Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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The Wurst Poster: Apr 8, 2005; Literally the Wurst...

Seriously...

For REALSIES.

If you were ever curious about the other end of the rotary phone system, you can actually see it in person if you are in the Seattle area. There is a museum run by retired AT&T employees where they maintain and show off old Bell System equipment. You can watch all of the switching equipment move and connect in action as you dial.
http://museumofcommunications.org/
They also have some crazy old proprietary stuff that still works.
http://museumofcommunications.org/?page_id=118

Here is one of their old interactive dial-up teletype terminals in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MikoF6KZjm0

# ? Apr 19, 2014 08:55

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 10:32

Mescal: Jul 23, 2005

WebDog posted:

By the end of the Discman's peak in 2003, stuff like the D-EJ885 pretty much had perfected all the quirks with CD playback, such as skip with two forms of buffering and a battery life of 110 hours.

Not to mention being one of the most attractive ever, with it's controls and displays being relegated to a cable remote. It was the last of the Luxury brands that Sony offered for portable music. But for all it's paring down of weight it suffered with flat audio output.

This was a fantastic CD player. I remember it seeming not exactly exciting but very appealing next to the new 2nd generation iPod. It was kind of like what the iPod would become--portable CD players could finally be not lovely just a few months before they became unpractical.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 09:41

Peanut Butler: Jul 25, 2003

cowtown posted:

Ours was one of these, with a single slider for all the channels. It was really easy to get to channel 2 quickly!

old post, but it took me surprisingly little time to google up a picture of the cable dial I grew up with:

My parents were relatively early adopters of cable, my earliest TV memories involve using this on their old Zenith 18" tube back in 84-87. I still remember rapidly spinning it to make the TV spaz out and sound like a Cthulhu cultist on speed.

Here's (someone else's picture of) my first laptop, the Toshiba Portege T3600CT:

My uncle gave me his in '96 (actually a T3400)- it ran Windows 95 just barely, I ended up laboriously putting Slackware on it as it had a janky external floppy and no modem/ethernet card. It ran a 486-SX/66 with (I want to say) 4MB RAM. Came with a 4GB drive that I replaced with a 20GB model. I broke the screen dropping it one day, but managed to find a half-working T3600CT for cheap on ebay, and frankensteined them together into a slick 486-DX/100 machine that I just put FreeDOS on.

I used this machine all the way through college, at a time that doesn't seem that long ago but when school laptops were pretty rare in the liberal arts. It ran beautifully (still does, if I could find the power cable), and it was TINY for the time- smaller than and about as thick as a textbook, I wouldn't see a full-powered laptop smaller than this until netbooks were A Thing. Its best feature was that it'd last for ~8-12 hours on one charge, making it an ideal campus computer. I used it for writing and Sid Meier's Colonization well into the 2000s until I replaced it with a Celeron-based Dell. I really want to find a use for it, since it's just taking up space in my old computer box, but aside from gutting it and putting netbook parts in, I can't think of a purpose for the old beast.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 09:55

dissss: Nov 10, 2007; I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

I had a Toshiba Satellite 100CDS in high school - Windows 95, Pentium 100, 16MB of RAM and a passive matrix 800x600 display.

Pretty tough little system though, and it actually had the power supply built in (no need for an external brick)

# ? Apr 19, 2014 10:04

Sir_Substance: Dec 13, 2013

My parents at one point had a laptop that was terminal only, with a blue-or-off LCD screen. By the time I got to it it was pretty dead, no backlight, battery long since lost. But I remember the keyboard was a dream to type on. The keys had just the right travel distance and just the right amount of click.

Of course, my fingers have gotten longer since then, so it might be a lot more like a standard laptop keyboard then I remember.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 10:37

Humphreys: Jan 26, 2013; We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule

These wonderful places

# ? Apr 19, 2014 11:09

BogDew: Jun 14, 2006; E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

PYF obsolete and failed places of conception.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 11:12

Humphreys: Jan 26, 2013; We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule

Sir_Substance posted:

My parents at one point had a laptop that was terminal only, with a blue-or-off LCD screen. By the time I got to it it was pretty dead, no backlight, battery long since lost. But I remember the keyboard was a dream to type on. The keys had just the right travel distance and just the right amount of click.

Of course, my fingers have gotten longer since then, so it might be a lot more like a standard laptop keyboard then I remember.

