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On MHz displays: I stripped one out of an old machine once and discovered it was entirely set up with jumpers. Turns out you could enable any segment you wanted on it separately too, and it was a 3-character one, although the first one was 1. I ended up making a hole in a 5.25" slot cover on my more modern case, installing it in there and used it as a power LED or HDD LED by hooking it up to the appropriate pins on the motherboard, switching between functions and display from time to time. It looked especially neat as HD activity light.
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Dec 16, 2012 14:54
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Are each of the buttons tilt switches or something? Because I don't get why they just didn't label them 1-5.
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Dec 16, 2012 18:50
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minato posted:Are each of the buttons tilt switches or something? Because I don't get why they just didn't label them 1-5. No, there are only 5 buttons.
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Dec 16, 2012 19:56
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minato posted:Are each of the buttons tilt switches or something? Because I don't get why they just didn't label them 1-5. I imagine it's so people can memorize whatever number they want. Same reason debit terminals have letters on the buttons.
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Dec 16, 2012 20:04
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Yep, pretty much. It's a 5-digit keypad with 5^n possible combinations, and it just happens to have both digits on each key there so that you can still set it to your birthday or your bank card number or whatever hideously insecure sequence you like. I don't know how long the sequence is, but I would hope at least 5 digits, which gives you 3125 possible combinations. Luckily, I don't think that allows you to start the car, so the worst that'd happen is someone steals your stereo and shits everywhere etc.
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Dec 16, 2012 20:34
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eddiewalker posted:I am an absolute Zip disk hoarder because of these machines: The first radio station I worked at had used to be run off of the Bernoulli DigiCarts , along with 5 100 disc Sony CD carousels for music. It was all controlled via a Windows 3.1 386 pc via serial - and somehow managed to not come crashing down. It wasn't until they got AudioVault in 2004 that they finally ditched this system and went to a modern automation system. I work at a radio station in NYC that still has Denon MiniDisc machines, and Marantz cassette decks in each studio. The place was built in 2005.... bigtom has a new favorite as of 21:06 on Dec 16, 2012 |
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Dec 16, 2012 21:03
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spog posted:I was thinking that too. I found a zip disk in our storage room full of ancient poo poo at work labeled only "NeckTieKnots Dot Com" with a post-it stuck to it saying "Rob says to put this on a website." I don't work with anyone named Rob and that URL goes to a squatter site now 
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Dec 16, 2012 22:47
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Sagebrush posted:Yep, pretty much. It's a 5-digit keypad with 5^n possible combinations, and it just happens to have both digits on each key there so that you can still set it to your birthday or your bank card number or whatever hideously insecure sequence you like. I don't know how long the sequence is, but I would hope at least 5 digits, which gives you 3125 possible combinations. You can't start the car, but I never found a way to reprogram the keypad on my '91 Taurus - the owner's manual had a card with the 5-digit number printed on it taped to the cover. It was just a convenience feature that gave me some terrible habits about leaving my keys on the seat or in the glovebox.
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Dec 17, 2012 01:24
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The best thing for locking your keys in your car is having a friend who is a locksmith. I lost $5 when I bet him he couldn't get into my car in under a minute. He got in. Still couldn't start it though That said, I wish I had a keypad or a secret button that activates the lock solenoid. Then again the newer cars with the NFC keyfob and button system is pretty bad rear end.
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Dec 17, 2012 01:42
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Nathan Explosion posted:The best thing for locking your keys in your car is having a friend who is a locksmith. I lost $5 when I bet him he couldn't get into my car in under a minute. He got in. Still couldn't start it though I've got a brand new CX-5, and having an NFC key is really awesome. It's weird, since I'm so used to using a key to start and not a push button, but it's pretty cool. It still does have a key, which slides out of the NFC fob, so I can give the fob to a valet and keep the key for myself. I believe it opens the hatch and glovebox, that kinda thing.
