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I was submitting paperwork for a warranty replacement on something, and the company actually specifically only takes faxes. In the process of scanning the paper work, attaching it, and virtually faxing it, you'd think they would be able to just take OH I DON'T KNOW an emailed PDF??
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Sep 16, 2014 01:11
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Sappo569 posted:I was submitting paperwork for a warranty replacement on something, and the company actually specifically only takes faxes. Maybe they want the paperwork to be difficult to deter warranty claims.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:19
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Drone_Fragger posted:Re: Fax machines: That's a pretty much solved problem, sign it with your PGP key (or an x.whatevernumber certificate, it's all the same idea) and then it's pretty much impossible to modify without access to your private keys.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:30
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I like fax machines where I work. When we need to send anything important that we are accountable for sending, we just fax and forget it. As long as we have a transmission receipt then gently caress them if their machine didn't print right or a cat knocked the thing over or whatever. It's nice to have someone on the other end with some skin in the game in making sure they get what we send. If it's anyone we have a working relationship with and not just an obligation, it's all email though.
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Sep 16, 2014 03:26
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Arsenic Lupin posted:But, you say, that's not obsolete! Quite right. But in 1855, a man named James Allen Edward Gibbs saw a single woodcut of a lockstitch sewing machine, then started messing around to see if he could puzzle out the mechanism. His solution, although he didn't realize it at first, was entirely original.  
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Sep 16, 2014 04:21
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I really love mechanical stuff. It's magic, man. Moving parts, interlocking, and running for years and years and years if treated right. (glares at laptop)
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Sep 16, 2014 07:21
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I really love mechanical stuff. It's magic, man. Moving parts, interlocking, and running for years and years and years if treated right. (glares at laptop) So I get what you're saying and agree for the most part- but I've worked in computer repair, and the most likely components to fail in a laptop are ironically the only mechanical parts, the HDD disk or the optical drive. You could theoretically keep most computers running for decades (if you had access to the correct integrated circuits), I just don't know why you'd want to. Maybe if we hit some kind of plateau with computers, you'd see much more reusable and user-serviceable parts. My roommate just got a universal AC adapter in the mail to replace one for a back massage cushion- thinking of using it to fire up my old 486DX laptop and see if it still runs. Probably still has FreeDOS on there if I recall what I was doing with it a decade ago correctly (taking class notes in EDIT.EXE and playing Colonization).
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Sep 16, 2014 08:18
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Zereth posted:I remember back when phone line modems were common there being software to interface with a fax machine on your computer. So you know, they're not any more secure there. Fuckin WinFax - It came free with lovely modems usually and was a pain in the rear end to set up and support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFax
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Sep 16, 2014 12:12
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Most big businesses would be using email to fax (and vice versa) gateways, so when you send a fax it would likely go email->fax->receiving fax->email. loving ridiculous.
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Sep 16, 2014 12:24
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Christmas Present posted:So I get what you're saying and agree for the most part- but I've worked in computer repair, and the most likely components to fail in a laptop are ironically the only mechanical parts, the HDD disk or the optical drive. You could theoretically keep most computers running for decades (if you had access to the correct integrated circuits), I just don't know why you'd want to. Maybe if we hit some kind of plateau with computers, you'd see much more reusable and user-serviceable parts. For the same reasons, I find it very odd that most people are so distrustful of solid state drives. Apart from a couple of bad eggs (OCZ...), they have much longer MTBF than traditional hard drives. Think about it. You're spinning a couple of magnetic metal discs at speeds of 120 revolutions per second (for 7200 rpm drives) or more, while reading and writing tiny tiny blocks of magnetic data using a voice coil-controlled arm that hovers above these discs at a distance smaller than a fleck of dust. And you expect this to work in perfectly reliability for a decade of daily use. It's a wonder it even works at all.
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Sep 16, 2014 13:36
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KozmoNaut posted:For the same reasons, I find it very odd that most people are so distrustful of solid state drives. Apart from a couple of bad eggs (OCZ...), they have much longer MTBF than traditional hard drives. Fun fact, the read/write heads of modern hard drives actually ride on a cushion of air. Western digital has developed hard drives that are filled with helium to reduce the air resistance in side the drive, but still allows the heads to ride their air cushion.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:13
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Lowen SoDium posted:Fun fact, the read/write heads of modern hard drives actually ride on a cushion of air. Western digital has developed hard drives that are filled with helium to reduce the air resistance in side the drive, but still allows the heads to ride their air cushion. How do they handle changes in altitude? Drives with conventional air bearings allow airflow between the inside and the external atmosphere, so the air bearing still functions correctly until you go high enough for low atmospheric pressure to result in a head crash. How do they maintain pressure equilibrium between the helium and the outside air?
