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Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer

Pham Nuwen posted:

I have one of these:



feels pretty cyberpunk.

edit: oops image leeching

Oh man please tell me that little toggle switch there doesn't control any vital functions.

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Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

tacodaemon posted:

Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk actually came with a floppy disk multimedia presentation that won it a fair bit of hype at the time:




Screenshot:



I almost bought that until I saw it was Mac-only. :argh: Billy Idol

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Monkey Fracas posted:

Oh man please tell me that little toggle switch there doesn't control any vital functions.

Even better.
It's a turbo toggle.

mints
Aug 15, 2001

Living on past glories

strangemusic posted:

Sure you're not thinking of something else? The Karma was 20gb with USB 2.0

He's got to be talking about the PMP300, the first Diamond Rio that came out in 98.

A Pinball Wizard
Mar 23, 2005

I know every trick, no freak's gonna beat my hands

College Slice
I used to have one of these:


The IBM Workpad z50. It was like a small laptop that ran Windows CE. Think a larger version of the HP Jornada. No hard drive, just internal memory and a compact flash slot. No USB or Ethernet, you connected it to your computer via serial cable and transferred files that way. It came with a cord you could use to hook the serial port to your cell phone and use the internet at outrageous cost (this was back in like 2001, before I got a cell phone, so I never tried it myself). I wrote a ton of papers on this thing.

The biggest problem with it was there was no good way to not use it for a while. You could suspend it, but it'd still draw from the battery, and after a week or so the battery would die. And for some reason the internal storage was dynamic memory, so after the battery died, well, hope you had your files backed up...

UnfortunateSexFart
May 18, 2008

𒃻 𒌓𒁉𒋫 𒆷𒁀𒅅𒆷
𒆠𒂖 𒌉 𒌫 𒁮𒈠𒈾𒅗 𒂉 𒉡𒌒𒂉𒊑


ravenkult posted:

What's the most cyberpunk obsolete tech you got?

My dad and I played pitch n' putt golf with William Gibson in the early 90s. He just happened to be in front of us.

Physical activity outside is obsolete now from what I can tell. Also golf.

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

tacodaemon posted:

Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk actually came with a floppy disk multimedia presentation that won it a fair bit of hype at the time:
I've just realized that my Offspring CD with the "put it in your computer for a multimedia slideshow" effectively lines up as obsolete.

And yeah old old laptops with a refresh rate so slow that if you turned on mouse trails you could draw with the mouse.

Waterslide Industry Lobbyist
Jun 18, 2003

ANYONE WANT SOME BARBECUE?

Lipstick Apathy
I missed instrument chat but I've got to throw this guy in here.

The Eigenharp Alpha



Each of the keys is sensitive to direct pressure, but also to lateral pressure in both directions, so you can program in pitch bending on individual keys. The sides have touch sensitive strips, so you can simulate bowing. And there is the wind controller. The entire thing is programmable so you can do things like use a set of keys as a sequencer then play simulated sax on top of that. The craftsmanship on them is excellent, although I haven't had one plugged in to be able to noodle around on. Cost $5900, but I'm not sure if you can find them anymore.

Lazlo Nibble
Jan 9, 2004

It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

Monkey Fracas posted:

Oh man please tell me that little toggle switch there doesn't control any vital functions.

The switch isn't stock, there's usually a faceplate there with the LSI ADM3A logo on it. The panel it's mounted on has a bunch of DIP switches underneath to control baud rate, parity and the likelooks like someone added the switch to flip between a couple of settings they used regularly.

Wonder Bread
Apr 16, 2005

Have you ever danced with a crapatar in the pale moonlight?

Waterslide Industry Lobbyist posted:

I missed instrument chat but I've got to throw this guy in here.

The Eigenharp Alpha



Each of the keys is sensitive to direct pressure, but also to lateral pressure in both directions, so you can program in pitch bending on individual keys. The sides have touch sensitive strips, so you can simulate bowing. And there is the wind controller. The entire thing is programmable so you can do things like use a set of keys as a sequencer then play simulated sax on top of that. The craftsmanship on them is excellent, although I haven't had one plugged in to be able to noodle around on. Cost $5900, but I'm not sure if you can find them anymore.

