|
YouTuber posted:The idea of a barcode reader isn't wholly bad, it came way too early and in a clumsy fashion. QR Codes are really useful but I only use them because my phone has the function built in. If I had to buy a device to use them I'd never do so. The modern init system for Linux actually renders a QR code during a kernel package instead of forcing you to scribble down stuff. You didn't have to buy it, they gave them out for free.
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 01:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 08:14 |
|
|
BaseballPCHiker posted:Sometimes I miss the crazy off the wall antics of early electronics. The industry was in it's infancy and companies could spring up out of nowhere and throw something against the wall and see what would stick. I can remember back in the day when the tower case design became a selling point! Used to be you would use the desktop as a monitor stand, I can even remember some models that had the power and ups built into the monitor for some odd reason. Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once.  I also fondly remember messing around with geoworks on my 386. Here is a link to a screenshot gallery of the operating system of yore. http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/gwe2
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 04:37
|
|
|
Mr Shiny Pants posted:config.sys and autoexec.bat shaving some KBs to get DOOM running with sound in 4MB RAM. Disabling every Extension except for the CD driver and QuickTime to get Return To Zork to play on a machine with 4MB RAM without crashing.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 04:41
|
|
|
OnePt57x2 posted:Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once. Oh, that reminds me of the 72x CD-ROM drive I used to have. It read multiple tracks simultaneously to get that read speed, so if you pointed a benchmark at it, it would come back as running at rotational speeds that would physically shatter discs if it was actually doing that.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 06:06
|
|
|
Remember these little hard drives? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive A tiny fragile mechanical hard drive for portable devices like the iPod Mini.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 11:13
|
|
|
I owned a Sony 2x CD burner that connected via ISA SCSI card to my Compaq with a Pentium 120 processor. This was in 1996 or so and CDRs were expensive. I was using it to pirate Playstation games. We had a big trading circle (via mail) and I also would rent them at the video store and burn them. Oh, the wailing and crying when that burner would kick out a "coaster", which it would frequently.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 12:50
|
|
|
Kreeblah posted:Oh, that reminds me of the 72x CD-ROM drive I used to have. It read multiple tracks simultaneously to get that read speed, so if you pointed a benchmark at it, it would come back as running at rotational speeds that would physically shatter discs if it was actually doing that. I loved mine, too bad copy- protection on game CD's threw it into a tizzy. 
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 13:26
|
|
|
OnePt57x2 posted:Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once. That reminds me, our PC back around 2000 or whenever episode 1 came out had two cd drives. My parents only ever put anything in the first one, so I could just leave disc 2 of my 2-disk games in the second drive. 
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 16:35
|
|
|
OnePt57x2 posted:Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once. I ran a large multi-line PCBoard BBS back in the 90s that had 2 (TWO) of these bad-boys stuffed with Nite-Owl and other sundry shareware CDs.. The fun REALLY came when multiple callers would download from several different CDs... The CD-ROMS would shuffle and send some data.. Shuffle then send more data.. Shuffle and send more.. Then I turned on a file "staging" area and fixed that right up.. good times... I saw some of those NEC 4x4s in my shed a few weeks ago in a box of old PC crap. yay me!
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 21:31
|
|
|
Slack3r posted:I ran a large multi-line PCBoard BBS back in the 90s that had 2 (TWO) of these bad-boys stuffed with Nite-Owl and other sundry shareware CDs.. I almost want to pick one up if I can find a IDE to SATA converter to work with it, I'm out of add-on card space and the traditional ide to sata adapters don't work well with cd/dvd drives. and throw it in my desktop for fun.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 00:28
|
|
|
Mr. Clark2 posted:I remember taking my Zip drive to work and attaching it to my work PC via parallel port, downloading game demos and patches, then taking them home to install on my home PC. We had a blazing fast T1 connection at work. I still twitch a little when I hear someone say something like "they've only got T1speeds." Man, I would have killed to have "only T1 speeds" back then
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 15:10
|
|
|
Aurelius posted:I still twitch a little when I hear someone say something like "they've only got T1speeds." Man, I would have killed to have "only T1 speeds" back then Nothing like going to college and learning that the OC3 line they use for internet access is more or less a free for all, and accidentally DDOSing your buddy's T1 FTP server by just uploading crap.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 19:55
|
|
|
OnePt57x2 posted:Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once. I remember my grandfather had a badass computer; he put geoworks on it
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 01:14
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 07:54
|
|
|
You guys ever watch the Computer Chronicles? It's the best show ever for old computer stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n81RKe-tu7Y
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 08:00
|
|
|
brian eno's best work
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 08:15
|
|
|
IT BURNS posted:Remember when Zip Disks were a thing? My Zip drive, and hence my Zip disks, got the click of death
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 09:43
|
|
|
Number Two Stunna posted:You guys ever watch the Computer Chronicles? It's the best show ever for old computer stuff. As someone who has an interest in computer history, thank you for this.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 16:53
|
|
|