Like IBM Model M's? I really gotta get around to buying a decent keyboard with cherry keys.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 11:48

Sir_Substance: Dec 13, 2013

Humphreys posted:

Like IBM Model M's? I really gotta get around to buying a decent keyboard with cherry keys.

Nah, wasn't buckling spring on a laptop. Some kind of scissor switch system, I think.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 11:53

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

The largest still-operating drive-in cinema in Europe is 20 minutes from where I live. I make a point of catching a movie there every once in a while, because who knows how long before they're all gone.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 11:57

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Captain Trips posted:

I have to use a fax machine at least every other day at work. I literally just mash buttons until something happens.

Why do people still use these gigantic paperweights?

Short answer: Regulations.

There are still various regulations especially in the finance sector that says a signed document isn't legal any more if it's been scanned and sent through email, but fax is ok.

Of course, a lot of companies just use them because they don't know any better.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 12:06

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Collateral Damage posted:

Short answer: Regulations.

There are still various regulations especially in the finance sector that says a signed document isn't legal any more if it's been scanned and sent through email, but fax is ok.

Of course, a lot of companies just use them because they don't know any better.

I'm an insurance biller for a big hospital and I use a fax machine everyday. The insurance companies (who all suck donkey dicks) won't accept documents if they aren't faxed or mailed. Even faxing is limited to 25 pages. There's only one I can fax certain things to via secure email (and by secure, I mean password protected PDFs).

# ? Apr 19, 2014 12:44

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

My parents took me to see Dirty Harry at the drive-in, and other kid-inappropriate movies like Death Wish. Since you had to hang the speaker in the window mosquitoes always got inside. Drive-ins were grubby and not much fun, particularly the "playground" they all seemed to have right in front of the screen which was more like a one-stop shop for getting tetanus.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 12:45

mrkillboy: May 13, 2003; "Something witty."

Did anyone have a Scandiphone? The brief rotary phone chat reminded me of it.

I had one growing up in the 80s before we replaced it with contemporary digital desk phone. It had a rotary dial at the bottom along with a big red button you pressed to hang up. You lifted up the entire thing to answer it.

Out of the blue earlier this year my mother asked me to get one for her off eBay. It turns out they still make it; same old design but with new modern features like a choice of ring tones. And as you can see in the pic below, push buttons instead of the rotary dial.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 12:48

Lucy Heartfilia: May 31, 2012

I like it. That's some pretty and timeless design.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 12:53

Humphreys: Jan 26, 2013; We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule

mrkillboy posted:

Did anyone have a Scandiphone? The brief rotary phone chat reminded me of it.

I had one growing up in the 80s before we replaced it with contemporary digital desk phone. It had a rotary dial at the bottom along with a big red button you pressed to hang up. You lifted up the entire thing to answer it.

Out of the blue earlier this year my mother asked me to get one for her off eBay. It turns out they still make it; same old design but with new modern features like a choice of ring tones. And as you can see in the pic below, push buttons instead of the rotary dial.

The root of the term "butt dialing" right there.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 13:00

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

mrkillboy posted:

Did anyone have a Scandiphone? The brief rotary phone chat reminded me of it.

The original Ericofon was common in hospitals because of the one piece design. That's the only place I ever saw them.

For a little while in the 1970s the '20s and '30s became popular, so you saw goofy retro stuff like the candlestick phone making a comeback. My aunt had one and they were annoying to use.

An art-deco font similar to this was everywhere.

Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 13:10 on Apr 19, 2014

# ? Apr 19, 2014 13:06

spleen merchant: Jul 1, 2007; Fun Shoe

mrkillboy posted:

Did anyone have a Scandiphone? The brief rotary phone chat reminded me of it.

My parents had one like this as a bedside phone. It was great until you set the phone down mid call to retrieve a pen or whatever.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 13:12

Wanamingo: Feb 22, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

They still have one of those near me. Never been.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 13:31

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

The last time I went to a drive-in was in 1979 to see Star Trek - The Motion Picture.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 14:19

BogDew: Jun 14, 2006; E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli

The last time I went to a drive-in was to a movie premiere. The on-set stories fluttering around during the drinks were better than the film that resulted.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 14:25

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

mrkillboy posted:

Did anyone have a Scandiphone? The brief rotary phone chat reminded me of it.