They still make them-- they are made in batches when they get enough orders, basically. I have a pico, which is the small version (only 2 rows of keys). The craftsmanship is excellent, but the cost is nuts.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

ravenkult posted:

What's the most cyberpunk obsolete tech you got?
The Japanese MSX computers of the mid- to late '80s are probably the most cyberpunk-looking things that I can think of:


Sony Hit Bit HB-F1XD Mark 2


Panasonic FS-A1 WSX


Sanyo Wavy 70FD

Even the names are perfect.

Exit Strategy
Dec 10, 2010

by sebmojo

Sham bam bamina! posted:

The Japanese MSX computers of the mid- to late '80s are probably the most cyberpunk-looking things that I can think of:


Sony Hit Bit HB-F1XD Mark 2


I own one of these. The MSX and MSX2 are what William Gibson was thinking of when he wrote about cyberdecks. They were supposed to be the evolution of computers like that.

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!
I know that technically all our tech and design today is 'better', but I love that angular and button-laden design of 80s technology.

Fooley
Apr 25, 2006

Blue moon of Kentucky keep on shinin'...

Sham bam bamina! posted:

The Japanese MSX computers of the mid- to late '80s are probably the most cyberpunk-looking things that I can think of:


Sony Hit Bit HB-F1XD Mark 2


Panasonic FS-A1 WSX


Sanyo Wavy 70FD

Even the names are perfect.

These are almost EXACTLY what I thought "decks" looked like when I first read Neuromancer...

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

Exit Strategy posted:

I own one of these. The MSX and MSX2 are what William Gibson was thinking of when he wrote about cyberdecks. They were supposed to be the evolution of computers like that.

Fooley posted:

These are almost EXACTLY what I thought "decks" looked like when I first read Neuromancer...
Cool, so it wasn't just me. :hfive:

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch

ravenkult posted:

What's the most cyberpunk obsolete tech you got?

While technically not obsolete I have a bit of cyberpunk that's not needed to be used anymore. It's a set of Bump Key Dies, basically metalworking patters that let you cut blank keys for the purpose of lock picking. These days a set of bump keys is like 5-25 dollars depending on what range of lock manufacturers you want.

I guess people use circle picks as well since a thing that helps you break into poo poo will always be useful. But I mostly use mine when I do freelance work to show people how unsecured their locked file cabinets are. But I feel that whole culture of handcuff and lock picking is pretty much a 90's cyberpunk relic. What other culture of modern tech done by nerds is taught to you by a rail thin long haired Norwegian man at a folding table during a convention (I kid, I kid, the European lock pick dudes are doing amazing poo poo with 3D printers these days but still).

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli
I kinda miss that computers don't try and look futuristic in some shape or form - usually at the cost of ergonomics and usability. You miss the days when your stereo was completely black with almost no indication of what is going on so you can impress your mates with a remote control!

Everything nowadays is black and silver with piercing blue LED's that need several layers of electrical tape.
Almost every device ends up becoming a form of ambient lighting to guide you around the house at night.
I don't need to turn on the bathroom light, my shaver's LCD display is bright enough to see where I'm pissing.

UnfortunateSexFart
May 18, 2008

𒃻 𒌓𒁉𒋫 𒆷𒁀𒅅𒆷
𒆠𒂖 𒌉 𒌫 𒁮𒈠𒈾𒅗 𒂉 𒉡𒌒𒂉𒊑


WebDog posted:

I kinda miss that computers don't try and look futuristic in some shape or form - usually at the cost of ergonomics and usability. You miss the days when your stereo was completely black with almost no indication of what is going on so you can impress your mates with a remote control!

Everything nowadays is black and silver with piercing blue LED's that need several layers of electrical tape.
Almost every device ends up becoming a form of ambient lighting to guide you around the house at night.
I don't need to turn on the bathroom light, my shaver's LCD display is bright enough to see where I'm pissing.

Yeah just the other night I was thinking about how my living room looks like the old Star Trek bridge in the dark. Luckily, only the modem lights blink though.

I got poo poo on in the PS4 thread for buying a PS4 controller charger with LEDs but the controller itself is one big LED that you point at your TV while trying to watch it. My fingers glow, my TV bezel glows and there's nothing I can do about it.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

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

Fooley posted:

These are almost EXACTLY what I thought "decks" looked like when I first read Neuromancer...

