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I Brake For MILFs
Jan 9, 2007

:syoon:


Checks are extremely common in casinos. It's the only way you can get money out of your account for free. I've seen a cage cashier do 30+ on a single night.

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Acute Grill
Dec 9, 2011

Chomp

lordblytzkrieg posted:

Checks are extremely common in casinos. It's the only way you can get money out of your account for free. I've seen a cage cashier do 30+ on a single night.

Please stop.

wipeout posted:

Do you guys think we can get another 10 pages out of bank chat? That would be so awesome. :suspense:

I present the Sinclair C5:


Early electric vehicle, I saw one once - I think it had broken down.

Is that a Power Wheels for adults? I think they could bring this back and make a killing off internet-raised manchildren. Just gotta market it right.

Acute Grill has a new favorite as of 22:57 on Oct 3, 2012

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
In the old days if you didn't have room on the system board to add RAM you could get a memory expansion card. This particular beast packs a whopping 4 MEGABYTES so those Quattro spreadsheets should fly!



I found a couple of these in storage at my last job, about three years ago.


I am saddened that my elite mouse cleaning skills have become worthless. I used to enjoy coming across a mouse that felt like it was rolling over cobblestones and clean it really well.

Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 23:05 on Oct 3, 2012

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Dick Trauma posted:

I am saddened that my elite mouse cleaning skills have become worthless. I used to enjoy coming across a mouse that felt like it was rolling over cobblestones and clean it really well.



quote:

MEMO

Re: Replacement of Mouse Balls.

If a mouse fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a ball replacement. Mouse balls are now available as FRU (Field Replacement Units). Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by properly trained personnel.

Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ depending upon the manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop off method. Domestic balls are replaced by using the twist off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.

It is recommended that each person have a pair of spare balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction. Any customer missing his balls should contact the local personnel in charge of removing and replacing these necessary items.

Please keep in mind that a customer without properly working balls is an unhappy customer.

Horace
Apr 17, 2007

Gone Skiin'

Fozaldo posted:

You could take the disc out of the camera mid way through usage due to a clever little window that prevented exposure. This enabled you to take a picture, take out the disc, wind it back one and then take another picture over the last one for some cool double exposure effects. Well I thought they cool, Boots thought I was a retard and put stickers on the pictures saying so.

Ah, Boots photo stickers. I scanned all my family's photos a couple of years ago and I think I got the full set, including the rare 'why have you given us wet film?' one.


Mewsbrook Park, Littlehampton by Monty Horace, on Flickr


Torn Sprockets by Monty Horace, on Flickr


wipeout posted:

Do you guys think we can get another 10 pages out of bank chat? That would be so awesome. :suspense:

I present the Sinclair C5:


Early electric vehicle, I saw one once - I think it had broken down.
I spotted one of these on the road near my house recently. I say on the road, the driver was dismantling it at some traffic lights and had tools and bits scattered all over the pavement.

Sargs
Aug 15, 2001

Poyekhali!

Kalos posted:

Is that a Power Wheels for adults? I think they could bring this back and make a killing off internet-raised manchildren. Just gotta market it right.

Nah, you're thinking of the Tesla Roadster :v:

The C5 was a recumbent pedal trike with an electric assist. I got run over (well, run under, technically) by one at a computer show in '85. Nothing was hurt except my pride.

In the early nineties, my uncle picked one up second-hand- he'd gone to buy some old car parts off some guy, saw the C5 in the back of his garage and asked how much he wanted for it. End result: Free C5.

I spent a merry Saturday afternoon ragging it around the car park of the family business and can report the following:

Pros: Surprisingly easy to make the back-end skid out in a hard turn, fun too. Cool LED strip indicators to show the battery charge.
Cons: The "Assist" part of the Electric Assist means it needs to be assisted by pedalling, except when going downhill or on very flat flat. You look like a dick and other road users will kill you without knowing it until they find you stuck in their grille two days later.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

wipeout posted:

Do you guys think we can get another 10 pages out of bank chat? That would be so awesome. :suspense:

I present the Sinclair C5:


Early electric vehicle, I saw one once - I think it had broken down.

