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SubG posted:That membrane keyboard is pretty much the only thing preventing the original TRS-80 Color Computer's chiclet keyboard from being the worst keyboard of the early micros. The Atari 400 membrane keyboard is right behind the Timex/Sinclair; maybe a teensy bit better because it's larger. I didn't know it was possible to bruise one's fingertips until 13-year-old me entered a long BASIC program on a borrowed 400.
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Jul 4, 2015 20:10
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moller posted:Some PS2>USB adaptors work and some don't. Or at least that used to be the case with dodgy adaptors. It's entirely possible that the demand for such adaptors is so low now that any one you happen to grab will be decent enough to work. Yeah, I've bought about ten of those things (to connect newer machines to an old 16-port ps/2 KVM) and some are horribly unreliable, while others are just slightly unreliable. None that I have found are really great all the time.
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Jul 11, 2015 23:59
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Dick Trauma posted:Those don't work. A++ #1 username/post combo
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Jul 21, 2015 14:51
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Lurking Haro posted:That doesn't really add up. They're probably compressing the data and figuring a "typical" compression rate when giving the "hour for a gig" spec. Every crappy consumer-focused backup device I used in the old days did this (qic-80, Travan, Castlewood Orb, etc)
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Aug 1, 2015 18:39
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T-man posted:Hey! My mother and father still uses Tracphone, and they certianly don't earn enough to be drug dealers. Mostly they keep them around in case of emergency (car breaks down, need to get in contact now, whatever). They've been buying those $20/60min cards for years so they have some insane number of minutes because those minutes expire after some amount of time unless you get another card. Are you my secret brother? My parents do this exact_thing as well.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:28
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[quote="0toShifty" post="""] I had an old Compaq CRT where the green scope would die sometimes. I kept a hammer next to it and just whacked the side of it every time it stopped working. Fixed it every time. [/quote] I bought a very expensive Sony 19" monitor on close out back in the day and the red would die on it sometimes. Banging on the side fixed it for awhile, but then I had to drill a hole in the side and tap directly on the gun with a long insulated screwdriver. Of course, over time, I had to tap harder and harder until...yeah, a huge flash and smoke/sparks/mayhem. Welp, back to cheapshit 17" crt's for the next year until I could afford another decent CRT. WITH a warranty.
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Aug 15, 2015 23:01
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dissss posted:I think the old Toshiba Satellite I had back in school around 96 or 97 is still at my parents place somewhere. Yeah, those passive-matrix LCD's were goddamn horrible. I actually prefer monochrome displays over those blurry, washed-out miserable things.
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Aug 19, 2015 03:41
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Fo3 posted:Main problem with the laptop was it shipped with vista, and has no drivers for winxp or win7, that's the main reason why I am using a linux distro on it. Really? I've never seen anything that had Vista preinstalled and couldn't use the same drivers for 7. Is it more of a 64/32 bit issue?
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Sep 6, 2015 17:45
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Drone_Fragger posted:Correct, except actually in this case it's the amazon kindle and ipads that are to blame for book stores going out of buisness. Yet another demonstration of right wing lunatics blaming public institutions for the failure of capitalism. No poo poo. Free public libraries and for-profit bookstores lived quite successfully together for well over a hundred years; the decline of bookstores JUST HAPPENED to dovetail with cheap online booksellers and the rising popularity of e-books. Funny coincidence, that is.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:43
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Slanderer posted:The big downside to VFDs is that they will degrade over time, depending on the brightness. There are also lots of weird failure modes that can occur after like a decade if the associated circuitry cuts corners. Since so many of these are custom (or just specialized), finding replacements can be harder than with nixie tubes. Yeah, which brings me to another obsolete-and-failed product: digital dashboards in cars. I don't know HOW many 80's Ford products I worked on (I'm a mechanic) that had zero or little speedometer functionality after their vacuum fluorescent dash readouts faded away to never-neverland. The owners didn't even try to fix 'em, the cost of new parts were immense and all the used ones were just as bad. I remember the '84 Corvette having a weird-rear end digital dash, some people raved about it, but I thought it was fugly even then. And '80's Japanese cars with "Tokyo-by-night" over-the-top digital dashes, those were the days. Now, at least, most manufacturers leave the important info in a classic gauge cluster and throw their techie stuff into nav systems and such, which you can mostly ignore.