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Dec 17, 2012 02:27
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minato posted:Are each of the buttons tilt switches or something? Because I don't get why they just didn't label them 1-5. As other people have already said they aren't tilt switches. But it reminds me of this: Sony Ericsson P1  I had one of these for a while, it was the first smartphone I owned. Like all the Ericssons it had a really nice camera for a phone, but the main reason I bought it was for the tilt keys. For some reason I preferred it to the blackberry's qwerty keyboards. Looking back I have absolutely no idea why.
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Dec 17, 2012 02:36
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Konjuro posted:Sony Ericsson P1 It was an interesting experiment in comparing functionality with ease of use. Both phones generally did everything the same, email, calendars and browsing - but the P1i was just fantastically inelegant in the way it stashed things away in odd menus.
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Dec 17, 2012 02:48
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Anybody remember back in the day before Sound Blaster and dedicated cards came out a company perfected the way to get speech and cd quality audio out of a PC speaker previously which was only capable of beeps?
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Dec 17, 2012 18:10
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b0nes posted:Anybody remember back in the day before Sound Blaster and dedicated cards came out a company perfected the way to get speech and cd quality audio out of a PC speaker previously which was only capable of beeps? If by "perfected" you mean "they modulated a beep to make it sound like something other than a beep," yeah. Even at its cleverest (Like in "Space Hulk,") it still sounded a lot like modem handshaking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Space_Hulk_briefing.ogg
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Dec 17, 2012 18:25
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"CD-quality" is a bit of a stretch, but yeah, the old PC speakers were able to play a tone of a single frequency (and not much range) so by dedicating all your CPU power to changing that frequency as quickly as possible, you could play arbitrary waveforms. It never really got used in games that much since it needed so much CPU power. See also the speech in C64's Impossible Mission: "Destwoy him, my wobots!"
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Dec 17, 2012 18:27
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Phanatic posted:If by "perfected" you mean "they modulated a beep to make it sound like something other than a beep," yeah. Even at its cleverest (Like in "Space Hulk,") it still sounded a lot like modem handshaking: "Star Control 2" also did this. It worked, but it sounded pretty tinny and hollow.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:30
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The same trick could also be applied to video displays. Near the end of the ZX81's life, some company game out with some "hi-res" games that displayed graphics ostensibly beyond the ZX81's powers. Again what they were doing was effectively driving the video output directly from the CPU in order to achieve higher video fidelity. Hold-and-modify mode on the Amiga was a bit like this too. In this mode the picture could choose from a palette of 16 colours or make a minor delta to the R, G or B value of the colour of the previous pixel. So to display images with "24-bit" colour, the CPU and Copper chips had to be running at full blast to change the colour palette, racing just ahead of the video scanline.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:31
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b0nes posted:Anybody remember back in the day before Sound Blaster and dedicated cards came out a company perfected the way to get speech and cd quality audio out of a PC speaker previously which was only capable of beeps? It didn't start with the PC.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:43
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minato posted:"CD-quality" is a bit of a stretch, but yeah, the old PC speakers were able to play a tone of a single frequency (and not much range) so by dedicating all your CPU power to changing that frequency as quickly as possible, you could play arbitrary waveforms. It never really got used in games that much since it needed so much CPU power. That was different, though. Doing it with the PC speaker was basically pulse-width modulation. The speaker's just supposed to put out a square wave, moving from high to low at whatever frequency you tell it, there's no half-value it's supposed to be capable of delivering. But if you time the width of the pulse right, you can tell it to go back to the 'low' value before it reaches the 'high' value so you can be clever and get stuff that sounds like something other than a beep. Being able to do digitized sample playback with the SID chip was a much neater hack. The SID was a combination of analog and digital circuits, all the inputs and controls were digital but the output was analog, and while it was only "technically" capable of outputting three voices, the output always had some level of bias on it at the point before it got fed to the amplifier. So you could rapidly alter the gain of the amp and modulate that bias as a fourth voice channel. And yeah, it was very CPU intensive. And once manufacturing techniques got cleaned up that output bias was eliminated and this trick wouldn't really work. But it was really neat to mash the spacebar and hear "Ghostbusters!" Here's the opening screen from "Neuromancer" as done on the AppleIIe, the C64, PC speaker, and the Amiga. It's kind of ridiculous how far ahead of its contemporaries the C64 is (not the Amiga, though, but that was a later generation altogether). The SID chip was a really impressive piece of hardware.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:45
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minato posted:
"AAAAAAAA-AAAAaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaghhhh..." Fond memories of the falling-in-a-hole scream echoing through my house. 
