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Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I had my Treo 650 until 2012. I loved that that keyboard.

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Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

woodch posted:

I should have snapped some pictures of the basement at the business phone joint I worked at before I left/got laid off. An entire basement nearly filled with 30-plus-year-old phone systems in various states of disassembly/functionality. Shelves and shelves of Lucent/Avaya system components and cabinets, many boxes packed with gross, decommissioned Lucent/Avaya phones, loads of ancient Toshiba gear that NO ONE was ever going to use again. I'm convinced that the building is being physically supported by most of that junk.

There's a pack-rat mentality that seems to be common among people in tech industries. That feeling that somehow, this thing might someday be useful/valuable. I know this because I suffered from it really bad 10-15 years ago. I still do, but nowhere near the insanity of my early hoarding years. A few examples include:

Back around 1995, I happily accepted a Lisa 2/10 system from someone. It was totally FREE! I was working as a technician for one of the few remaining Apple Certified Repair Centers, and I was convinced it'd be great to have around, and that at worst I could totally turn it around make a nice bundle of cash off of it. Some things I learned about the Lisa 2: It's as heavy as a dump truck, draws WAY too much power and generates WAY too much heat, and even modded is limited to software that would run on System 6.0.4 (maybe 6.0.8, but my memory is foggy). It's also super slow. I never did sell it, and nearly blew my back out lugging it to the dumpster.

Later, around 2000, one of our customers was upgrading equipment and had a load of various desktops he was going to throw away. We're talking PCs from 386's on up to early Pentium 166's. I snagged like 4 or 5 of these bad boys, thinking I could network them together and use them for awesomeness. One went to work as a FreeSCO router (remember those?), and that was really all it did--until I realized a real router was cheaper to run, easier to administer, took up less space, and didn't look like I'd gotten it out of a dumpster. The others went unused until I moved, at which point they made great doorstops. Straight into the dumpster after they'd served their purpose.

I had a fully functional G3 Desktop (the original version that looked like a 7200, not the cool blue one) that came free from someone upgrading to a new G4 or something. I had all PCs at home, so I thought it'd be cool to have a Mac in my collection to do Mac stuff with. Turned out that particular G3 was terrible at, well, everything. OS X worked on it, but only barely, and soooooooo slowly. Once it was booted up, programs had to thrash for room to work, and most of the time didn't work at all because the only version of OS X that would successfully load on it was hilariously out of date. It eventually went to dumpster heaven too.

There are so many more examples of my computer pack-ratting, but those are the ones that spring to mind. In '07, I moved out to Arizona, and in the process gave the ol' heave-ho to just about every computer THING I didn't actually need. Not only was it necessary-- I was almost literally going out there with the clothes on my back-- it felt so good to jettison all that baggage that it made me occasionally evaluate the junk I have lying around and get rid of it on a semi-regular basis. I say "semi-regularly" because my pack-rat tendencies run deep (I'm sure my dad has it too--maybe it's genetic?), and I have to consciously fight against it every time I begin to think about saving some bit of technology I've replaced or stopped using.

Writing this now makes me realize I'm overdue for a purge, actually. Maybe when the summer heat backs off a bit, I'll start chucking some of the "interesting-yet-useless" computer stuff that mysteriously accumulates around me.

I have a fully maxed out IIfx, with a Radius Rocket Board, maxed out RAM, and a 2MB Raster Ops Video Card running 8.1along with a IIci with a Daystar 601 PowerPC board. I keep them around because they were dream machines for me on their original release (I also have a Next Cube for the same reason).

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

nigga crab pollock posted:

i found an old mod called navy seals that itself is a very radical quake mod. but with the limitations of the hardware ends up working, kind of well actually, as an oddly paced high stress cover shooter? its not like anything i've ever played. it's like a bunch of seemingly bad things working together in unison to make something good or at least i see some potential. ive made a bunch of lovely test maps to see what the 3ds is capable of and i mean its still janky but at the same time its like some alternate timeline ps1 era shooter (jank and all) so i wanna make a little campaign. half to just say 'i made a first person shooter for the 3ds'

the mods source is included and i tried to delve into that to fix/change stuff but it doesn't compile and lol the second i tell people im working in C they dont want to help me anymore

its got a bunch of guns and sick nasty gib and particle effects and they all work on the janky software rendered 3ds port its the most beautiful thing :allears:




man holy poo poo imgur destroyed those images

The guy who did Navy SEALS is Gooseman whose next big mod project was Counterstrike so...