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Oct 23, 2015 06:01
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GWBBQ posted:I am nostalgic for the purestrain '80s that was the 300ZX dashboard Ha! That was the exact dash that I had in my mind when I wrote that, but I couldn't remember if it was in the Maxima or the 300ZX.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:33
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empty baggie posted:From my understanding, Betamax was still used at places like news stations for decades after VHS won the home video wars, and wasn't deemed obsolete until digital took over. You're probably thinking of Betacam, that's a pro format that hung on until everything went digital in the industry E: goddamn it
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Nov 11, 2015 00:57
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I installed startisback on Win 10 and it gives you the option of the full Control Panel right there in the start menu like 7 did. Really made it easier for me to get everything set up.
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Mar 20, 2016 03:58
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Another issue with old R-to-R magnetic tape is the backing material - very old tape(and cheap, lovely tape) used acetate and when it gets old, it just disintegrates into shreds. Newer/better tape used polyester, which holds up better,?and the best tape used Mylar, which holds up great even after 35-40 years. The difference is amazing, acetate tapes break when I just thread the reel of my old Ampex deck, while the Mylar works A-Ok after repeated plays.
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Apr 30, 2016 11:39
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Goober Peas posted:I heard at one point in the 90s, the weight of a full power window assembly actually weighed *less* than a full manual window assembly. I can't remember the source, but it seemed really implausible at the time. It's pretty true for many vehicles that still offer manual windows. The weight and size of a modern power window motor/regulator is amazingly low, on the order of a couple pounds. OTOH, some manual windows still use the old method, which involves a large half-gear operated by a small gear hooked to the manual handle and is relatively heavy. At this point it's safe to say that power windows add virtually no weight to a vehicle. The other thing with power windows is that the motor rarely fails, it's generally the lovely regulator mechanism - some are cable operated, some use sliding levers, and others use a plastic tape arrangement. So using a manual handle instead of a motor still exposes you to possible failure if the manufacturer does a poo poo job in designing the regulator. Source: I am a state govt. fleet mechanic and replace a fuckload of dead power windows.
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May 8, 2016 20:23
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JediTalentAgent posted:ON the subject of disc storage and tech: What is the status on the 100-200-300+ CD disc changers for homes? Looking on Amazon, it seems like almost every model I look at is discontinued. I bought a Sony 200CD unit for my shop and filled it with CD's set on "random song" in -1995. It was great, kinda like my own radio station. Clunky and limited, but still great. Now I do the same thing with a fully loaded 64gig thumbdrive. There's a reason nobody wants them anymore.
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May 11, 2016 00:10
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Samizdata posted:I remember setting all the codes with my friends so we could basically skip the callback if possible. We had location codes, so we could page on another and say "Meet me here", and activity codes, and people codes... The only codes I still remember are the "buying drugs" codes.
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May 17, 2016 04:26
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Shlomo Palestein posted:He's right though. For the car, it makes the most sense to have something that relies on muscle memory. It's why despite having touchscreens for all the a/v functions, every single new car still has turn signal stalks. I don't know if design will ever go back to "obvious and differently shaped controls" for common radio/ac functions, but I hope the lesson is learned relatively soon. I worry it'll be more of a "bespoke" thing for rich people cars in the future, like wood trim is at this point despite having been relatively common decades ago. Nah, HVAC stuff will go back to "normal" controls and radio controls will migrate largely to steering-wheel buttons. I thought the same thing in the late-eighties about those loving terrible LED and vacuum -fluorescent display that were all the rage, and they went away after the "newness" wore off and everybody realized they sucked.
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May 29, 2016 16:41
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Sentient Data posted:88 Lebaron I have no trouble at all believing that the most wonderful thing in an '88 LeBaron is the electronic instrumentation. 
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May 29, 2016 19:27
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WebDog posted:Erugh that reminded me of some dreadful VIA IDE controller on an old system that was a 0.1 volt off by default and kept on crashing. I had a horrible chipset from VIA that was the same way - random BSOD's during heavy disk use. Just often enough to drive me nuts and not often enough for me to build a new system right away. Goddamn VIA694x, never owned another VIA chipset, gently caress that company.
