Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Guy Axlerod posted:

I saw this posted as a "hack" not too long ago.

They remove the front polarizing screen from the monitor, and then use glasses with an equivalent polarizing screen. Nothing particularly special about the monitor or glasses. Just don't tilt your head too much, or the polarization will be out of alignment.

Didn't they also suggest cutting up the polarizing screen and making glasses?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2014 17:08

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 16:35

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Aristophanes posted:

I can't imagine these would stand the test of time very well, being on tapes and all.

They now make a digital version.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2014 01:26

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Pham Nuwen posted:

I got a Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen or whatever it was called, new in box at a garage sale back in 2006. Best $20 I ever spent.

I bought one of those new in 2002 or so. Cheaper than an iPod at the time and pretty durable. Never did fill up that 30Gb drive. I last used it about a year ago and it still works.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 23:42

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

tacodaemon posted:

Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk actually came with a floppy disk multimedia presentation that won it a fair bit of hype at the time:

Screenshot:

I almost bought that until I saw it was Mac-only. :argh:

Billy Idol

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 00:31

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

hackbunny posted:

It was perfect for playing Micro Surgeon!

I can't tell how many of my patients died on the table.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 13:24

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Pham Nuwen posted:

Punch cards were used for many computers for decades because they were relatively easy to create and work with. You'd write your program on paper, then go to a card punch and enter the code, one line per card. You'd then take your stack of cards to the computer, which would be loaded with a compiler. You'd feed in the cards, the compiler would interpret the source code and either run your program right away or write the machine code to a tape or more punch cards. Before modern timesharing systems, this meant that users would prepare their programs completely independent of the computer and only use valuable computer time when running the code. Often, you'd hand your cards over to an operator, who would put them in a queue of jobs to run; you could pick up your results printout tomorrow. This is actually how many supercomputers still operate today, although the operator has been replaced with a computer-based scheduler.

I used them in 1985 when I took computer programming - RPG (Report Program Generator). God, I hated that language. I liked COBOL74 a lot better despite its wordiness. Unfortunately, I was never able to use what I'd learned.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 02:29

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

mystes posted:

Or you could load Print Shop Deluxe in DOS and make a card on your monochrome dot matrix printer in the comfort of your own home .

Wasn't Print Shop the program that, whenever a new version came out, you couldn't just upgrade, but had to buy the whole program again?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2014 01:58

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

RC and Moon Pie posted:

I have an RCA model that does VCR Plus+. I bought it off eBay long after the function was obsolete, but it's a heavily touted option on the menus.

Our first family VCR was this beast. It's a General Electric and from what I've been told, cost my parents a lot of c. 1985 money.

You see that 0217 to the far right? That's not time elapsed. The VCR could be programmed to record at a certain time, but it did not measure tapes in time. It used tracking numbers.

I don't think it had an actual menu on the screen, either. You programmed it by opening the front right panel and setting switch-type things. I have yet to find a photo that shows it opened and I can't exactly remember how it worked, but it was strange.

This was my first VCR, the Panasonic PV-1220. Top-load with a wired remote that only controlled fast forward, rewind, and pause functions only after you pressed play on the VCR itself.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 04:10

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Lowen SoDium posted:

We had a couple of these. They were incredibly good VCRs as far as reliability went. Must have had them for 10+ years.

Mine lasted about eight years on the first set of heads. I replaced them and used it for another two before selling it.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 22:52

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

empty baggie posted:

I still have a SCSI ZIP drive. Double-obsolete.

At the last place I worked, I was cleaning out a storage closet and found one of these. I have no idea if it works. A quick check on eBay shows that people still buy these things. I should probably put it on there.

Mister Kingdom has a new favorite as of 02:20 on Mar 25, 2014

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 02:18

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

GWBBQ posted:

Taking down a pair of ceiling-hung 44" monitors that weighed around 350 pounds was one of the more miserable things I've had to do at work. It was basically three guys with a ladder trying to avoid being crushed to death.

I still have a 27" flat face CRT TV in the bedroom. It was the only thing I couldn't carry upstairs by myself when I moved. I checked online and it clocks in at 110 pounds.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 03:16

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Disgusting Coward posted:

Shame you end up never again talking to anyone with a bunch of 9s in their number because gently caress YOU.

