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Nasgate posted:And if we're bringing up old heating machines(screw working on octopus machines, that looks horrible), how about boilers? So dangerous that they have four safeties just for the water pipe, let alone the other safeties. If I wasn't on a phone I'd show you why, but for now just Google boiler explosion aftermath or something. If you mean a true steam boiler, those aren't too common for new installations, since hot water "boilers" are cheaper, smaller, and safer, but older houses are still mostly steam. My house has a steam boiler that's only two years old.
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Jul 18, 2012 23:53
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Invisble Manuel posted:I always wanted one of these: On that note:  It didn't work nearly as well as advertised but with Home Alone 2 pretty much being a feature-length commercial for the TalkBoy who didn't want one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoz0vbm3Vss H I K I D S W E R E H O M E E A R L Y
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Jul 19, 2012 00:57
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Invisble Manuel posted:I always wanted one of these: I've seen these go for hundreds on ebay.
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Jul 19, 2012 01:23
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Farbtoner posted:On that note: I generally used mine as a tiny boombox. I always felt like that was the epitome of products that were a whole lot less cool than advertised.
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Jul 19, 2012 01:35
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RyokoTK posted:It makes me wonder why. I mean, by 2012 standards, the technology can't be either expensive or complicated. Yet, the drat thing is huge and clunky and still costs a hundred bucks? Nobody has made a competitor to the TI-83 to undercut them? Casio makes a kind of competing calculator but I think it's more of TI's having been around for so long that they're the standard. Hell I've never seen a book that gave instructions that weren't for a TI. A few people in my stats class were using casio's for a couple weeks until they just gave up and got TI's because no one knew how to do the functions we needed to do on casio's. I'd love to use my smart phone but I'm at a lovely community college and anyone under the age of 50 with a cellphone out is assumed to be texting. Also the casio's are just as expensive so chalk another one up to american business practices being stupid.
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Jul 19, 2012 02:56
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Farbtoner posted:On that note: Aww man my brother and I had these. Obviously it wasn't as amazing and crisp and loud as in the movie, but we had a ton of fun slowing down fart noises, and recording on slow and then speeding ourselves up in to chipmunk mode. They were also the awesome analog brother to the digital Yak Baks:  SO 90s IT HURTS A few neighbor kids had these before we got our TalkBoys, and we were jealous. Since we had two TalkBoys, we could slow things down over and over, or speed them up again and again. Things became unintelligible after a few loops of that, but hearing your own burps slowed down by a factor of ten is amazing when you're in elementary school. I also remember only having two or three tapes, so we had to be careful not to overwrite stuff that we thought was particularly funny from months ago. Good times.
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Jul 19, 2012 03:10
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There was a Yak-bak-like toy that was shaped like a hockey and had a telescoping megaphone on one end that you could pull out. Anyone remember what it was called?
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Jul 19, 2012 03:29
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kimbo305 posted:There was a Yak-bak-like toy that was shaped like a hockey and had a telescoping megaphone on one end that you could pull out. Anyone remember what it was called? I know what you're talking about. I had one as a kid. It didn't record, it just worked kinda like an electronic megaphone and I think you could alter your voice with it. drat I can't remember what they called it.
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Jul 19, 2012 04:04
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Farbtoner posted:On that note: HEYYY! STOP drooling on me! edit: I recall borrowing a TalkBoy from a friend and playing back a recording of talking after inhaling a helium balloon in slow-mo to see if it sounded normal. It didn't really. olaf2022 has a new favorite as of 06:34 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 06:31
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Farbtoner posted:On that note: Actually, surprisingly enough, the Talkboy originally was a non-working prop made specifically for the movie. When a large flood of letters from children were seen asking for them to make it, it was then sourced to Tiger Electronics. The movie came out in 1992, and the product came out in 1993, shortly after the VHS release.