My grandparents had an Ericophone when I was a kid. They're quite collectible now, at least certain colors of them. They were called the cobra phone here. (Kobratelefonen) because of the earpiece's similarity to a rearing cobra.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 14:52

Mocking Bird: Aug 17, 2011

HonorableTB posted:

I used to have an old Magnavox, like this but the screen was maybe six inches bigger:

It weighed drat near 250 pounds. It was on top of a six foot TV stand and it took four of us to get it down and then we had to put it on a dolly to get it to the truck, and to get it on the truck we had to use a pneumatic jack to raise the drat thing up to the truck bed.

This was from a few pages back, but I dropped one of these on my foot when I was a teenager :catstare:

I was moving it from a shelf to another shelf by myself. It had convenient grips on the back, so I essentially was clutching it in a bear hug. My back twinged and a hand slipped.

I'm lucky I don't have a metal plate in my foot. I snapped a corner off the bottom trim with my metatarsals.

Now my TV is a 22" Planar monitor. Never forget.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 17:12

Captain Trips: May 23, 2013; The sudden reminder that I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about

I thought I had it bad moving this beast:

32" Sharp.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 17:25

BigHustle: Oct 19, 2005; Fast and Bulbous

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

I'm planning to hit the closest one in a weekend or so. There is one about 20 minutes from here and two or three more within an hour drive.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 17:49

Ron Burgundy: Dec 24, 2005; This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.

Dick Trauma posted:

For a little while in the 1970s the '20s and '30s became popular, so you saw goofy retro stuff like the candlestick phone making a comeback. My aunt had one and they were annoying to use.

I have a 20s candlestick without a dial, you were expected to use the operator, another obsolete technology.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 18:06

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

Captain Trips posted:

I have to use a fax machine at least every other day at work. I literally just mash buttons until something happens.

Why do people still use these gigantic paperweights?

Geoj posted:

Ugh fax machines

I do phone support for a major tire manufacturer's retail stores so we inevitably end up fielding "our fax machine from 1994/bargain basement level all-in-one printer with fax capability isn't working" calls. Upper management has already decreed that they aren't supporting fax machines anymore, but the stores inevitably have a sob story about why they can't use the e-fax service provided by corporate - typically "we do business with whatever government agency and need a standalone fax machine."

I manage the VoIP network for my company and faxes are an ever present thorn in my side. Faxes don't always play well with VoIP systems and it's not always easy to figure out why. Some times it's as easy as a codec issue or a signalling problem. Other times it's just some evil spirit haunting the phone lines and you never can figure it out. We had a branch office that could not fax our headquarters office for 6 months and we never were able to figure out why. Nothing had changed on either end to start the problem, and both locations could send a receive faxes to other locations with out issue.

I was able to wait out the problem. The remote location was upgraded to be a member of our Cisco Call Manager phone system, and then I was able to route their faxes on our internal network: Problem solved.

We have to keep faxes for 2 reasons:

1: The HR department has special requirements for a lot of forms that have to be sent in to them. The have a fax machine in a secured office that they use. They won't use email because of the electronic copies and for other legal reasons I won't pretend to know.

2: My company sells products to a lot of smaller mom-and-pops stores and small organizations. Many of them place their orders through fax.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 18:17

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

We gave up on running faxes through the VoIP system and just have POTS lines for the two faxes we('re forced to) use.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 18:26

GWBBQ: Jan 2, 2005

Ensign Expendable posted:

Are radio contests still a thing? I can't imagine anyone listening to a radio these days unless they're in a car, and it's not like you're going to be dialing a phone while driving.

The wonder of modern phones is that not only can you dial hands-free, if you really wanted to get fancy you could set your phone to recognize the DJ on your preferred station telling you to call in and do it automatically.

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

We have a few still open in CT and another opening this summer.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 18:29

smackfu: Jun 7, 2004

On the portable Sony Discman subject, they had some ridiculous options in the interface. Like programmable track order which seems pretty pointless looking back.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 18:50

Sunshine89: Nov 22, 2009

EatMySpork posted:

Speaking of Walkmans, I just found one of these in a old box not to long ago.

My aunt had that exact yellow Walkman in the mid 1990s, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I also remember getting this Discman DNS 505 in the early aughts from my parents for my 13th? birthday:

smackfu posted:

On the portable Sony Discman subject, they had some ridiculous options in the interface. Like programmable track order which seems pretty pointless looking back.

That may have been handy if you had a burned CD and you didn't like the track order on it; kind of like a CD based playlist function

Ron Burgundy posted:

Hah, you guys and your modern CRT televisions.