And gently caress trying to win radio contests.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 22:19

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

strangemusic posted:

I used to have exactly this. It was the greatest thing. I was born in 88 so I grew up mostly in the age of CDs, but I used to play some of my parents' tapes on it. I made a couple of incredibly horrible recordings to these kinds of tapes once. I wish I still had one, it would be a neat little lo-fi box.

I used a fairly modern version of the Walkman ($20 about 6-7 years ago) to transfer some tapes to my computer. Pretty decent sound considering.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2014 03:27

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Collateral Damage posted:

Short answer: Regulations.

There are still various regulations especially in the finance sector that says a signed document isn't legal any more if it's been scanned and sent through email, but fax is ok.

Of course, a lot of companies just use them because they don't know any better.

I'm an insurance biller for a big hospital and I use a fax machine everyday. The insurance companies (who all suck donkey dicks) won't accept documents if they aren't faxed or mailed. Even faxing is limited to 25 pages. There's only one I can fax certain things to via secure email (and by secure, I mean password protected PDFs).

# ¿ Apr 19, 2014 12:44

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

The last time I went to a drive-in was in 1979 to see Star Trek - The Motion Picture.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2014 14:19

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Lowen SoDium posted:

Capacitance Electronic Disk (the real name of this format) is theoretically about the same quality as VHS recorded in SP mode. That is, it should have about the same amount of detail and clarity. But most people say that it looked better.

It did have some disadvantages. It was not recordable. Disk held 1 hour per side and had to be flipped. The CEDs were read by a stylus that physically contacted the disk, like a record player, and video quality degraded with each viewing due to the physical wear.

This is what it looks like:

# ¿ May 3, 2014 18:48

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Sony crams 185Tb of data onto a standard cassette.

It's voodoo, I tell ya!

# ¿ May 4, 2014 19:11

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Snaguaro posted:

It's also not a standard cassette.

drat stupid picture!

# ¿ May 4, 2014 19:28

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Pham Nuwen posted:

Apparently "reading" is the obsolete technology, since the article was only 200 words long.

I can see how it's possible to misread the title, "Sony Crams 3,700 Blu-Rays' Worth of Storage in a Single Cassette Tape", and the part of the story that says, "meaning a cassette could hold 185 TB of data".

# ¿ May 4, 2014 21:05

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Code Jockey posted:

10 PRINT "BONERS"
20 GOTO 10

I still make mine do this occasionally. The classics never die.

I used to do that on Radio Shack display computers except I would substitute "Radio Shack sucks" for boners.

# ¿ May 5, 2014 01:21

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Pham Nuwen posted:

Y'all scrubs. 40 GB storage, long-lasting battery. The only downside was that it's a bitch to upload music to it, you either had to use their software on Windows or (in my case) some reverse-engineered crap. No USB mass storage option.

My 30Gb still works, but I had to find a WIN 7 workaround.

# ¿ May 6, 2014 03:41

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Aristophanes posted:

My first MP3 player was one of these:

That looks very Star Trek-y.

# ¿ May 6, 2014 23:04

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Code Jockey posted:

Also trying to track down the Star Wars "definitive" edition Laserdiscs but holy bajesus those aren't cheap!

Back in the early 90s, I bought a laserdisc player from Radio Shack. I even joined the Columbia House Laserdisc Club and with their 3-for-$1-each promotion, got the Star Wars trilogy.

I finally managed to snag the Definitive set cheap (about $50), too.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 02:30

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Pham Nuwen posted:

But typing on to index cards will always be miserable, I did that for a presentation in middle school and once you get halfway through the card it will start to slip and go all crooked and you spend as much time getting the next card in as you do typing.

Then you need these.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 12:31

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

The_Raven posted:

Hmmm... let's see...

When I was a little lad of 8, my mother bought me the 22-volume World Book Encyclopedia, along with the 2-volume dictionary. I proceeded to read them.. :-)

I did the same thing. I have been tempted more than once to buy a set off ebay, but only in the library binding.

