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Perry Normal posted:Re: Gumpei Yokoi, it always seemed like a shame to me that the disgrace of the Virtual Boy was caused by his going against his own basic design philosophy. He was all about using dependable, simple and cheap technology to it's fullest purpose (i.e. using calculator style LCD displays for the Game and Watch series, using very simple graphics tech for the Gameboy to keep battery life long and costs low, etc). Virtual Boy was new, untested technology and it blew up in his face. Oh poo poo! I had one of these! I watched the hell out of the Pink Panther cartoons we had.
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Sep 10, 2012 00:54
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Perry Normal posted:For content, The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer And, of course, it's been hacked. http://www.retrothing.com/2008/07/modding-a-fishe.html
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Sep 10, 2012 01:54
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Space Gopher posted:Water cooled computers are, outside of a few specialized applications, an excellent subject for this thread - they're obsolete and failed technology suited mostly for increasing the owner's e-peen. W/C is a neat way to quieten down noisy hungry graphics cards. Its good if you want to build a fast tiny machine and can't fit a decent tower cooler (like Mini ITX). Specialised I guess (I wanted something very small for my desk) My favourite old technology is the Valve, not quite obselete though. How about the dot matrix printer?
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Sep 13, 2012 04:18
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wipeout posted:W/C is a neat way to quieten down noisy hungry graphics cards. Levers are where it's at mang.
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Sep 13, 2012 05:53
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Yeah the Stylophone had a major resurgence in the mid-2000's with nerds and nerd music: Holy poo poo, that was phoned in as gently caress. TMBG really are terrible without the brass section.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:46
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Perry Normal posted:Re: Gumpei Yokoi, it always seemed like a shame to me that the disgrace of the Virtual Boy was caused by his going against his own basic design philosophy. He was all about using dependable, simple and cheap technology to it's fullest purpose (i.e. using calculator style LCD displays for the Game and Watch series, using very simple graphics tech for the Gameboy to keep battery life long and costs low, etc). Virtual Boy was new, untested technology and it blew up in his face. That reminds me of this thing my mother had lying around from when she was young. It was this brown, handheld "binocular" of sorts, about the size of a small virtual boy you could say. You put these white paper discs (very thin, about 10cm in diameter) in a slot on top, and they had a series of themed, tiny, transparent photos around the edge. For example, one would be themed Caribbean, and there were pictures of landmarks, local people, beaches, ports, etc. You pushed down on a lever to advance to the next picture. The slide pictures embedded in the disc were maybe 1x1cm, but when you viewed them through the two eye-holes (like a binocular), they of course appeared as big as your vision. Kinda neat in the old days. I think it was called something with "scope" or "vision" in the name, but I can't remember now.
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Sep 14, 2012 12:36
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Pilsner posted:That reminds me of this thing my mother had lying around from when she was young. It was this brown, handheld "binocular" of sorts, about the size of a small virtual boy you could say. You put these white paper discs (very thin, about 10cm in diameter) in a slot on top, and they had a series of themed, tiny, transparent photos around the edge. For example, one would be themed Caribbean, and there were pictures of landmarks, local people, beaches, ports, etc. You pushed down on a lever to advance to the next picture. The slide pictures embedded in the disc were maybe 1x1cm, but when you viewed them through the two eye-holes (like a binocular), they of course appeared as big as your vision. Kinda neat in the old days. I think it was called something with "scope" or "vision" in the name, but I can't remember now. Are you talking about Viewmasters?  You talking about them being a toy from your mother's childhood has made me feel depressingly old. Elim Garak has a new favorite as of 12:48 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 12:45
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I remember those. I had a couple as a kid myself, but that was in the late 80s. I got my parents collections of the discs, and got newer ones myself. They were great. I still have them in a box somewhere.
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Sep 14, 2012 13:09
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I'm only 24 and can remember Viewmasters... because they still make them. My local Walmart has a selection of Disney-themed reels for them, lots of Pixar stuff. I never understood what was so great about them as a kid because the 3D effect doesn't work for me at all. When I look through a Viewmaster or binoculars I just see two separate side-by-side images. 