I was at college just before flash drives became a thing, and waaay before cloud storage. My parents had some loving Lotus word processor on the family PC, which I had to use for an assignment. It couldn't save as .doc file to use with Word at college. The only compatible format was loving .rtf. Rtf files, for whatever reason, are enormous, even by todays standards. My assignment ended up being around 15mb in rtf. The only way to get the assignment to college was to use a programme called Chainsaw to split the file over multiple floppies. These were floppies that I used and reused hundreds of times and were very much on their last legs. If any one of those floppies failed, I wouldn't have gotten my assignment in on time. I can't actually remember if the file survived. EvilGenius fucked around with this message at 20:07 on May 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 20:01
|
|
|
Migishu posted:As someone who has an interest in computer history, thank you for this. You'll like this then. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles https://archive.org/details/texts?and[]=computer Yaos fucked around with this message at 01:25 on May 22, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 22, 2015 01:04
|
|
|
 I love finding boxes of stuff in the loft and there are a million old serial cables in it.  It's funny how much of the back panel used to be taken up with ten million different serial ports JUST IN CASE you had a device that used that size cable. I also remember my sweet as heck ribbon printer. It printed at about one page every two minutes, made constant, high pitch, high volume screaming noises as it did so, and you selected the font by pressing buttons on the printed until one of about four options lit up, I think it did times new roman, copperplate gothic, courier, and courier sans.  I miss my old amiga and my dad's massive archive of neatly labeled and stored bootleg floppies. In fuckin' locked floppy trays. Protect your data! 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 00:29
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:
Nice! That's not quite fair though - sure, you don't have a separate keyboard connector (or, in the case of the bottom one, retrofitted thing that allows use of both keyboard AND mouse?!) nowadays, and I don't think I've seen even server-grade PC hardware with a choice of Ethernet connectors for a while, but otherwise everything else there has an equivalent today. Replace the serial ports with (more) USB ports, SCSI with eSATA (not completely equivalent, but overlapping intents) and "mono" with HDMI and you still have a similar number of special connectors. They're just all a lot smaller today! Maybe if you look at a high-end mid-'90s PC you'd find more connectors that have gone the way of the dinosaur, like joystick/MIDI ports and parallel ports that have both been taken over by USB. Also SCSI is actually parallel, not serial  If it was serial it wouldn't need such a huge number of pins!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 02:27
|
|
|
Oh yeah there are still a bunch of ports I don't use much, but the advent of USB seems to have replaced a large number of other peripheral connectors. I don't know what the big lump term for all those old trapezoidal cables is so I just call them serial connectors because that was what seemed to take up the bulk of the space and most of the things that used them now use USB. USB is so much nicer, not least because they stack better. And they're all the same size. I actually did find an old saitek joystick that used a big plastic plug that I seem to remember being a specific joystick connector. Got asked if I wanted to keep it and replied that even if I did, I don't think they make computers to plug it into any more 
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 02:40
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I don't know what the big lump term for all those old trapezoidal cables is The correct name for the connectors is D-sub(minature) although I don't think I've heard that term used except by hardware engineers. quote:I actually did find an old saitek joystick that used a big plastic plug that I seem to remember being a specific joystick connector. Got asked if I wanted to keep it and replied that even if I did, I don't think they make computers to plug it into any more There are converters for those, they seem to be of varying quality though, I got one cheap off eBay that doesn't work very well with my old flight stick. I got a cheap one that works well for PlayStation 2 controllers though. I think you can get PCI cards with those PC game port adapters too.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 04:46
|
|
|
Yaos posted:You'll like this then. Once I move into my new place, I'm not going to be seen for a long time it seems.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 04:49
|
|
|
Buttcoin purse posted:There are converters for those, they seem to be of varying quality though, I got one cheap off eBay that doesn't work very well with my old flight stick. I got a cheap one that works well for PlayStation 2 controllers though. I think you can get PCI cards with those PC game port adapters too. PCI sound cards always had them for some reason. Now I know why even the latest Z97 boards still have 2x PCI slots!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
Buttcoin purse posted:I don't think I've seen even server-grade PC hardware with a choice of Ethernet connectors for a while Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 05:09 on May 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
Vulture Culture posted:For real? SFP+ is really common. You get to pick between copper SFP+ DAC (twinax), LC fiber connectors, or 10GBase-T (if your vendor is dumb enough to support an SFP+ adapter). what is that? I just got my first GIG NIC from circut city!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 05:16
|
|
|
Vulture Culture posted:For real? SFP+ is really common. You get to pick between copper SFP+ DAC (twinax), LC fiber connectors, or 10GBase-T (if your vendor is dumb enough to support an SFP+ adapter). I mean that for a long time you've just had a single "connector" (slot for a GBIC or SFP, or actual jack) per interface, not a choice of two different connectors as shown in that picture, or three as you might have seen on some '90s NICs. And for those who aren't aware, the 15-pin connector labelled "Ethernet" in the Sun picture is AUI, which is an interface for connecting to an MAU (adapter) which connects to the physical Ethernet network, be it 10BASE-2, 10BASE-T, etc., so they could have left off the BNC coax connector and you could have used an MAU to connect to the coax network instead. So an MAU is like a GBIC transceiver or SFP module - an adapter between the NIC and the physical medium - and what I was trying to say was that these days you don't tend to get both an SFP slot and some physical port (or at least not on the admittedly fairly small sample size of hardware I've seen).