# ¿ May 9, 2014 00:48

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

ToxicSlurpee posted:

If memory serves automatics sometimes gently caress up and manuals get better fuel economy. Automatics are also mechanically more complex.

If your battery dies, you can get a push start in a manual, As far as gas mileage goes, if you aren't that good at shifting, your mileage may actually vary.

# ¿ May 11, 2014 23:09

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Gromit posted:

That would have been horrifying.
Although you could get this system that let you backup data to VHS tapes as video, so maybe you mean one of those?

I worked at a pawn shop that used VHS tapes for backup (from a PC).

# ¿ May 16, 2014 12:58

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Code Jockey posted:

This one appears to be single disc double side, so, after a quick read of wikipedia, it looks like the laser switches sides. Neato! I'll only have to get up three times! That's considerably more convenient.

Looks like this inside:

# ¿ Jun 22, 2014 13:02

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Slavik posted:

Is there several seconds of delay with the movie paused while it switches sides?

Yep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRCnJJOdysM

# ¿ Jun 22, 2014 18:24

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

KozmoNaut posted:

Are you sure? Because just about everyone I know listens at their computers or MP3 players. Whenever I go visit friends and family, all of the CDs that used to be proudly displayed are gone, and no CD player-equipped stereos in sight. Instead they stream everything, either directly from a NAS or from a streaming provider. We've got three major providers here, and they all offer sizeable libraries and decent sound quality. Why have a giant CD collection taking up space, when you can store it all on a hard disk and/or stream it?

I had over 650 CDs at one time and the shelving units I used to store them were about 3'x4' (it took two and I had to put box sets on a regular bookshelf). I broke down all the jewel cases and everything fits into two of these:

I put the booklets & backing cards into four 2" binders and the whole lot is sitting in the closet.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2014 19:24

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

karl fungus posted:

Speaking of obsolete services, here's something on Prodigy: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/where-online-services-go-when-they-die/374099/

On a related note, I'm curious as to how online shopping worked in the early days around the late 80s and early 90s. Was it just as simple as providing a credit card number and having things shipped to your door? How secure was any of this?

Wow. That brings back memories. I was on Prodigy from 1992-1995 mainly to interact with fellow MST3K fans.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2014 22:19

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Antifreeze Head posted:

As for audio DRM, I would love to know just how much time and money was plowed into that was so easily circumvented with an hour to spare and a $1 wire from the dollar store.

I seem to remember (and correct me if I'm wrong) Apple's iTunes' DRM being broken in a few days. Later, Apple, said, "Ha! We fixed it, you bastards, try and break it now!"

It was broken 18 hours later.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 20:58

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Back in the 60s, it was not unusual for a record label to say to a new artist, "We think you have potential, but not enough to commit to a full album. So we'll let you cut a single or two and we'll see what happens."

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 23:02

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Zeether posted:

Video of a guy with an old modem from 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE

SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?

# ¿ Jul 19, 2014 23:59

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Collateral Damage posted:

To be fair so does most of the western world, to everyone's chagrin.

I use a fax machine nearly every day. I just wish the idiots on the other end understood how they work.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 12:32

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Rhymenoserous posted:

Yeah, this is so much better than just sending a loving e-mail.

I deal with health insurance companies all day and need to send info to them (itemized bills, medical records, etc) and only ONE has the capability of receiving secured email.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 23:06

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

tribbledirigible posted:

10", you young whippersnapper.

When I was in high school. we didn't even have computers.

:corsair:

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 04:58

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Dick Trauma posted:

Hand scanners were horrible pieces of poo poo.

Oh, poo poo, I had one like that. You had to scan at the right speed or you'd freak out the computer and get a blue screen. That was $99 not well spent.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 03:36

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Lumberjack Bonanza posted:

It's amazing, that's how.

One cassette? ONE?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgTuzDQokdk

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 00:35

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 16:35

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:

Don't forget to hook up your video signal stabilizer. Wouldn't want an unstable signal, right? *wink* *wink*

I bought one of those on ebay and it came with a pair of six-foot RCA cables so that you could hide it.

If the feds were going to bust me for copying some old commercial VHS tapes, they weren't going to be fooled by a cable that seemed to go nowhere.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 23:56

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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