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Jul 7, 2016 19:43
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Delivery McGee posted:Or, more charitably, one big crumple zone! We got some of those AWD Tauruses(Taurii?) in police trim added to my fleet to replace the ancient Crown Vic's and the officers HATE them with a passion. Not because of any power or drivability issues(I personally raced the two vehicles against one another and the Taurus cleans the Crown Vic's clock 😃), but because the goddamn Taurus is TINY inside once you put the divider cages and other police equipment inside. A big tall officer with all the crap they carry on their belt barely fits in the cockpit, and great big inmates can't really fit in the back - we need to get a van for transport. The CHP went with AWD Explorers for patrol vehicles, they rejected the police Taurus for the same reason.
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Jul 9, 2016 16:30
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Trabant posted:Since you have first-hand experience with this stuff: what is the logic behind cop pickups? If you're an Alaska trooper who has to traverse the wilderness to find meth labs, I get it (although even then there are better choices). But I've seen them in suburban NY and TX, and it makes no sense to me. I don't know why a suburban police department would have one, other than maybe as a public-service vehicle - hauling booth material and such for PR events maybe. I know the California Highway patrol uses them for commercial vehicle enforcement - they have portable scales in back, as well as coveralls and tools needed for undercarriage inspections on busses and large trucks. Sometimes oddball police vehicles were seized from drug dealers and kept, rather than sell 'em at auction. There's a fake Ferrari kit car in police-paint scheme that some department in the Bay Area uses for school lectures and such that was obtained that way. I think it's a Fiero under the skin.
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Jul 9, 2016 19:55
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FruitNYogurtParfait posted:Chip and signature not pin Some are chip-n-sig, some are chip-n-pin. Dunno why they don't just all go chip-n-pin, I can punch my PIN in faster than I can fumble with that dumbass little plastic pen and scrawl a completely unintelligible blob on the screen.
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Jul 11, 2016 13:22
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Keith Atherton posted:My dad is still using his AOL account he created almost 20 years ago I'm still using mine that I created in 1993. People give me poo poo about it sometimes, but it's really convenient to always know your logon details for every pissant site you've ever registered to.
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Oct 29, 2016 14:28
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Jerry Cotton posted:Tupperware was pretty futuristic when I was a kid Oh wow, I had these as a kid. They held up really well and my little sister played with them too.
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Dec 7, 2016 14:04
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Jerry Cotton posted:Did they have interchangeable parts? Yep! You could create hybrid monstrosities with them easy as pie. Unfortunately, they did not burp.
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Dec 7, 2016 14:32
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Platystemon posted:Field Guide to the Vernal Pools of Mather Field is what I was thinking of. Fuckin' thing is $125 used, somebody must be interested.
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Feb 11, 2017 03:16
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Light Gun Man posted:That packard bell looks familiar as hell. I think that, or a similar model, was one of the first PCs I had actually in my own house!! I had one too, but I think it had a P-150 non-mmx processor in it. Bought it at Costco, IIRC.
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Mar 18, 2017 05:16
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Burns, Oregon to just above Alturas on 395 is the most terrifyingly desolate road I've ever been on, and I drove trucks to northern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Boise to Vegas on the regular. I don't think I saw a single open place of business for 3-4 hours and there wasn't any cellphone reception either(as of 6 years ago).
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Apr 11, 2017 13:38
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My favorite(!) thing about the late Eighties switch to CD was when radio stations went to playing CD's and the early players would skip or seize up pretty regularly.
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May 9, 2017 13:20
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Nothing will ever top the Wall of Sound, though. Shame that Owsley will be remembered for his acid shenanigans, his sound work with the Dead was amazing.
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May 12, 2017 02:42
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I ran it back in the day(2000-ish) on a spare box - version 4 or 4.5, can't remember, and there wasn't much of anything available for it except little open-source programs and what came with it. Like, OS/2 Warp had more software available at the time. It was lightning fast and could play a bunch of media at the same time, but the supported hardware list and software availability was pretty grim.