Ooh yeah, that reminds me of the Ellert, an early Danish-invented electric vehicle. Slow, poor build quality (at least that was my impression upon seeing it in person), low range, looked comical, and on three wheels like a Reliant Robin. It was the butt of many jokes for a while. Sometimes you'd see them parked in the city, with a long extension cord going from it, across the pavement and up to an apartment window on the 3rd floor.

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

Dick Trauma posted:

I am saddened that my elite mouse cleaning skills have become worthless. I used to enjoy coming across a mouse that felt like it was rolling over cobblestones and clean it really well.

Oh man that was the most stupidly satisfying thing in the world, getting all the gunk from the rollers out and then having it glide smooth as silk. I got so many dumb nerdgasms from doing that to poorly maintained mice I'd find at school or friends' houses :downs:

HP Artsandcrafts
Oct 3, 2012

0toShifty posted:

The light switches are all 4-way pushbutton switches. They let you do strange things like turn on the hall lights from 3 different floors.



My house also has steam radiators. It was converted from coal to heating oil at some point. The insulation in the walls is horsehair. The foundation is field rock, about 20 inches thick, so my window sills in the basement and the first floor are really deep. The glass panes in the windows are really wavy - they've never been replaced. 2x4s in the walls are actually 2" by 4". The plaster on the walls is wood-lath backed, and it weighs a TON.

Is there any reason why they stopped using push button switches other than mechanical complexity? They're just so satisfying to use. :3:

I live in a house built in the early 1920's but we only have one push button switch left. We do however, still have giant cast iron radiators and a few areas of plaster and lath left. For those of you who have ever ripped out plaster and lath walls you have my deepest of sympathies. There is really nothing to prepare you for the amount of dust and debris you're going to be working through. Doubly so if your home once had coal furnaces. And then all that poo poo has to go somewhere...

Fuzz1111
Mar 17, 2001

Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.

Bonzo posted:

My walkman had auto reverse. And was it me but did the tape not sound right when it was in that mode?
The reverse mechanism meant the heads had to be moved back and forth (as opposed to being fixed in place) this meant that it was more common to have the heads not quite line up properly with the tape, particularly as the mechanism wore-out, and it was pretty common to have one direction better aligned than the other (I had a sharp double cassette stereo where one cassette could record and the other was double direction, the latter was better aligned going backwards than forwards).

Depending on the design it would also be possible to have one side play faster than the other.

Terrible Robot
Jul 2, 2010

FRIED CHICKEN
Slippery Tilde

Dick Trauma posted:

I haven't seen a residential or commercial fusebox in a long time. I'm wondering how common they still are. Everything I've worked with since the 1990s has been circuit breakers.



That looks exactly (as in I'm really starting to believe the picture was taken by him) like the fuse-box in my friends house, a genuine Sears & Roebuck Catalog house from 1947. Bewildered the poo poo out of me the first time I had to dick with it.

Speaking of obsolete, it blows my mind that there used to be a catalog, from a SINGLE company, that you could order literally everything you could ever possibly hope to need from, including a loving house.

Terrible Robot has a new favorite as of 02:59 on Oct 4, 2012

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug

Terrible Robot posted:

That looks exactly (as in I'm really starting to believe the picture was taken by him) like the fuse-box in my friends house, a genuine Sears & Roebuck Catalog house from 1947. Bewildered the poo poo out of me the first time I had to dick with it.

Speaking of obsolete, it blows my mind that there used to be a catalog, from a SINGLE company, that you could order literally everything you could ever possibly hope to need from, including a loving house.

I remember the Sears catalog still around when I was a kid. It wasn't quite as big and random as the old days, but you could still order pizza, shipped in dry ice from Chicago. And just the general idea of the big, thick, exhaustive catalog even for a more focused clothing store or something today is as obsolete as a phone book.