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:22
|
|
|
~Coxy posted:PCI sound cards always had them for some reason. It doubled as a connector for MIDI instruments with the use of a dongle.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:59
|
|
|
Best part of getting a new sound card: C:\CREATIVE>sbaitso.exe
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:00
|
|
|
OnePt57x2 posted:Speaking of crazy hardware I Remember getting an NEC multispin 4x4 drive, it was a slot load single bay CD drive that would hold 4 discs at once. I remember in FMV game days that some of the games would not properly work with a multi cd drive.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 21:49
|
|
|
Yaos posted:You'll like this then. quote:Hosted by Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles was the world's most popular television program on personal technology during the height of the personal computer revolution. It was broadcast for twenty years from 1983 - 2002. The program was seen on more than 300 television stations in the United States and in over 100 countries worldwide, with translations into French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. The series had a weekly television broadcast audience of over two million viewers. I wish I had seen the days when computer punditry was so sophisticated. Today we have Linus loving tech tips.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2015 16:11
|
|
|
Dr. Arbitrary posted:Best part of getting a new sound card: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUzK0ylOzBY can anyone tell what happens in this video?
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2015 18:04
|
|
|
VostokProgram posted:I wish I had seen the days when computer punditry was so sophisticated. Today we have Linus loving tech tips. Journalistic integrity is too hard, same with research. The Screensavers are back though with Leo Laporte. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFP9Euhwi3GqbQmWS-M-0hA Yaos fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 27, 2015 21:09
|
|
|
Yaos posted:Journalistic integrity is too hard, same with research. The Screensavers are back though with Leo Laporte. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFP9Euhwi3GqbQmWS-M-0hA Wow, awesome! I remember having to order like 50 bucks worth of channels just to get TechTV so that I could watch Screensavers!
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 00:43
|
|
|
I used to watch the Screensavers. Leo Laporte being a misogynistic shitlord that sexually harasses women on the air kind of soured me on the concept of a re-launch, though.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 03:07
|
|
|
ErIog posted:I used to watch the Screensavers. Leo Laporte being a misogynistic shitlord that sexually harasses women on the air kind of soured me on the concept of a re-launch, though. Ah I wasn't aware of any of that, I was more of a fan of that other balding guy and the guy who built cool computers and stuff for them.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2015 08:06
|
|
|
BaseballPCHiker posted:Sometimes I miss the crazy off the wall antics of early electronics. The industry was in it's infancy and companies could spring up out of nowhere and throw something against the wall and see what would stick. I can remember back in the day when the tower case design became a selling point! Used to be you would use the desktop as a monitor stand, I can even remember some models that had the power and ups built into the monitor for some odd reason. The best part of that now, the guy who invent that garbage fire J. Jovan Philyaw changed his name to and I am not kidding "J. Hutton Pulitzer". He popped up on that Curse of Oak Island show recently and it took me like 15 minutes of trying to figure out why the guy looked so familiar. Watching the show he comes off like such a scammy con artist I am amazed that anyone ever took him seriously. He is dressed up like a fat Indiana Jones cosplayer.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 08:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 08:14 |
|
|
Djarum posted:He is dressed up like a fat Indiana Jones cosplayer. Is there any other kind?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2015 08:09
|
|