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Jul 19, 2012 22:48
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 IBM ThinkPad. Slow, unattractive, as reliable as an AK47 and along with cockroaches, game boys and Nokia 3310s, the only thing that will remain after nuclear war.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:07
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VogeGandire posted:
 The ThinkPad on my desk is wondering why you're calling it failed or obsolete.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:14
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Doesn't count if it's Lenovo. The IBM ones are pretty drat obsolete now. Though I bet they'll STILL work.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:15
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I'm not sure about how they're doing under Lenovo at the moment but Thinkpads have always been not only hugely successful with both businesses and consumers but they pretty much always featured the cutting edge of what you could cram in a notebook shell. They were never failed not obsolete.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:19
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amishbuttermaster posted:I'm not sure about how they're doing under Lenovo at the moment but Thinkpads have always been not only hugely successful with both businesses and consumers but they pretty much always featured the cutting edge of what you could cram in a notebook shell. They were never failed not obsolete. If you want a genuine obsolete-but-awesome Thinkpad, there's always the 701 series. IBM wanted to build a very small portable computer, but ran into the same problem netbook users had more than a decade later: a small computer means a tiny, cramped keyboard that's really uncomfortable to use. The solution? The "butterfly keyboard." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=478hsrVjVQk These days, widescreen LCDs, the space requirements for a touchpad, and cost-cutting mean we'll probably never see that mechanism in a new computer again. But, it was incredible in its own time, and it's still pretty awesome to see.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:35
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Space Gopher posted:These days, widescreen LCDs, the space requirements for a touchpad, and cost-cutting mean we'll probably never see that mechanism in a new computer again. But, it was incredible in its own time, and it's still pretty awesome to see.  .I really don't like touchpads, especially when set to allow you to tap to click.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:43
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:That'd actually pretty rad for some art collage project or something. Sadie Benning became a pretty important experimental filmmaker at the age of 16 using one of those and for a long time after that in the '90s they were pretty expensive because of that. Me and Rubyfruit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqG3GRjkPNo
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Jul 19, 2012 23:46
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I wish those had been the more widely adopted notebook pointing devices. I hate touchpads too. I always disable it when I get a new one.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:47
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It's still holding in there on Lenovo's ThinkPads and Dell's Latitudes. A few more models here and there, but at this point it's pretty much a business-PC thing only. Shame. Unless you like USB keyboards, that is.
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Jul 20, 2012 01:05
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I have an old IBM thinkpad X20 thats about ten years old now and still works. Its only just starting to have issues now with running new things.
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Jul 20, 2012 01:22
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Farbtoner posted:On that note: Holy poo poo I remember this commercial.  Thanks for the trip down memory lane!When did this commercial air?
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Jul 20, 2012 03:18
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amishbuttermaster posted:I wish those had been the more widely adopted notebook pointing devices. I hate touchpads too. I always disable it when I get a new one. I never understood the appeal of nipple-mice until my wife's new laptop had one. Now I'm annoyed that I used trackpads for so long.
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Jul 20, 2012 05:31
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They're really accurate but not to a fault. On top of that it's placed in such a spot that you don't have to take your hands off of the home position for much of anything really. If it's setup like IBM did it's pretty much an efficiency machine.
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Jul 20, 2012 05:37
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mystes posted:Incidentally, if pointing sticks are dead then I guess they are on my list of obsolete/failed technology that I like Like every rational human being i loving abhor lovely trackpads and edge scrolling, but computers don't really come with bad trackpads anymore (unless you buy the $400 acer walmart special) that are okay and have multitouch. And mac trackpads are probably the best imput method that has been invented
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Jul 20, 2012 09:18
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Invisble Manuel posted:I always wanted one of these: I have one that I got recently and had modded. They go for hundreds on eBay because they have a look to them that is incredibly difficult to duplicate with post processing effects. There are a few mods people do to them, from increasing the dynamic range of the video, to adding RCA output jacks for video/audio so it can be used with an external media recorder. They are cool little cameras, but nearly useless indoors unless you floodlight everything.
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Jul 20, 2012 13:18
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you know what we don't hear about nowdays, with these kids with their ssd and blue rays? Holograms. Especially the wacky turn of the century attempts to use them for storage. Like, for example, storing stuff on sellotape.quote:The tape always remains as a roll, he added, a standard 10-metre section providing enough storage for 10 gigabytes of data, twice the hard-drive capacity of most conventional computers Kerbtree has a new favorite as of 14:59 on Jul 20, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 14:01
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I had an electronic personal organizer at school back in 1998, really basic and used for noting homework, phone numbers and exam schedules. It had a very low character limit so it sucked for crib notes. There was a bit of a fad for the device at the time, I think mine cost $15. I know it exists somewhere so it'd be amusing to pop in some new batteries and remind myself what my 15 year old self was doing - if the memory hasn't died. My first MP3 player in 2002 was this.  It was called the DAP-CD0001 - it didn't have any brand name like NOMAD (which I'd coveted with envy at the time). Being the cousin of the Nomad it didn't come with built in storage, you had to burn your MP3s onto a CD. Other than that weird quirk it served pretty well and preloaded your tracks into a buffer to prevent skipping. I remember almost exclusively wearing slightly larger vests or overcoats just to have somewhere to carry the thing. Plus I always loved this for an early tech attempt that didn't go as planned. 