But yeah, the old days, speaking of kit houses:

BoutrosBoutros
Dec 6, 2010
It's cool how catalog shopping was a really big thing for a while, and now we do basically the same exact thing on the internet. poo poo doesn't really change if you think about it.

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

Dick Trauma posted:

In the old days if you didn't have room on the system board to add RAM you could get a memory expansion card. This particular beast packs a whopping 4 MEGABYTES so those Quattro spreadsheets should fly!



I found a couple of these in storage at my last job, about three years ago.

I don't even want to know how much that must have cost.

Bondematt
Jan 26, 2007

Not too stupid
Can't wipe your rear end with the internet :colbert:.


Yet.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Bondematt posted:

Can't wipe your rear end with the internet :colbert:.

But there have been many times that I've wanted to.

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

Bondematt posted:

Can't wipe your rear end with the internet :colbert:.


Yet.

Right now somebody prints out all of another goons posts and uses them as toilet paper.

Glottis
May 29, 2002

No. It's necessary.
Yam Slacker

Dick Trauma posted:

I am saddened that my elite mouse cleaning skills have become worthless. I used to enjoy coming across a mouse that felt like it was rolling over cobblestones and clean it really well.


Optical mice made such a massive difference. I think it was Razer that still made ball mice for a while and tried to act like it somehow was better for gaming, but it was so universally better to have an optical mouse.

Acute Grill
Dec 9, 2011

Chomp

Glottis posted:

Optical mice made such a massive difference. I think it was Razer that still made ball mice for a while and tried to act like it somehow was better for gaming, but it was so universally better to have an optical mouse.

There was a certain finesse with the ball mouse that you had to re-learn for more modern ones, since the ball would keep spinning and move your cursor after you picked up the mouse to reposition it, which didn't happen with the optical ones. Naturally, gamers blamed optical mice for being bad technology rather than retraining their muscle memory.

Then mice came along that were precise enough that you didn't have to worry about ever picking up your mouse anyway.

Landerig
Oct 27, 2008

by Fistgrrl

Dick Trauma posted:

In the old days if you didn't have room on the system board to add RAM you could get a memory expansion card. This particular beast packs a whopping 4 MEGABYTES so those Quattro spreadsheets should fly!




4 MB of RAM... over the ISA bus. I dunno, maybe useful on a 286?

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug

Landerig posted:

4 MB of RAM... over the ISA bus. I dunno, maybe useful on a 286?

Once in 1996 or so I got one of these, ancient even at the time. It was on a Compaq 386DX, which had like 2MB of RAM on its main board. So I stuck it on. Lots slower than regular RAM, but it beat page files if you wanted to put Windows on. And then I put on one of those 386 to 486 upgrade chips to do that and double the clock besides. :black101:

Then I turned around and sold it to some guy I worked with. It was a lovely excuse for a 486, but it would run Windows 3.1 and that put it ahead of his 8086. Which actually had Windows 3.0, operating at 640x200 in 2 colors.

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

Bonzo posted:

If you want to run central air or be able to have the TV on while you run the hairdryer you'll need to upgrade your electrical system. The house I live in now was built in 1920 and just had the electrical updated before I moved in a few years ago.

Since we're now living a few miles and I'm in an apartment, I took my laundry over to grandma's last week. The first thing I was told was I couldn't run the washer and dryer at the same time because it'd break the circuit.

The wiring is old enough that when grandma finally had to replace her console TV because she only picks up over the air channels, I suggested a surge protector. One was purchased, but she can't use it. The outlets are all two-pronged.

She also has this on her back porch:



(Not hers but quite similar.)

I think the original color was white, but the exterior is rusted over. The interior still looks good and still works. I suspect my grandparents bought it in the early 1960s. There are separate fridge and freezer sections, but there aren't separate doors for them.

I haven't been able to track down a picture of another outdated piece of technology that's in her bathroom. There is a heater built into the wall. It's a Westinghouse and I've never known it to be operational.