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Jul 10, 2017 01:59
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Horace posted:And they deserved it. Those earbuds were terrible. I wish I'd have known about that back in the day, would have been slick. I just wish aftermarket car stereos - or at least some of them - didn't look like Tokyo at night and had knobs and buttons which made sense, rather than endless blinking lights and minuscule buttons of uncertain function.
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Sep 2, 2017 03:41
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Wasabi the J posted:Android Auto and Apple Carplay are easily the best available options for car interfaces right now. My new Accord has CarPlay and it's really good about being able to do whatever with only voice commands and using the familiar Apple apps. Plus it's nice not being locked into(and paying for) a proprietary nav system that will become obsolete and un-updateable in the near future.
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Sep 2, 2017 15:17
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Horace posted:Almost all aftermarket single-DIN stereos are hideous, and in the rare case you find one which is not hideous it's usually pathetically low spec and outrageously priced. Yeah, I'm not a fan of touchscreen interfaces for automobile functions even if they were a 'good' design. I mean, CarPlay' s ok, but still could be a lot better, and there was a ton of work put into it. I'm just thinking of the double-DIN stereo in my old Cadillac. It had great big knobs and large buttons and you could do anything while never taking your eyes off the road. I can understand that a lot of people who upgrade their stereo want 'technology' and blinking lights appeal to them, but there's gotta be a market for simple, elegant, good-quality car stereos for people who just want something that plays from BT, 1/8" aux-in and USB sticks.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:54
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RandomPauI posted:I bought a laserjet printer for $40, and it hit me that I still needed some sort of scanner. But there aren't cheap small flatbed scanners anymore. Scratch that, there are. But they're attached to really crappy printers which is what I wanted to get away from by buying the laserjet printer on sale. You can get one of those thin Canon Lide scanners for pretty cheap on eBay, they scan pictures and single documents fine and don't take up much room. I think I paid $35 w/shipping and it's been humming along for years.
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Sep 5, 2017 13:10
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Proteus Jones posted:And 100% polyester with white piping. Yup, just find an old video of the Philadelphia '76ers playing the Celtics in -~'75-'76; that'll give you exact details on how short/tight the shorts should be.
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Dec 16, 2017 02:58
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Johnny Aztec posted:Remember the Cryix chips? I do! I ran one in a Win2k box bcause it was balls cheap. I remember the IBM/Cyrix ‘Blue Lightning’ 75mhz 486 chip because it’s the only time I ever got good support from a major corporation. I was trying to install OS/2 ‘Warp’ on one and it wouldn’t install for poo poo. I called support and it got elevated to the point where IBM’s tech guys were calling me regularly with possible fixes. I found it hilarious that an IBM- branded OS would not work on an IBM-branded microprocessor. The IBM guys did not seem to find it as funny as I did.
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Jan 9, 2018 01:59
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Dick Trauma posted:I can remember back when MTV was a thing and I'd be sitting there waiting for a cool video to come on and it would be something like "Rosanna" instead. The first couple of years there were like, 30 videos, then things exploded around 1983 and every song had to have a video. Or two. Or three. MTV was like the only thing I ever got in on the ground floor on. My sister and I didn’t have cable, but my aunt did, so we went over there a day or two after it started and were mesmerized. There were only about 25 videos played regularly, and I think a quarter of them were by Peter Gabriel, but it was still the coolest thing 15-year-old me ever saw.
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Jan 21, 2018 10:33
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Those easily-remembered videos like ‘Sledgehammer” and such came later though; the very early days of MTV were filled with the same 25-50 videos and the vast majority of them were really terrible by today’s standards; Fleetwood Mac lip-syncing in the desert, Cheap Trick standing in a room motionless while a hanging lamp swings back and forth endlessly, etc. But it was so different and so cool at the time that it spread in popularity like crazy; the ‘I want my MTV’ campaign was crazy-effective and had never been done before - consumers lobbying cable providers was unprecedented. The really sad thing, to me, is that a huge number of people got really wealthy off of MTV and the original VJ’s got absolutely screwed, their pay was like $35K a year in Manhattan and they had to come up with all their own wardrobe. When they fought for better pay after the channel was a huge success, most of them got canned.
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Jan 22, 2018 14:29
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