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Jul 20, 2012 14:32
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:Between VHS and DVD there was Video-CD. The funny thing was that compression artefacts and low resolution made for a worse picture than a good VHS tape. Few players exist. These are extremely common in West Africa, and probably in other less developed parts of the world that can't afford DVD-players. Picture quality is indeed horrible and broken cd's are much more common than with dvds
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Jul 20, 2012 14:36
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torjus posted:An earlier Zen was the Zen Touch. I had (and still have it, though it's not in active duty) the 20GB variant. I have my one of these too, and it is indestructible. Battery is getting a bit weak, but I heard they are pretty simple to replace. Mine accompanies me on business trips because I can chuck it into a soft luggage bag that will be kicked around by baggage handlers and squashed under other bags. I even have the crappy remote/microphone/radio tuner thing for it somewhere. The touch strip was so annoying to use until I realised that holding your finger at the top or bottom makes it scroll really quickly through whatever list you're going through. I was so proud when Apple had to pay Creative 100 million dollars for infringing on their highly dubious software patent.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:01
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Mister Snips posted:Like every rational human being i loving abhor lovely trackpads and edge scrolling, but computers don't really come with bad trackpads anymore (unless you buy the $400 acer walmart special) that are okay and have multitouch. I would cry with happiness for a Thinkpad sporting a glass trackpad like the Macs do. I own a MBP personally, and use a X220 at work, and my biggest beef with the X220 is the lovely trackpad.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:13
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How's support for the magic trackpad on non-osx OSes? I'd say give that a try. For content: The HP Jornada 720 (Or 'Handheld PCs' in general)  I wanted one so bad when I was in middle school. I would always go play with them in Best Buy and dream about one day having the money to afford such a small computer. Years later I got my first job and bought one off ebay for ~$200. This is still pre-smartphone proliferation, btw. I installed doom, but the screen ghosting made it unplayable, so I used it as the most awkward mp3 player ever. Also, if you let the battery die, it would resort to its' backup battery (a CR2032) to keep its' memory. Leave it dead for too long and you'd have a completely factory resetted device and a bunch of warnings about your dead backup battery. It's still sitting in my room. quote:The Jornada 720 was released in 2000. It featured 32 MB of RAM, a Compact Flash slot, a PC card slot, a Smart card slot, 56K Modem, 640x240 16-bit display, a 206 MHz StrongARM CPU, and has 9 hours of battery life[2]. It ran under the Windows CE 3.0 based HPC2000. The Jornada 728, released later, was identical except for the doubling of RAM to 64 MB and 14 hours of battery.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:25
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Zombie Rasputin posted:How's support for the magic trackpad on non-osx OSes? I'd say give that a try. Haha, gently caress yeah dude! I had something similar from my uncle, a Cassiopeia A-11. 44MHz Hitachi SH-3, Windows CE 1.0. I felt like the coolest kid ever, I had a motherfucking Pocket PC. I mostly played missile command on it with a stylus.
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Jul 20, 2012 16:39
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^^^ Oh, I had/have a PocketPC too, but one of the slate/touchscreen only ones, an Asus A600. It was pretty cool and I found it genuinely useful tool for keeping track of poo poo and playing games (Pocket UFO!). movax posted:I would cry with happiness for a Thinkpad sporting a glass trackpad like the Macs do. I own a MBP personally, and use a X220 at work, and my biggest beef with the X220 is the lovely trackpad. That's because you have the wrong X-series Thinkpad.  See? No lovely trackpad problems
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Jul 20, 2012 17:22
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kith_groupie posted:
I still have one of these. It still has music on it. Every so often I plug it in and get all nostalgic. The ability to make playlists on the fly with it was awesome and I still haven't found a player that lets me do it in the way that my brain got wired. I also had one of those Diamond Rio MP3 players, too. BLEEDING EDGE.