I do NOT enjoy moving this thing, hence the carpet square it more or less lives on.

drat, that is one beautiful TV. Love the sunburst dials! Would you be able to tell us more about it, and what year it's from?

For content:

On the subject of retro appliances, Philco had a really neat model in the early 1950s: the V-Handle

The door on this fridge was hinged on both sides- pull the V to the right, and it operates as a left hinged fridge. Pull the V to the left, and the left hinge releases and the door operates right hinged. Looks awesome, and saved the need to make a left and right hinged model. There was one major drawback, however- pull the handles the wrong way, and both of the hinges release, and a heavy fridge door falls forward on you.

Also, if you want a 1950s style fridge, without the CFCs, stratospheric electricity consumption or having to worry about your kids locking themselves inside it, Big Chill makes one. I believe it's an Amana with a custom casing.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 19:27

rockinricky: Mar 27, 2003

Humphreys posted:

These wonderful places

We still have a drive-in here in Pueblo, Colorado. It's one of 5 still operating in the state. With 3 screens, it's the largest one. They just upgraded all 3 screens to digital projection this year. They use low-power FM transmitters for audio, no more speakers hanging off the window.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 19:35

Lazlo Nibble: Jan 9, 2004; It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

smackfu posted:

On the portable Sony Discman subject, they had some ridiculous options in the interface. Like programmable track order which seems pretty pointless looking back.

That was a standard CD player feature at the time, but yeah, pretty pointless. It was really just so they could put "programmable" on the box.

Speaking of lost CD player features, I still miss in-track index points. :-(

# ? Apr 19, 2014 20:05

RoyKeen: Jul 24, 2007; Grimey Drawer

Lazlo Nibble posted:

That was a standard CD player feature at the time, but yeah, pretty pointless. It was really just so they could put "programmable" on the box.

Speaking of lost CD player features, I still miss in-track index points. :-(

I dunno, I used the CD track program function fairly often. It was great when an album had an annoying song that I didn't want to listen to or a long, wanky instrumental or something.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 20:18

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

Collateral Damage posted:

We gave up on running faxes through the VoIP system and just have POTS lines for the two faxes we('re forced to) use.

We do that at any remote location that already has pots, but a lot of facilities have PRI or T1 cas service.

Cisco has better support these days for fax over IP in the form of T.38 but even that is a pain in the rear end since times.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 20:21

Lazlo Nibble: Jan 9, 2004; It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

The Ape of Naples posted:

I dunno, I used the CD track program function fairly often. It was great when an album had an annoying song that I didn't want to listen to or a long, wanky instrumental or something.

On the players I had it was always way more trouble to program than it was worth, especially given that you could always just use the remote to skip over stuff you didn't like. Later-gen players could treat it like a playlist and use it automatically whenever you played the disc afterwards, though, which makes it more useful.

# ? Apr 19, 2014 20:53

sweeperbravo: May 18, 2012; AUNT GWEN'S COLD SHAPE (!)

The Ape of Naples posted:

I dunno, I used the CD track program function fairly often. It was great when an album had an annoying song that I didn't want to listen to or a long, wanky instrumental or something.

Same. I could just program it to the songs I liked on the album, possibly repeating my favorite song in between all the others, and just go about cleaning my room without having to think about what was playing :shobon:

# ? Apr 19, 2014 21:08

GWBBQ: Jan 2, 2005

Sunshine89 posted:

On the subject of retro appliances, Philco had a really neat model in the early 1950s: the V-Handle

Everything

Philco

(credit: wipikepdia user Visitor7)

made

is awesome and all of it obsolete as hell (unless you consider the digital-analog TV converters made under the Philco name recently, but those don't really count.)

I really want a Predicta

# ? Apr 19, 2014 23:39

Der Luftwaffle: Dec 29, 2008

WebDog posted:

Aware of size Sony eventually came up with the D88. Which also played the new Mini-CDs.

Holy poo poo, all these years I've thought that was just an ill-conceived cyberpunk prop cooked up for Johnny Mnemonic.

# ? Apr 20, 2014 00:52

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 10:32

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Der Luftwaffle posted:

Holy poo poo, all these years I've thought that was just an ill-conceived cyberpunk prop cooked up for Johnny Mnemonic.

Ha, I was wondering where I recognized that from.

# ? Apr 20, 2014 03:02

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