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Dec 17, 2012 19:13
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Phanatic posted:If by "perfected" you mean "they modulated a beep to make it sound like something other than a beep," yeah. Even at its cleverest (Like in "Space Hulk,") it still sounded a lot like modem handshaking: Are you sure you linked to the right file, there? I'd be flat-out amazed if I heard that come out of a PC speaker. I can't find it, but the PC speaker intro to The Crescent Hawks' Revenge sounds a lot more what you'd expect a tortured beeper to sound like
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Dec 17, 2012 19:29
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PC Speaker was more capable of voice like this, although I think with the quality of speakers it was never even this good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEB_TjIsyf8
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Dec 17, 2012 19:50
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Konjuro posted:As other people have already said they aren't tilt switches. But it reminds me of this: My dad had this. It was his first smartphone too, and then he dropped coffee on it, leaving the screen a strange shade of yellow for the rest of the time he had it. It's such a clunky little fucker, but I remember being really excited about owning an actual thing with a touchscreen!!!!! Now everything has touchscreens and the novelty is quite gone sadly.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:05
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redmercer posted:I'd be flat-out amazed if I heard that come out of a PC speaker. I can't find it, but the PC speaker intro to The Crescent Hawks' Revenge sounds a lot more what you'd expect a tortured beeper to sound like
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Dec 17, 2012 20:08
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I remember hearing speech out of the old Apple II in games like Sea Dragon, Horizon V and Tumble-Bugs. Surely that only had a lovely little beepy speaker too? \/ Yeah, apparently I'm Hitler or something. Sorry. Gromit has a new favorite as of 22:51 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 22:40
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holy poo poo that's quite an avtext gromit
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Dec 17, 2012 22:42
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Gromit posted:I remember hearing speech out of the old Apple II in games like Sea Dragon, Horizon V and Tumble-Bugs. Surely that only had a lovely little beepy speaker too? Wow you made someone mad. Looks like someone already queued up a fix for your title though.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:18
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b0nes posted:Anybody remember back in the day before Sound Blaster and dedicated cards came out a company perfected the way to get speech and cd quality audio out of a PC speaker previously which was only capable of beeps? Some examples here. http://www.oldskool.org/sound/pc/#digitized Under a Killing Moon blew me away in 1994 due to it's (then) photo realistic looking graphics and 360 degree movement around a game world. Doom's 3D was raycasted where UAKM used texture mapped polygons. Access Software were pretty sharp with pulling off all sorts of technical achievements such as video playback thanks to some pretty insane decompression. They also were one of the first to use DVD-Roms in 1998 when barely anyone owned one.
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Dec 18, 2012 03:49
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Gromit posted:I remember hearing speech out of the old Apple II in games like Sea Dragon, Horizon V and Tumble-Bugs. Surely that only had a lovely little beepy speaker too? In fact, as a technology, it's far from obsolete. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 05:30 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 14:44
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SHAM BAM BAMINA posted:Same deal; you just flip the 1-bit speaker signal on and off with the right timing to play a sample. The technique applies to literally any computer that can produce sound. Yeah, I was only questioning if the Apple II had a beepy speaker, not how it was done. I'm almost certain it did, but not 100%. But speaking of taxing the CPU to do it, I'm almost certain none of those Apple II examples could do it whilst anything else was happening. The games would always pause or it would happen at game start or game over.