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Sep 14, 2012 13:23
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I remember when I was little a He-Man Viewmaster disc that got a cool effect with some kind of magic aura by coloring it white for one eye and yellow for the other. Little me spent a long time trying to figure out how they got it to look all crazy like that.
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Sep 14, 2012 13:24
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Viewmasters have been around since the 60s but yeah....I think I need to take a geritol.
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Sep 14, 2012 15:19
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Hell, as late as the mid-90s I remember a local chain of restaurants (East Side Mario's, for the Canadians) using Viewmasters with custom-made cards to show you nicely photographed 3D images of all the stuff on their menu. A lot of my classmates had them when I was in elementary school, and that was less than twenty years ago...
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Sep 14, 2012 18:29
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Sagebrush posted:Hell, as late as the mid-90s I remember a local chain of restaurants (East Side Mario's, for the Canadians) using Viewmasters with custom-made cards to show you nicely photographed 3D images of all the stuff on their menu. A lot of my classmates had them when I was in elementary school, and that was less than twenty years ago... That's genius.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:42
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Elim Garak posted:Are you talking about Viewmasters? Not only can you still get Viewmasters but this place http://www.studio3d.com/pages/viewmaster.htm will make custom slides for you. I was looking into offering them to couples when I was regularly shooting weddings.
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Sep 15, 2012 11:33
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Viewmasters are timeless. World War 3 will come and go and there will be Viewmasters. I am lucky enough to own a Graphoscope that was my Grandma's.  Although I think it's a cheaper copy. Accidentally I also inherited an early model Viewmaster from my old man and bought one of those FINEPIX W3 stereo cameras that Fuji failed to sell (alleged to be the worst camera ever made in one review). So this Graphoscope kick started a collection of 3D viewers that recently included a Nintendo 3DS. Stereoscopic toys are fun but they seem to be more often failures than not. Wish I had a place to set them all up - call it the Tunnel of Dud Stereo.
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Sep 15, 2012 13:59
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Elim Garak posted:Are you talking about Viewmasters? Yes, that was the one!  How crazy they're still in production today. I wonder if my mom took it home with her from the USA or something.
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Sep 15, 2012 14:45
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When my grandfather passed away he left to me his TRS-80 CoCo 2, with two game carts: Chess Master 2000 and ATOM. But no floppy drive or tape recorder, I just grabbed a regular old tape recorder from a second hand store and plugged that in. That TRS-80 however was obsolete technology in that in all the old rear end magazines it came with something that was advertising the CoCo 3. Which included such revolutionary features as 16 colours displayed on screen at once compared to the paltry 8 in my CoCo 2, higher resolution graphics modes and.. mother loving text displayed in graphics mode. (Text mode and graphics mode were separate things back then) The TRS-80 also came with his old TV, which was a bigass wood paneled unit with a wired remote control! Also, Teddy Ruxpin! I had one as a kid, and also destroyed it when the batteries ran low causing the tape to run at gradually slower and slower speeds, which sounded demonic. Black Pants has a new favorite as of 15:19 on Sep 15, 2012 |
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Sep 15, 2012 14:53
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Black Pants posted:When my grandfather passed away he left to me his TRS-80 CoCo 2, with two game carts: Chess Master 2000 and ATOM. But no floppy drive or tape recorder, I just grabbed a regular old tape recorder from a second hand store and plugged that in. That TRS-80 however was obsolete technology in that in all the old rear end magazines it came with something that was advertising the CoCo 3. Which included such revolutionary features as 16 colours displayed on screen at once compared to the paltry 8 in my CoCo 2, higher resolution graphics modes and.. mother loving text displayed in graphics mode. (Text mode and graphics mode were separate things back then) I still have mine. And grubby, his retarded giant caterpillar friend. Wire them up together and have a jam session!
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Sep 15, 2012 18:14
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I don't know if these were mentioned, but I was at the thrift store the other day and these popped into my head after seeing a couple: telephone & alarm clock radios in one. Every household it seemed in the 80s and 90s had one of these in the master bedroom. They were designed to save space on nightstands and the like since telephones took up valuable real estate on a small nightstand, and by combining two things into one, you now had space for a glass of water, your glasses, gently caress toys, dentures, and what have you. The rise of cellphones and the shrinkage of landline owners pretty much made these things obsolete. Also, how about console TVs and stereos that were made to look like, and blend in as pieces of living room furniture?  Man, that's swanky.