I got your deck right here, buddy.



I can still remember the pain of playing Soccer on that evil controller.

stevewm
May 10, 2005

Toilet Clam posted:

I used to have one of these:
.......

The IBM Workpad z50....

The biggest problem with it was there was no good way to not use it for a while. You could suspend it, but it'd still draw from the battery, and after a week or so the battery would die. And for some reason the internal storage was dynamic memory, so after the battery died, well, hope you had your files backed up...

Nearly all Windows CE devices and other PDAs such as Palms from that era are like that. The #1 reason was cost... Flash memory was considerably more expensive back then. To save cost they where designed with regular dynamic RAM that had to be kept powered. The entire platform was designed around that limitation. Most people used these devices with a desktop PC running Sync software. The sync software would make a complete backup of the entire device whenever it was connected. Long as you synced regularly, the battery completely dying really wasn't that big of an issue.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
My old boss had an early Windows cellphone which I'm pretty sure was the same way - dead battery meant all his contacts disappeared.

Great design there.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

Pham Nuwen posted:

I have one of these:



feels pretty cyberpunk.

edit: oops image leeching

haha poo poo is that a lear siegler ADM-3? My dad used one in college, still has it, and I have one that came with a Northstar Horizon I got from a classmate's dad years ago.

The Northstar Horizon is another fun one, 8080 or z80 CPU, 64k of RAM (two S100 cards!), dual full height 5.25" floppy drives, a video card that reportedly cost something like 2-3k when bought, etc etc. The power supply is linear instead of switch mode and the whole computer weighs like 100lbs. Its boot ROM is 256... bytes. Not kilobytes, bytes.

Which is the only reason I haven't gotten it booting yet, it ran CP/M (which puts most of the BIOS functionality in a file on the boot disk, which shuffled of this mortal coil decades ago) and used hard-sectored floppy disk media :sigh:

Oh it has a math coprocessor built entirely out of PROM chips (not EEPROM or EPROM, just PROM) and 7400 series TTL logic, too. You fed the data in by sending bytes to specific memory addresses and then telling it what operation you wanted, then waited hundreds of clock cycles for your result. Still faster than doing it on an 8 bit microprocessor with no native divide or multiply instruction.

One of these decades I'll get it working. It came with full schematics for the mainboard and all adapter boards, and I know 8080/z80 machine+assembly language, so this is actually possible... the wonders of being a turbo nerd in high school. Now, too, but I get paid to do that poo poo these days.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



kastein posted:

haha poo poo is that a lear siegler ADM-3? My dad used one in college, still has it, and I have one that came with a Northstar Horizon I got from a classmate's dad years ago.

It is indeed the Lear Siegler ADM-3A. The "A" means it has the lower-case mod installed.

And no, mine doesn't have that switch.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Interesting, I thought the A meant it left the factory assembled instead of requiring the owner to solder the whole thing together.

Mine has a couple banks of DIP switches under that little cover that set number of bits per byte, stop bit count, parity type, baud rate, etc. I've never seen one with that switch on it, maybe the owner used two specific baud rates more than the others and added a toggle switch for them.

tacodaemon
Nov 27, 2006



Also, check the right side of the ADM-3A keyboard's home row to see where vi's keybindings got their start:

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli
Speaking of memory...

Drum memory


Somewhat of an early precursor to the hard drive invented in 1932.
A metal cylinder coated with ferromagnetic material. The first held around 60kb and were mostly used in IBM mainframes up to the 80's when they were kept around as a sort of secondary storage.

Each row is a fixed track and the drum has to be rotated to align with the read head. Some drums had multiple heads to speed things up.

This method of read delay eventuated in programmers working on a concept where they would time when the head would be at the desired track and place the code required in the right spot leading to all sorts of interesting trickery.

BSD nerds would recognize their linage from /dev/drum being the default virtual memory location.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



tacodaemon posted:

Also, check the right side of the ADM-3A keyboard's home row to see where vi's keybindings got their start:



The keyboard in general was very good for Unix. The Esc and Ctrl keys were in good places too.

^^^^^^^ I just saw a bunch of those in the Computer History Museum over the weekend. If any of you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, go there. It's amazing. I've got a bunch of pictures that I should upload.

