it's insect-like legs. I thought it was creepy as hell and loved the poo poo out of it. It looks and moves like something out of an old 50s horror movie.

Installed in the late 60s, our Planetarium replaced it in the mid-90s with some boring digital projector. It was the end of an era. Zeiss still makes projectors, and some of them are cool as hell. The old Mark I - !V models are dinosaurs. I wonder what happened to them all.

My high school still has one in its planetarium. Its a smaller model, but I've seen it in action once, it was honestly pretty cool.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2012 00:13

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Maxwell Lord posted:

I honestly don't WANT physical media to go away. Network outages or slowdowns are more common in my experience than plain old power outages, and it's nice to know that even if my BR player's connection to Netflix WI is acting weird, I can still watch one of the many, many discs I actually own.

I live in urban area and I'm still stuck with lovely internet, both speed and connection wise, so yeah, I agree with this guy.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2012 19:15

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Dick Trauma posted:

EDIT 2: Oh man some of you probably don't know what a "check register" is.

I actually don't. What is it?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 17:48

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Manfrompoot posted:

I can't even picture 400 CDs in my head. I can just imagine the fun of spending an entire afternoon loading every CD you own into that thing and then keeping a mental inventory of which disc is which.

How do you even cram 400 CD-drives into anything smaller than a desk sized box? (I have never actually seen a disc changer, so please excuse my probable ignorance.)

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 05:34

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

What's touch-tone dialing :shobon:

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 21:25

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

Hey man, it radiates stuff and therefore is radiation and radiation bad!

Visible light is a form of radiation. Take that, people who play outside! :smug:

# ¿ Oct 27, 2012 21:06

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Donkwich posted:

Are door locks banned where you live?

Locked doors are very suspicious in my household

# ¿ Oct 31, 2012 00:11

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Donkwich posted:

Yes I see the logic of how much worse it is to be suspected of masturbating than to actually be caught masturbating.

Not worse but just as bad, yes.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 23:00

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

DrBouvenstein posted:

Those can be thwarted, too.

"Dammit, locked out again! Oh, hey, Bob, can I borrow your eyes for s second?"

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 01:29

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

leidend posted:

I'm guessing bubble sheets are obsolete too now? As are keyboarding classes?

Keyboarding classes maybe, but bubble sheets and standardized tests that use them are very much alive and well, even at more well-off schools. Just took one today, in fact!

# ¿ May 9, 2013 01:00

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Here's a horribly outdated visually but still very cool website that has a bunch of outdated/weird technologies:

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm

Farecoal has a new favorite as of 00:40 on Jun 28, 2013

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 00:35

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Axeman Jim posted:

In the 1940's it was very clear that diesel locomotives had some big advantages over steam - it was cleaner, cheaper (if you had oil), easier on the crew, more reliable, easier to produce very high power from, and operationally much more flexible.

Yeah but steam is cooler :colbert:

# ¿ Jun 30, 2013 18:10

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Axeman Jim posted:

(like the very successful class 47)

I just looked this class up and despite being built in the early-mid 1960s some are still used for mainline duties in Britain today :psyduck:

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 03:04

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Axeman Jim posted:

Crap British Trains � Back to the 50�s
BR Class 28

This charmless gargoyle of a diesel featured a noisy, unreliable two-stroke engine that was completely unsuitable for railway use and belched smoke like the steam trains it was supposed to replace � but that didn�t stop its manufacturers, Crossley, exporting similar power units to Ireland and Australia and loving up their railways too.

The class 28, bizarrely, featured a two-axle bogie at one end and a three-axle bogie at the other, meaning that what track it was permitted on depended on which direction it was facing. Also, its cab windows had a tendency to fall out of their frames at high speed and hit the driver in the face. The 28 soon found its way to the scrapyard.

Hey, it's BoCo! :3:

I actually like the look of the 50s-60s British diesels.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 22:40

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Gromit posted:

My friend bought the Optimus Maximus keyboard because he loved flashy gadgets. I mean, he had a collection of every SGI desktop computer in his house as well as one of their super-computers, along with a wood-burning camp stove that could power USB devices.

Are you saying the stove had a mini-steam engine in it to generate power, or was the stove plugged in to an outlet too? _{_{_{please be the first}}}

Collateral Damage posted:

He probably means a BioLite stove or one of its knockoffs. It's got a thermoelectric element that powers a small fan to fan the fire and a USB outlet for charging your phone while cooking.

Kind of cool.

Farecoal has a new favorite as of 02:47 on Oct 10, 2013

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 17:47

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

DrBouvenstein posted:

So did Nintendo just agree to do that as some sort of last-ditch middle finger to Sony after their planned "BFF" console from the mid 90's fell through?

"Oh, you didn't want to partner with us and made a kick-rear end console? Well, we found someone else who will partner with us to take our already mediocre console and turn it into a mediocre DVD player! Take THAT!"

What?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 07:27

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Kalos posted:

There are rules against drunkposting

The Gamecube controller is pretty good, though.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 19:47

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:37

Farecoal: Oct 15, 2011; There he go

Pneub posted:

Yeah, right? Fuckin retards.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 22:03

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