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

nigga crab pollock posted:

navy seals status:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93b6F5GHHm8

forking a twenty year old codebase :rms:

I love the sounds of the MP5 and the shotgun in that mod. What are removing from the weapons code? Hopefully not the Mode switch.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

thathonkey posted:

there is a pretty cool story on ars technica about crazy people that still use OS 9

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/an-os-9-odyssey-why-do-some-mac-users-still-rely-on-16-year-old-software/

I have a pair of G4 Towers that run it because I cannot find OS X Drivers for my Formac ProFormance 3 video card which drives my sweetass SGI 1600SW

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Kai's Power Tools had an extremely iconoclastic UI for a commercial program. It was terrible and there were so many complaints from the paying user base they reverted it to a more useable by non-developer endusers.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

I rest my case.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

barbecue at the folks posted:

I've only seen black and white pictures of the SX-64 - the quality of design really surprised me (I always keep forgetting that Commodore was a) American and b) not only about mass-market designs like VIC-20/C64). That keyboard design is tasty as all hell and oh my god those blue highlights :allears: I guess I know without asking that someone has already turned one of these into a regular old PC with a small LCD screen and gotta say, the prospect does intrigue me.

It would be ridiculously cheap and easy to convert too. Plenty of room to slap a NUC in there (or four) or just a standard ATX mobo even.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Humphreys posted:

I decided to check out a few old web 'memes' and I went down the deep end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE8WzYNRPNU

This counts as a relic right?

Jesus that was ten years ago? Not going to lie, I watched that entire posted video and still enjoyed it. Gary is just so loving happy while he's lip syncing this stupid rear end song.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kelp Me! posted:

I think this was posted a while back, but I'll see your boating sim controller and raise you the Steel Battalion setup:



Featuring individual buttons for poo poo like reload, windshield wipers, fire extinguisher, multi-channel communication, separate electronics startup and actual engine ignition, cockpit hatch, and about a billion other super-niche things.

I really wish this thing had gotten more popular. They have drivers to make it work on PC, but what game is going to use so many ultra-specific commands? Mapping the buttons on a per-game basis would be a nightmare.

Fun fact: the Eject button is under a flip-up plastic case, and if you didn't eject when your giant robot was destroyed, the game would perma-death you and delete your save :v:

Mine still works too! And the answer is Mechwarrior series

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Class of '80....:ohdear:

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
When I was in high school we used dumb terminals and the Madison Metropolitan School District's Time Sharing System. That's right , I learned to program COBOL and Fortran on a DECWriter II and a Texas Instruments Silent 700. We could check out a NCR 2660 terminal to take home and connect on a built in 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Data Graham posted:

Ah yeah

How many of us does this trigger memories for?



I built a video projector using one of those and a LCD flat panel display that I took apart. It worked great actually.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Humphreys posted:

Well when everyone moved from sliderules...

My dad got a TI-30 when they first came out, before that he did all his calculations on a sliderule and he taught me how to use one.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Buttcoin purse posted:

:v:

I don't actually know where they make their money, but they also make CPUs and DSPs which are popular in embedded applications.

DLPs for video projectors too.

e:fb.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

PinkoBastard posted:


Re: Old cell phones: The Blackberry Bold 9000 had a bad OS and a terrible web browser, but to this day it's the best phone I've ever had for texting. I didn't even have to look at it while I wrote.

My Treo had the best nubbin keyboard. So good for texting.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:

To this day I sometimes write notes for myself in Palm OS Graffiti.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kelp Me! posted:

Pirated DVDs are (or at least were) a huge thing in lower-middle class urban areas. 10 years ago you couldn't have a meal at a restaurant in Newark without at least one person walking in with a backpack and going around to all the tables selling VCDs of popular movies and/or terrible cams of movies currently in theaters.

e: also http://www.nickselby.com/2013/08/25/software-pirates-rule-in-russia/

All over Oakland and most of the flea markets in the East Bay.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
My 31 seems like it could take a close proximity nuke.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
One of these is still lurking in my closet...





Terrapin VCD Recorder. Last time it was used was probably 2001.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

One of these is still lurking in my closet...





Terrapin VCD Recorder. Last time it was used was probably 2001.

Just pulled it out and turned it on for the first time in 16 years. It works! Played my VCD of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and recorded off my DVD player. Yes, the image looks like complete rear end, but dammit it works!

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Holy poo poo! Some of the things in that auction...

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32247922/gridcase-model-1530/?ref=catalog

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32247925/gridpad-model-1900-with-case/?ref=catalog

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32222672/gold-album--put-the-hammer-down-/?ipp=100&ref=catalog

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32247970/historical-artifacts--box-1-of-2---/?ipp=100&ref=catalog

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32248000/cue-cat-samples/?cpage=2&ipp=100&ref=catalog

https://ubidestates.hibid.com/lot/32248182/bust-of-charles-tandy/?cpage=4&ipp=100&ref=catalog

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I loved our big C-Band dish. It came with the house and my dad and I spent a summer getting that thing running in the late-70s. Watching interstitial stuff during commercial breaks could be hilarious on national news feeds.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

doctorfrog posted:

Tucows was somehow too big. I ended up visiting nonags.com for a curated catalog of cool freeware that didn't nag me to register.