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Dec 20, 2012 04:29
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Oooo, Apple ][ talk! The speaker on the old ][ series right up to the //gs was a standard off-the-shelf speaker like you'd get in an old cheap 9V AM radio. Here's an old ][ Plus. You can see the speaker to the left of the power supply (golden box near the top.)  On the ][ you could drop into the monitor with CALL -151 and type C030 and you might hear a click from the speaker. Or even reset to the BASIC prompt and type POKE -16336,1. People who wrote stuff in 6502 assembly code who were really good at it could make decent sounds and animate at the same time, who doesn't remember Drol or Repton, or even Wings of Fury's opening theme on the //e? Later in the Apple // era, you could buy a $129 card called the Mockingboard that gave you arguably better sound/music than an Atari/C64; quite a few companies supported it.
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Dec 20, 2012 05:23
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WebDog posted:Access Software's RealSound? Which basically used highly compressed 6-bit audio squeezed through a PCM speaker. linked page posted:The Sun/NeXT .au format was chosen for these clips since, at the default 8000Hz sample rate, it reproduces all of the technical quality of the original sound, while at the same time being very cross-platform, easy to play, and has very low CPU requirements. RealAudio and MPEG Layer 3 were specifically not considered because their benefits (high audio clarity) were outweighted by their disadvantages (RealAudio is not as cross-platform as I would like, and MPEG Layer 3 has heavy CPU requirements during decompression). Besides, their additional clarity would not have represented the sound better anyway. This page about computer music formats from a bygone era was itself made during some bygone era.
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Dec 20, 2012 06:17
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Binary Badger posted:People who wrote stuff in 6502 assembly code who were really good at it could make decent sounds and animate at the same time, I learned 6502 assembler for my C64 by reading a friends Apple II assembler manual. Good times.
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Dec 20, 2012 06:28
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Does future predictions count? I've just got this in the mail. Over ten years ago I eagerly flicked through this in the library, all giddy with what promises the future could bring as they predict what could happen each year out from 1996 to 2225. So what actually was correct and by how far? Here's a few speculative ones early on. 1996 - Genetically engineered weapons of destruction. A charming opener that generally argues towards the present of how murky the future of biological warfare is and notes Iraq's programs (as of 1995). Of course the future would see several notable attempts such as the 2001 anthrax letters (suspected to be made by a scientist working in a biological lab). A 2002 plot for ricin gas in the London subway and more letters in 2003. Has it moved into the stage of specifically engineered weapons of doom, no, and hopefully not. 1997 - Portable CD recorder + player At the then cost of $2,500 this was a luxury item. The article mentions the fact DAT tape prices were kept high to slow down accessibility and prevent bootlegging and suspects the same for CDs and DVDs to come. My first CD burnt was in 2001. A straight dub of music tracks, done in real-time and you having to manually mark each track. This was done with a professional CD-recorder used in live recordings. CDs in 2001 were roughly at a cost of 0.70c per disc. 1997 - Movies on demand Possibly one of the more accurate articles - however expecting 1997 to be the year of on demand is a decade off. However the article lists everything that had to be overcome, better video compression, higher resolution monitors and internet speeds. At the time it suggest Blockbuster could use an online VHS delivery service and the possibility of satellites providing a streaming service. Nowadays we stream HD without barely a thought. 1998 - Ecash gets real The article's not about alternate digital currencies, but developing the cryopology within creating a secure and fast way to transfer money from bank to bank. It mentions "Digicash" who once had on their website "Digital money is numbers, that are money". I suppose the novelty then was that you weren't dealing with physical banknotes and coins and easy online transactions were the way of the future. Digicash went bankrupt in 1998 and sold it's technology to Ecash which survives today under Blucora. Ecash is still used in Australian banking systems. There's tons more I'll have to sum up later.