Pixotic
Jan 14, 2008

He could be in this very room!
He could be
you!
He could be
me!
He could even b:commissar:

wipeout posted:

Do you guys think we can get another 10 pages out of bank chat? That would be so awesome. :suspense:

I present the Sinclair C5:


Early electric vehicle, I saw one once - I think it had broken down.

If you were in london at the time, there's a distinct possibility that was my dad in the broken down c5 :haw: He worked for Sinclair back in the day and was driving one around when it died on him in the middle of... I want to say King's Cross?

My mother loved telling me that story as a kid :allears:

Fozaldo
Apr 18, 2004

Serenity Now. Serenity Now.
:respek::respek::respek::respek::respek:

Fuzz1111 posted:

The reverse mechanism meant the heads had to be moved back and forth (as opposed to being fixed in place) this meant that it was more common to have the heads not quite line up properly with the tape, particularly as the mechanism wore-out, and it was pretty common to have one direction better aligned than the other (I had a sharp double cassette stereo where one cassette could record and the other was double direction, the latter was better aligned going backwards than forwards).

Depending on the design it would also be possible to have one side play faster than the other.

I didn't think the heads of auto reverse units moved at all? They were just two heads in one that covered both sides of the tape. No ?

Benly
Aug 2, 2011

20% of the time, it works every time.
The talk of old electrics reminded me: the house I live in is pretty old, and we had to get the electrics updated when we moved in. Our phone jacks are all old four-prong style, which weirded me out at first.

0toShifty
Aug 21, 2005
0 to Stiffy?

Benly posted:

The talk of old electrics reminded me: the house I live in is pretty old, and we had to get the electrics updated when we moved in. Our phone jacks are all old four-prong style, which weirded me out at first.

Yeah, these are all over my house, abandoned in place. Most of them have been painted so many times that the holes aren't visible.

That probably means that not many people have seen one of these:

axolotl farmer
May 17, 2007

Now I'm going to sing the Perry Mason theme

DNova posted:

Are you throwing that away?????????

Of course not. I just put it back on the shelf where it will sit until the sun blows up or someone else cleans out all the old crap.

It's potentially full of someone's old scientific raw data from the early 90s, or maybe a backup of something.

Benly
Aug 2, 2011

20% of the time, it works every time.

0toShifty posted:

Yeah, these are all over my house, abandoned in place. Most of them have been painted so many times that the holes aren't visible.

That probably means that not many people have seen one of these:



I still use my land line, so I've got a couple of those. I also have one of those which then has a DSL adaptor thingy plugged into it. (You can tell I'm a real technical guy by the terms I use.)

I guess my land-line phone with curly handset cable that keeps getting tangled with other cables also qualifies. I've been thinking of getting a cordless and catching up with the 90s.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

Speaking of obsolete, it blows my mind that there used to be a catalog, from a SINGLE company, that you could order literally everything you could ever possibly hope to need from, including a loving house.
Hahaha... What makes you think they still don't exist?

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Kalos posted:

There was a certain finesse with the ball mouse that you had to re-learn for more modern ones, since the ball would keep spinning and move your cursor after you picked up the mouse to reposition it, which didn't happen with the optical ones. Naturally, gamers blamed optical mice for being bad technology rather than retraining their muscle memory.

I remember that a lot of optical mice would spazz out and move in random directions if you moved them too quickly. My old Razer Diamondback was the first optical mouse I tried that I could fully trust to not gently caress up during a 180 degree snap turn in Doom II.

Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug
Optical mice also didn't work on reflective surfaces, like my awesome shiny circuit board mouse pad.

extremebuff
Jun 20, 2010

Man this thread is depressing as gently caress. The poo poo we've spent money on, especially in the 90s and early 2000s when there was a huge internet/digital tech boom and no one really knew what was going to kick off and what was going to be obsolete in a month.