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Sep 16, 2014 14:26
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At a guess, they are completely sealed, and the bodies are rigid enough that the volume (and thus pressure) inside is near enough constant?
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Sep 16, 2014 14:28
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Computer viking posted:At a guess, they are completely sealed, and the bodies are rigid enough that the volume (and thus pressure) inside is near enough constant? Dan says not, and he's pretty good at this stuff. Of course, that article is pretty old, so if we're making helium drives now they probably do have to be sealed. Since we're now talking about old forms of computer memory, may I take this opportunity to remind you all of the peak of computer memory.  Acoustic Delay Line Memory Basically you have a big drum filled with a liquid that suits the properties of the equipment you are using, mercury is a good candidate (isn't it always?). You stick transducers on each end, and fire the bit sequence into one transducer. WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB-WUB The pulses travel down the tube, hit the other transducer, fire around to an amp which sends them back to the first transducer, repeat. When you want to read the memory, just strip the amp signal off on the way through. Truly, no finer form of memory has been known.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:22
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Sir_Substance posted:
That thing looks like a loving spaceship reactor. I need one.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:31
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Oh, I know normal drives are vented - but helium is nigh impossible to contain, so they would kind of have to be solidly sealed. I guess they could have an atmosphere-connected air bladder inside , but at that point it seems simpler to just build it like a gas flask.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:43
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Christmas Present posted:So I get what you're saying and agree for the most part- but I've worked in computer repair, and the most likely components to fail in a laptop are ironically the only mechanical parts, the HDD disk or the optical drive. Spoiler: How the zigzag attachment works. Because Featherweights are designed and machined to drive the needle straight down, you can't move the needle back and forth. Instead, the attachment moves the fabric from side to side.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:53
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Speaking of disk drives, I found a big box of these things cleaning up around my office today.  I have literally never seen one of these before today. According to the label, they contain images from scientific expeditions from the early-mid 90s that have long since been published and backed up and archived elsewhere, but I was told to store them in a disused office instead of throwing them away. Also a bunch of magneto optical disks. I don't think there are even drives to read these things any more anywhere in my building. ReidRansom has a new favorite as of 17:30 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 17:23
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HonorableTB posted:That thing looks like a loving spaceship reactor. I need one.  And the dekatron which just looks awesome in operation:  There's currently one operational Dekatron computer in the world, the Harwell Computer, aka WITCH in Bletchley Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tR22G3-MU4
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Sep 16, 2014 17:33
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Sir_Substance posted:Truly, no finer form of memory has been known. Bubble memory is pretty nifty. My favorite obsolete electronics technology is integrated injection logic. Power consumption close to CMOS, but more robust (and unfortunately more complicated to manufacture).
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Sep 16, 2014 17:51
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ReidRansom posted:Speaking of disk drives, I found a big box of these things cleaning up around my office today.
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Sep 16, 2014 20:01
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Zopotantor posted:Bubble memory is pretty nifty. I always found it cute that the arcade game Bubble Bobble used Bubble memory EDIT: Or not, turns out it was used on Konami boards, not Tatio. SCheeseman has a new favorite as of 20:33 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 20:27
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Wikipedia says that it's a removable hard disk. I guess that, for space-intensive stuff like archived photographs, it was easier to have a stack of these and one drive for reading them than to have a whole bunch of individual hard drives. Nah, it was more like a higher density floppy disk. Publishing industry used it a lot as a way of transferring digital artwork before the internet was fast enough or CD burners were widely available. Pretty robust, too. You could Fedex them in an unpadded envelope without breaking them. I think they were too expensive per MB to use as archiving media - people would definitely ask for them back after use.
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Sep 16, 2014 20:37
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Collateral Damage posted:On the topic of old computer memory, you also have the Williams tube which operates similar to the delay line memory except the delay in this case is the time it takes for the phosphor in a CRT to fade: If you are in the London area and happen to have a day free, I highly recommend taking the train north (it's about 30 minutes out of the city) to Bletchley Park to visit the National Computing Museum there. The WITCH is on display and ticking away as are tons of other cool and nifty bits of historical technology, all safely in the "Obsolete" category of things.