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Dec 20, 2012 07:28
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WebDog posted:Does future predictions count? I've just got this in the mail. If this counts, I have this loving awesome booklet published in 1957-1958 (?) about the future of space exploration, the miracle flights of Sputnik and Explorer 1 that JUST HAPPENED, and how all future manned missions would require artificial gravity and massive space stations and special food and we'll all be living on the moon by 1980 etc. I'll try and scan it when I get a chance.
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Dec 20, 2012 07:32
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Here's a summary of what Wired's boffins predicted each year up till 2013 and how it compares to today. Do the predictions actually match? Fantastical thinking 1996 - Genetically Engineered Weapons of War 2001 - Solar Powered automobiles 2001 - Fortune 500 Virtual Corporation (it's dot-com!) 2002 - Fat destroying pill 2004 - Commercially Viable Nanotech 2004 - Non invasive surgery (other than resonance or radiotherapy etc etc) 2005 - Universal Organ Donor Animal 2006 - One-Fourth of U.S Homes get smart. 2006 - Effective hair-loss prevention. 2009 - Orgasmatron 2010 - Smart drugs 2010 - Robot Surgeon in a pill Way off NEVER - An interactive TV in every home Despite throwing about concepts of set-top boxes in 1996 they were adamant that we'd still see the TV as our entertainment device and the computer as the information one. The article does mention at the time Apple looking into TV technology - as evidenced by the 20th Anniversary Macintosh having a TV tuner in 1997. Despite every concept thrown around actually being correct, the idea was still seen as alien. 1997 - Intelligent Agents I suppose autocomplete in browsers was one early on. But the concept of ambient AI has only begun to get going with things like Google Now. 2003 - One-Fifth of U.S Workers telecommute In 2008 only 2.5 million employees telecommuted to work in the states. A number far higher in Asian countries such as India however still a low number. The dream of complete online work-from-home is far fetched. 2005 - Computer Defeats Human Chess master. This actually happened in 1997 with Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov. Still a long way off, but plausible within the century 1999 - Male birth control pill 2000 - Gene therapy for Cancer 2002 - AIDS Vaccine Available 2007 - Smart fabrics go mainstream. 2008 - Hemp based auto fuel. 2004 - Holographic Medical Imaging. The concept in 1996 was the body gets scanned and then projected in a 3D interactive model over the patient (sci-fi projection stuff). Advances in tomography, CT and MRI scans have generally started this off and there has been advances in gloveless ways to interact through haptic feedback. However it will still be a good while before fast, safe and reliable image generation that matches our sci-fi dreams is here. Around the corner 2009 - V.R Sunglasses While various forms of Augmented Reality exists it hasn't moved out of specialist applications. It's safe to assume that 2014 may be the year of AR eyewear. Well on it's way at the time 1997 - Affordable home CD recorders. 1998 - Flat-Rate phone service. 1998 - Ecash (online banking) 2002 - Computer Handwriting Recognition 2004 - GM produced crops. 2006 - Self-Cleaning toilets. 2007 - Fiber to the home The concept's correct, but not how they'd thought it happen. 1998 - First Virtual High School Graduating Class. In 1996 it was suggested that whole grades become a virtual class. There were even early online services around. Despite such courses today being well and viable, it's also opened up a shady market of fraudulent qualifications. 1999 - Overnight custom clothing. While online clothing has boomed the concept of getting an overnight tailored garment hasn't quite arrived. However 1999 was the year Nike launched "NikeID" offering a limited assortment. 2001 - Global Wireless Telephone Number In 1996 this was a dream of a satellite phone that answered anywhere. Nowadays your mobile phone can do so and it goes one step further with VOIP devices. 2004 - Solar Power to the People The concept of every house being a self sufficient solar operated dwelling is still a fair way off. Generating and selling electricity is still a viable way to gain income for states. 2004 - Operational Space Station The ISS launched in 1998 and was completed in 2010. Surprisingly on the mark 1997 - Movies - on demand. Netflix launched in 1997 providing a postal service for physical media before moving into digital. 