But the economy was great and both companies and people could afford to make huge gently caress-ups. :unsmith:

Drone_Fragger
May 9, 2007


The university I went to was still being vast numbers of floppy disks in 2012 becuase a lot of the machines for probing surface finishes and testing dimensions were connected straight to a propriety PC, and the only way to get raw data off it to the outside world was a floppy disk drive.

Terrible Robot
Jul 2, 2010

FRIED CHICKEN
Slippery Tilde

MadScientistWorking posted:

Hahaha... What makes you think they still don't exist?

If you can find me a paper catalog that I can order a house, food, guns, furniture, whatever, I will buy the catalog in an instant.

edit: as an aside, my post last night got me researching Sears Modern Homes, and it turns out my friends house is probably not one, despite what the realtor said.

Terrible Robot has a new favorite as of 17:38 on Oct 4, 2012

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!
There used to be catalog stores like Service Merchandise. It was a Costco type building but all you could see was a limited show room the floor. In the store where stalls where you could browse the catalog for something you needed and then gave the clerk the catalog number. You'd drive around to the back and pick it up or they would bring it to the counter for you.

davestones
May 7, 2009

Terrible Robot posted:

If you can find me a paper catalog that I can order a house, food, guns, furniture, whatever, I will buy the catalog in an instant.

edit: as an aside, my post last night got me researching Sears Modern Homes, and it turns out my friends house is probably not one, despite what the realtor said.

In the UK you can't quite buy a house from it, but https://www.argos.co.uk sells pretty much everything else you need to furnish a home. I'm sure IKEA used to sell flat-pack homes for a short period too, and they do a catalogue. Does that count?

Bonzo posted:

There used to be catalog stores like Service Merchandise. It was a Costco type building but all you could see was a limited show room the floor. In the store where stalls where you could browse the catalog for something you needed and then gave the clerk the catalog number. You'd drive around to the back and pick it up or they would bring it to the counter for you.

Yep, this is exactly Argos in the UK. You fill out a code, give it to a cashier and then queue up for 5 minutes for some spotty teen to hurl it down a conveyor belt/chute to the counter.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

If you can find me a paper catalog that I can order a house, food, guns, furniture, whatever, I will buy the catalog in an instant.

As I said earlier insanely bizarre paper catalogs that have an eclectic bunch of goods are not uncommon. Mcmaster Carr, Grainger (Which you probably can't even do business with last I knew), and MSC Direct are three industrial supply companies who are famous for having rather insane paper catalogs.
EDIT:
Hahaha... Mcmaster Carr's catalog has existed for 118 years. I didn't actually think it was that old.

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 18:36 on Oct 4, 2012

Jibo
May 22, 2007

Bear Witness
College Slice

davestones posted:

Yep, this is exactly Argos in the UK. You fill out a code, give it to a cashier and then queue up for 5 minutes for some spotty teen to hurl it down a conveyor belt/chute to the counter.

Apparently you could get beer like this in Canada however long ago (and possibly now, I have no idea).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWzdOKCb-Gw

Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug
That's how the Beer Store works, but the provincial LCBO is a normal store.

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Terrible Robot
Jul 2, 2010

FRIED CHICKEN
Slippery Tilde

MadScientistWorking posted:

As I said earlier insanely bizarre paper catalogs that have an eclectic bunch of goods are not uncommon. Mcmaster Carr, Grainger (Which you probably can't even do business with last I knew), and MSC Direct are three industrial supply companies who are famous for having rather insane paper catalogs.
EDIT:
Hahaha... Mcmaster Carr's catalog has existed for 118 years. I didn't actually think it was that old.

There are certainly plenty of companies that have catalogs with a staggering amount of poo poo to buy, but I've yet to find one that is as widely varied as the old Sears, Roebuck ones.

davestones posted:

In the UK you can't quite buy a house from it, but https://www.argos.co.uk sells pretty much everything else you need to furnish a home. I'm sure IKEA used to sell flat-pack homes for a short period too, and they do a catalogue. Does that count?

I'm not sure if the IKEA comment was a joke or not, but they are in fact doing just that

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