MA-Horus
Dec 3, 2006

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

This fuckin' bad boy here.



The Compaq Portable II. The sheer gall of calling this goddamn thing Portable, it weighs a bloody ton and cost my father's company $3500. Mine has the orange/black plasma display.

Lazlo Nibble
Jan 9, 2004

It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

WebDog posted:

Drum memory

The first version Sperry Rand built for UNIVAC was so massive that gyroscopic effects made it tend to shift position as the earth turned underneath it. They fixed it in the next generation by adding a second drum that spun in the opposite direction.

A Pinball Wizard
Mar 23, 2005

I know every trick, no freak's gonna beat my hands

College Slice

MA-Horus posted:

This fuckin' bad boy here.



The Compaq Portable II. The sheer gall of calling this goddamn thing Portable, it weighs a bloody ton and cost my father's company $3500. Mine has the orange/black plasma display.

I literally have one of these. If anyone wants it, pm me and I'll see if it works.

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

MA-Horus posted:

The sheer gall of calling this goddamn thing Portable, it weighs a bloody ton.
Wasn't luggable the correct term?
The CPII was 23.6 lbs/10.7 kg. The first model ('83) was 12kg and the 486 model ('92) had dropped to 7.6kg.

Kids these days, they know nothing about striding around with kilos of equipment.
Unless you work in film, in which cameras can still weigh up to and over 10kg.

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

tacodaemon posted:

Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk actually came with a floppy disk multimedia presentation that won it a fair bit of hype at the time:




Screenshot:



This is incredible, I never knew about that.

And I think the most cyberpunk thing I own is probably my C64, though it can't hold a candle to an MSX. Man what a beautiful looking machine, and now that you guys have me associating them with cyberdecks [why did I never do this before] I want one more than ever.

One of you, give me yours. I've got a spare lung for trade.

e.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


WebDog posted:

Wasn't luggable the correct term?
The CPII was 23.6 lbs/10.7 kg. The first model ('83) was 12kg and the 486 model ('92) had dropped to 7.6kg.

Kids these days, they know nothing about striding around with kilos of equipment.
Unless you work in film, in which cameras can still weigh up to and over 10kg.

quote:

Man portable

Capable of being carried by one man. Specifically, the term may be used to qualify: 1. Items designed to be carried as an integral part of individual, crew-served, or team equipment of the dismounted soldier in conjunction with assigned duties. Upper weight limit: approximately 14 kilograms (31 pounds.) 2. In land warfare, equipment which can be carried by one man over long distance without serious degradation of the performance of normal duties.

W424
Oct 21, 2010

ravenkult posted:

What's the most cyberpunk obsolete tech you got?



Yamaha midi guitar and converter. Apparently it was quite expensive back in the day and had better tracking than systems designed for regular guitars. However this was accomplished by having every string be the same,a plain G, the worst string in a guitar. Felt horrible to play, picked up a lot of junk data that had to be cleaned up afterwards, huge rack unit for the conversion, massive propertiary cable etc etc. Flipped it for a small profit pretty soon.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012

ravenkult posted:

What's the most cyberpunk obsolete tech you got?
Does the Matrix phone/Samsung SPH-N270 count?

It was made for the second Matrix movie and had a limited release.

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli
That phone really sucked. Even for 2003. It was cool for the spring loaded answer function, but beyond that it was lacking the ability to send text messages or bluetooth so no one really brought it. It cost $500.

Does the SIEKO Final Fantasy Watch count?

There were two announced with the film.

This one got released - and I think other similar styles can be brought today.


This one is vapor-wear as they never released it.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012
Didn't one of the Final Fantasy MMOs have a special clock you could get that told you the time/day/moon cycles on the clock along with the normal time?

hackbunny
Jul 22, 2007

I haven't been on SA for years but the person who gave me my previous av as a joke felt guilty for doing so and decided to get me a non-shitty av

Dick Trauma posted:

I got your deck right here, buddy.



I can still remember the pain of playing Soccer on that evil controller.

It was perfect for playing Micro Surgeon!

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.
My most cyberpunk possession is probably a Casio camera watch. Its this model.



120 120 pixels (0.0144 Mpixel), 4‐bit greyscale.

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Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

WebDog posted:

This one is vapor-wear as they never released it.
My eyes are rolling right out of my head at this.

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