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Sep 15, 2012 19:33
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The best part of the console tv was it made a nice stand for the new tv.
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Sep 15, 2012 20:15
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You Are A Elf posted:Also, how about console TVs and stereos that were made to look like, and blend in as pieces of living room furniture? Blend in in a Soviet-era gently caress dungeon, perhaps.
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Sep 15, 2012 20:22
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Armyman25 posted:The best part of the console tv was it made a nice stand for the new tv. My father tells me this was true back as far as when he was a kid in the 1950s. Their first TV was a very nice looking console model that didn't last very long before they replaced it with a new one on top. The old one actually had a good enough cabinet that eventually they ripped out the electronics and just put a couple of shelves in there.
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Sep 15, 2012 20:23
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Armyman25 posted:The best part of the console tv was it made a nice stand for the new tv. Jeff Foxworthy posted:You might be a redneck if you have a working TV sitting on top of a non-working TV. I must be a redneck because I did this once.
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Sep 15, 2012 20:24
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El Estrago Bonito posted:You wanna talk old computers? I learned DOS on two old Toshiba Packet Sniffers. Those things retailed new for a huge amount of money and had that odd Asian card slot RAM. Yeah, thats right, RAM in what was basically a PC Express slot.  
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Sep 15, 2012 21:16
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You Are A Elf posted:
Yeah. Then twenty years later you decide to replace it with a more modern TV only to realize that heavy son of a bitch isn't leaving your living room without a fight. Could be worse though. It could be a Curtis Mathes monster:  Once that behemoth ends up in your living room, it's not leaving for a very long time. Landerig has a new favorite as of 21:31 on Sep 15, 2012 |
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Sep 15, 2012 21:27
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I figured this would be a good thread to post a nostalgic question (though I realize I'm probably in the older 1/3 of goons). As a kid in the late 70s/early 80s my mom was big on not plugging in 'extra' phones. She would tell me that the phone company ran tests on people's lines occasionally to see how many phones were on the line. Evidently they would charge extra for additional equipment (even if you purchased rather than leased). Keep in mind this was before deregulation, and I think after the period where you had to lease all phone equipment. Growing up we had 3 phone jacks in the house -- one in the kitchen, one in the master bedroom, and one in the hallway. The one in the hallway and kitchen had a 25ft cord that was constantly tangled from frequent trips to the pantry or the hall closet for those 'private' conversations.
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Sep 15, 2012 22:57
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Goober Peas posted:As a kid in the late 70s/early 80s my mom was big on not plugging in 'extra' phones. She would tell me that the phone company ran tests on people's lines occasionally to see how many phones were on the line. Evidently they would charge extra for additional equipment (even if you purchased rather than leased). Keep in mind this was before deregulation, and I think after the period where you had to lease all phone equipment. Kind-of. There's this thing called REN, which is to do with the electrical load placed on the phoneline by the number of phones attached. Basically, the bigger it is, the more you start to run into problems with ADSL, line quality etc. You could, in theory work out the number of attached phones by watching line voltage, if they were dead-standard phones, all of the same model. Realistically, as long as you don't have so much attached that the exchange shits itself, nobody will care. Kerbtree has a new favorite as of 23:17 on Sep 15, 2012 |
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Sep 15, 2012 23:13
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Goober Peas posted:I figured this would be a good thread to post a nostalgic question (though I realize I'm probably in the older 1/3 of goons). So, what's your question?
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Sep 15, 2012 23:13
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Goober Peas posted:I figured this would be a good thread to post a nostalgic question (though I realize I'm probably in the older 1/3 of goons). Unless all of those jacks were wired to separate physical phone lines (like, separate lines that went all the way to the phone company, which would likely have separate numbers), or analog home phone technology was simplified by leaps and bounds since the 80's (it hasn't, to my knowledge) I can't really think of a way the phone company would even be able to tell if you had multiple phones. All the jacks in your house go to a single box outside where they are all wired together and connected to the main line that comes into your house. I guess they could measure resistance or inductance or something on the line while you used it, more phones would take more energy to ring and provide more resistance etc, but that would be pretty rough unless they knew the specifics about every single phone in your house. Of course I'm not an expert, just some rear end in a top hat who knows about his home phone system and basic electronics principles. Does anyone else know if that's even possible?