2002 - Remote Controlled surgery In 1996 very early procedures had been performed over closed circuit cameras and the book suggest an insane hypothesis of "doc in a box" where a soldier could be airdropped a remotely operated theater to crawl into. In 2001 the Lindbergh Operation was performed over dedicated fiberoptics from New York to France. 2003 - Universal Picture Phones Long associated with "Horrifically expensive" video conferencing didn't really pick up until the rise of the internet and the development of video compression technology. Once the domain of sign language users it's becoming everyday. 2005 - Housecleaning robot. In 2002 the Roomba was introduced and by 2006 it was estimated 3,540,000 domestic robots of some sort were in use. 2005 - Software Superdistrubution. In 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes store and to a degree Steam started off the future of video game distribution. In 1996 it was predicted a subscription based service could be the norm, something that's beginning to start up with Adobe Cloud. It also suggests a hardware based DRM installed on all PC's could be the norm. "...the development of common software such as word processors will be so easy by the turn of the century that a great software price collapse will cause people to pay you to use their software" 2007 - Online mass retailer as big as Sears 2008 - 20% of U.S Consumers telegrocery shop In 1996 Amazon had just appeared along with Ebay. With Ebay turning into the world's biggest private reseller and Amazon gradually acquiring books, clothing, and audio retailers Wired was pretty much on the mark. 2010 -The audio CD becomes a format of second choice. In 1996 Winplay3 allowed for the playback of the relatively new MP3 format around the same time the warez music scene started up. Metallica's "Until it Sleeps" reportedly being one of the first rips. In 1997 early players only had 32mb of memory and most collections were primitive at best. It wasn't until 2001 when the iPod set the world on fire. In 1996 Wired suggests the DVD would follow the CD, but DVD-A became a niche for audiophiles and MP3 players now rule the waves. However it does suggest flash memory might be an alternative method. 2013 - The Book goes digital. In 1998 the SoftBook appeared and for it's time was surprisingly ahead of it offering an online store and subscriptions to periodicals. It wasn't until 2007 when faster internet speeds and dedicated readers like the Kindle began to dramatically change everything.
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Dec 20, 2012 11:23
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WebDog posted:1997 - Portable CD recorder + player I still have my very first burned CD around here somewhere. It's marked "December 1995" and contains a ton of  , including Timon & Pumbaas's Jungle Games (which was friggin awesome), a sheet-music based midi sequencer and a bunch of other random stuff. I can't remember where it came from, but considering the price of CD burners and burnable media in 1995, it must have been a dedicated warez outfit of some kind.
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Dec 20, 2012 15:29
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WebDog posted:Fantastical thinking Actually that one's real, and we did it in 2004, not 2009: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=235788&page=1 quote:In a surgical procedure done in his office, Meloy implants the electrodes from this device into the back of the patient, at the bottom part of the spinal cord. When the electrodes are stimulated with a remote control, the brain interprets the signal as an orgasm, he said. The device is about the size of a pacemaker and can be turned on and off with a handheld remote control. The only problem is there's a very real chance of it causing paralysis. EDIT: Wired has the story as far back as 2001, actually: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/02/41682
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Dec 20, 2012 20:57
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Talk of CDs made me suddenly nostalgic for the days when you would buy magazines for the CD full of software they came with. Or the days of using ftp.cdrom.com.
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Dec 21, 2012 14:35
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SimplyCosmic posted:Talk of CDs made me suddenly nostalgic for the days when you would buy magazines for the CD full of software they came with. I only did this once and the CD had Fallout on it. I had no idea what I was getting. (Also, I listened to my Minidisc player this morning in the bus since I still haven't found my Itunes after moving because it's so loving small.)
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Dec 21, 2012 14:47
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