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Jul 20, 2012 17:28
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I had this: my senior year in high school, and beginning college. It was great, because teacher's let me use it like a calculator, but because it was programmable in BASIC, you could have comments for things like stat formulas, etc. I wrote a program to solve basic linear algebra matrices. The printer had 4 colored tiny ballpoint pens, and it would 'write' whatever it was you were printing. I may even still have it somewhere...
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Jul 20, 2012 19:01
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Invisble Manuel posted:I had this: If it ain't Reverse Polish it ain't poo poo.
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Jul 20, 2012 19:06
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VogeGandire posted:
The IBM ThinkPad is perhaps the best PC I ever purchased I bought a ThinkPad 360P in 1996 used from Computer Shopper. Had a color monitor VGA class, 486SX processor 8mb ram (Not standard) and 320mb HDD with floppy and docking ports also 2 PCMCIA slots in it. Came with IBM DOS version 3.2 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. I later added a modem into the unit a 33.6 PCMCIA modem. Also the 360P is a pen tablet model uses a massive digitizer pen and has a special software to go with it. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:360P After all this time it still runs to this very day. The only problem with the system are the batteries they are quite stone dead but the rest of the system works without a problem. I even found Lenovo has the digitizer pens for sale still. I don't care if the PC is old enough to drive a car or vote ANY PC that lasts this long is astonishing. IBM built them well and I salute them.
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Jul 20, 2012 19:19
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DrBouvenstein posted:This long and no one has posted Laserdiscs? I amassed a bit of a LaserDisc collection, starting pretty much the year DVD came out (of course). LaserDisc's lack of popularity did give it a few unusual advantages that strangely persist to this day. Criterion got to handle quite a few releases of relatively major Hollywood films; some of these have commentary tracks that Criterion owns the rights to, and aren't on any existing DVD versions. They also weren't shy about extras/commentary that was critical of the motion picture studio. You also have the odd title that got tied in a weird legal snafu preventing a proper DVD release; the prize of my collection falling into this category is a Criterion Laserdisc set for Akira, which has the ORIGINAL English dub (this exists on a British DVD, but in poo poo transferred-from-VHS quality). It also took a while for DVD to really pick up enough momentum to properly replace DVD releases in terms of quality. Quite a few early DVD releases had non-anamorphic video and a poorly-compressed Dolby Surround 2.0 track, which would look considerably better on a non-digitally-compressed laserdisc with a PCM stereo track, disc flipping aside. And it took a while for DVDs to have special edition cuts in a few cases, like with Aliens (the special edition was only on like the 3rd or 4th version of the DVD, I think). LDs were popular for a stupidly long time with Asian populations for Karaoke, as well. They were, of course, ultimately crushed by the DVD juggernaut; quality-wise, the best LDs were only marginally better than badly-made DVDs, and DVDs could offer way better options for audio quality and branching paths (plus, again, no flipping). I think the cheapest LD players ever got new were about $400, and movies were $30 bare minimum. And worse than the size was the fact that they were heavy as gently caress; a single disc weighed something like 1 pound, and some movies could be on 4-5 discs (like Aliens, Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments).
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Jul 20, 2012 19:49
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kith_groupie posted:
I also had the great fortune of owning one of these; I think it's still in a box somewhere. Probably still works, if I could find it. The one thing I remember most about it and pretty much all Creative products was that while the gear was good quality, the software support was absolute rear end. Finding the correct drivers and software from their website was difficult enough; if you actually got the right ones and the download worked, you were in for 3-6 reboots under WinXP just to get the damnable thing to be recognized. God help you if you accidentally plugged it into USB before going through all that, though. I think someone else mentioned being able to get it running under Linux; IIRC it was as simple as "download this .c file, run make, insmod the driver, plug in to USB". Good times.
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Jul 20, 2012 20:00
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This is the best talkboy commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9wgzUSsE_Y leidend posted:
This poo poo annoys me to no end! All the tape players in most cars I've driven either reject these things for no reason or the heads don't line up correctly and you get audio in the left OR right channel. Why can't they put aux inputs on all drat car stereos?!! Wrath of Mordark has a new favorite as of 20:46 on Jul 20, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 20:40
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