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Sep 15, 2012 23:18
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This thread has been awesome! So much stuff I had never heard of, party because I'm not particularly old (22), but also because I didn't really know anyone rich growing up. Not many people I know had gadgets like PDAs or portable computers. My dad had a ZX Spectrum, but he's a computer programmer. Someone earlier mentioned alarm clocks, and I still use a mechanical bell one because I find my phone on full volume won't wake me up violently enough in winter. But does anyone still use a bedside tea maker? My parents had one like this:  and used it for years. It has a compartment up top that you put tea and water and milk (maybe? That sounds gross but I swear it did) in and then in the morning when you want a cup of tea before you get out of bed it will make one for you.  Yes, I'm English. They still make them though, the Teasmade brand is still going, and Lakeland sell one for lonely singletons that only makes 1 cup. I don't know anyone with one though.
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Sep 15, 2012 23:36
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madlilnerd posted:But does anyone still use a bedside tea maker? My parents had one like this: Make a version that will do coffee and that'd be a smash hit over here in the USA.
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Sep 15, 2012 23:43
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I actually have one of those! It makes a little pot of tea rather than individual cups, though. It's great for making loose tea when I might want more than one cup of it.
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Sep 15, 2012 23:49
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Landerig posted:Make a version that will do coffee and that'd be a smash hit over here in the USA. But coffee makers have had built-in timers for at least 20 years. Just put it on your side table and keep an empty mug in the drawer.
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Sep 15, 2012 23:50
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Landerig posted:Make a version that will do coffee and that'd be a smash hit over here in the USA. It's just a small coffee maker. Apparently they sell them as tea makers in the UK (big surprise there). The Philips I have looks exactly the same, even the cups that came with it. So you can make coffee with it and it's not a big hit in the USA so you're a liar! Found a picture of the model I have - apparently it's not obsolete, though, since Philips is still selling the Duo, albeit in a more modern guise. 
3D Megadoodoo has a new favorite as of 23:58 on Sep 15, 2012 |
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Sep 15, 2012 23:52
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cobalt impurity posted:But coffee makers have had built-in timers for at least 20 years. Just put it on your side table and keep an empty mug in the drawer. I'm sure you can get a single cup coffee maker that would do this. It seems like a lot of the cheaper drip coffee machine have this feature.
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Sep 15, 2012 23:53
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Landerig posted:Make a version that will do coffee and that'd be a smash hit over here in the USA. I can't tell if the one in the picture has a timer or you just hit a button to start it, but there are plenty of single-serve coffee makers available in the US - the cheaper ones use tea bag-like coffee pouches called "pods", but you can also (with some clever folding) fill a regular coffee filter with the grounds of your choice (or just stick a tea bag in it) and press the button when you wake up to have hot coffee in about 2 minutes.
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Sep 16, 2012 00:04
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Of course you can just load up a full-size coffee maker with only one (or two) cups of water and a small amount of coffee/tea and it will do exactly the same thing in exactly the same time. And it's not that much bigger. So while it may not be obsolete, it should be.
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Sep 16, 2012 00:12
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thedouche posted:I'm sure you can get a single cup coffee maker that would do this. It seems like a lot of the cheaper drip coffee machine have this feature. Nearly every hotel I've been to in the last 5 years have these.
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Sep 16, 2012 00:27
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You Are A Elf posted:I don't know if these were mentioned, but I was at the thrift store the other day and these popped into my head after seeing a couple: telephone & alarm clock radios in one. I remember both of these growing up, and I remember a lot of peoples homes with the console TV turned TV stand. I did have one friend that removed the electronics and screen from the cabinet and turned into a fish tank/tv stand. He also placed two tower speakers on top to surround the TV and the bass speaker for his makeshift surround sound in the left side of the cabinet. Not really sure if those fish were comfortable ever.
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Sep 16, 2012 01:15
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Whoops. I knew about the single serve coffee makers, but didn't think one of those would be small enough to fit on a bedside stand.
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Sep 16, 2012 02:37
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