Having a Palm III was like having a grown-up Game Boy I could take to work. I got a bunch of stuff from FreewarePalm.com.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040611094748/http://www.freewarepalm.com:80/

Played a bunch of Cody's Quest, a little Palm RPG engine that ripped off Final Fantasy sprites I think.

I still have my Handspring Prism and it works great.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Casimir Radon posted:

So was Titanic and the 60s Dr. Doolittle.

Dr. Zhivago and Ice Station Zebra too.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Efexeye posted:

found this in a box of detritus that could probably be its own thread, i have video cards going back twenty years in there



kind of ashamed that i let it fall in to this state of disrepair but everything is bluetooth now so this is obsolete. having thirty button macros to put the living room in to theater mode with one touch were worth $250...right? :ohdear:

goes for $6 on ebay

I still have mine and use it to run my home theater, projector, ceiling fan and some other stuff.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

azurite posted:

Hey now, the FM + PSG chips in the Mega Drive produced some of the best video game music of its generation. :colbert:

Edit: and I thought the demo was neat. Transparency and polygon rendering are examples of things the MD was never meant to do.

Those shadows. Amazing piece of work.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

evobatman posted:

I loved flight simulators in the 90s, and used to pick which game to buy based on the weight of the box. I probably spent just as many hours with the manual for EF2000 as I did with the game.

Falcon 4.0 was the champ for that.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Buttcoin purse posted:

I recently read a contemporary review which wasn't great. And I guess what you said above could be said about Star Citizen too :v:

I wish I had time to replay some of those classic flight sims, or maybe the updated Falcon 4 versions.

If you look carefully you can find Humbug Scoolbus's real name in the credits for both the PC and Mac versions of Falcon 4. The Mac version was one of the last flight sim projects I worked on.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Aubergine Mage posted:

I'd give anything for a new Falcon game.

So would I :(

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Star Man posted:

And the greatest video game console ever was the result of that.

Dreamcast?

e:fb

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Quote-Unquote posted:

My good man let me introduce you to a little thing called GetRight, to ensure your downloads always get completed!

poo poo, I'm 15-20 years too late, aren't I?

edit: lol GetRight still exists.

The thing that wrecked me was the fact that the original Demo for Kingpin Life of Crime was 109MB. We downloaded it on the Optical at work because even with ISDN, it would have taken forever.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I still have my MSI U100 Wind...



I put Mint Linux, an extra GB of RAM, and a 100 GB SSD in it and it's still my inflight entertainment machine.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

:drat:

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

empty baggie posted:

Steely Dan is the ultimate audiophile music.

So loving true. I had a friend who went big for DVD audio just so he could hear an 'absolutely pristine' copy of Gaucho.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
The first video card I bought was a VillageTronic MacMagic. It was a weird 2d/3d board using Voodoo 1 for the 3D on a daughter board and a 4MB S3 set for the 2D. I also had a Techworks Gamewizard Voodoo card. My 2000 vintage G4 currently has a Formac ProFormance 3 hooked to an SGI 1600sw, and a pair of SLI 8MB Voodoo 2s for gaming.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I have my frankly stupidly large mp3 collection backed up with CrashPlan.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Pham Nuwen posted:

I'm running OS 9 on a first gen iMac and it's a matter of constant frustration. The loving cooperative multitasking alone means a single misbehaving program can very well require a reboot. I got it to play old games (installed Myst already) and mess around with old software, but like half the time I'll download something and transfer it via FTP (since SFTP is a nonstarter as far as I can tell) and then the OS just has no clue how to open the file.

It's also really hard to specify to a search engine that I want software for OS 9, not OS X.

I have a pair of G4 Towers (1999 vintage) that run 9.2/10.1 and they are still fun to dick around with. The tricked out 550mhz (overclocked) one has paired Voodoo2s, 1.5GB RAM and a Formac ProFormance 3 card to run an SGI 1600SW flat-panel.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I started with 10 and moved up to 10.1 and 10.2, but 10.2 was always kind of unstable with the overclock. I run mainly games on them these days, as well as having Codewarrior installed so I can screw around with programming them. There are no drivers for the Formac card for OS 10 of any version, so that's why 9.2 is the primary OS on that machine. That 1600SW is an amazing monitor.

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Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

promising carl posted:

lol, I remember downloading the 65MB Diablo demo over dialup. Took about 10 hours.

109MB Kingpin Life of Crime Demo. A group of us used our work's optical connection to download that one.

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