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Sep 16, 2014 22:06
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Phanatic posted:How do they handle changes in altitude? Drives with conventional air bearings allow airflow between the inside and the external atmosphere, so the air bearing still functions correctly until you go high enough for low atmospheric pressure to result in a head crash. How do they maintain pressure equilibrium between the helium and the outside air? They don't. I worked at Dell at the Latin America servers dept. and Bolivia (among the tallest cities on Earth) had hilariously high hard drive failure rates. The worst part is that the drive warranty doesn't cover usage above a certain height.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:38
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ReidRansom posted:Speaking of disk drives, I found a big box of these things cleaning up around my office today. I stil have several of those. Before Zip disks arrived, those were the bee's knees for transferring big images. I think I paid $100 for each 88mb SyQuest disc. It's (more or less) a hard disc platter in a big plastic case.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:49
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Christmas Present posted:So I get what you're saying and agree for the most part- but I've worked in computer repair, and the most likely components to fail in a laptop are ironically the only mechanical parts, the HDD disk or the optical drive. You could theoretically keep most computers running for decades (if you had access to the correct integrated circuits), I just don't know why you'd want to. Maybe if we hit some kind of plateau with computers, you'd see much more reusable and user-serviceable parts. Yes, you can the problem with that is that a motherboard would cost like $20k+. There's an industry that has been doing this exact thing for years, pretty much everything micro-electronics in defense related stuff is built to last for obscene amounts of time and be repairable. It's how you have 30-40 year old hardware still running. The qualification of every part is absurd and the whole system even more so but things still fail sometimes. It's really just not worth the cost in the consumer market. It's a cost vs profit thing. Also electrons moving around is totally mechanical if you get down far enough...kinda.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:54
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spog posted:Nah, it was more like a higher density floppy disk. PhotoKirk posted:It's (more or less) a hard disc platter in a big plastic case.
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Sep 17, 2014 04:49
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TerryLennox posted:They don't. I worked at Dell at the Latin America servers dept. and Bolivia (among the tallest cities on Earth) had hilariously high hard drive failure rates. The worst part is that the drive warranty doesn't cover usage above a certain height. Was that more about heat dissipation than head crashes? Thinner air doesn't conduct heat as well.
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Sep 17, 2014 15:05
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Guy Axlerod posted:Was that more about heat dissipation than head crashes? Thinner air doesn't conduct heat as well. Hard drives don't really need to dissipate a lot of heat compared to a CPU or GPU, and most of it goes directly through the mounting points.
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Sep 17, 2014 16:51
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Single-Event Upset would hose the cache memory in the drive and cause data errors. Basically, ionizing radiation from space is bombarding the Earth constantly, which when it hits a memory cell can cause a bit corruption. The issue is more prevalent at altitude because the cosmic rays haven't broken down yet. http://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtml Don't even get me started on Tin Whiskers. We're all going to die, except all of this "obsolete" tech would still work because it's got huge lithography and lead-based solder. Dielectric has a new favorite as of 22:47 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 22:41
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KozmoNaut posted:Hard drives don't really need to dissipate a lot of heat compared to a CPU or GPU, and most of it goes directly through the mounting points. Hard drives put out an INSANE amount of heat in high density. At the last datacenter I worked at the SAN was by far the highest BTU device.
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Sep 18, 2014 01:45
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The other weekend I was in Goodwill and spied a couple of N64 controllers in decent shape. Not fantastic, but about as good as one can expect for 14-20 year old controllers. I bought them, and took them apart to clean them. Here's part of the reason the analog sticks on N64 went so bad: 
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Sep 18, 2014 13:37
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DrBouvenstein posted:The other weekend I was in Goodwill and spied a couple of N64 controllers in decent shape. Not fantastic, but about as good as one can expect for 14-20 year old controllers. I bought them, and took them apart to clean them. Is that some pulverized plastic from the stick or did you find a drug stash? e: Or is it (eww) dirt?
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Sep 18, 2014 13:40
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DrBouvenstein posted:The other weekend I was in Goodwill and spied a couple of N64 controllers in decent shape. Not fantastic, but about as good as one can expect for 14-20 year old controllers. I bought them, and took them apart to clean them. Edit: That reminds me, here's a top tip: If you have a TV remote where you have to push the buttons hard to get a reaction, take it apart and clean the PCB with acetone - the top side where the rubber buttons press down onto the contact areas. Ta-daa, your buttons should now be very senstitive once again.
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Sep 18, 2014 13:43
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Yeah, that's a combo of dust, and worn down plastic from the stick itself. Even after cleaning it, the stick remains a little loose, because it's worn down so it no longer fits in very well.
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Sep 18, 2014 13:47
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DrBouvenstein posted:Yeah, that's a combo of dust, and worn down plastic from the stick itself. Even after cleaning it, the stick remains a little loose, because it's worn down so it no longer fits in very well. Not sure how much this is worth to you: http://www.shapeways.com/model/373538/n64-joystick-links.html Success rates all over the map in review comments.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:14
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DrBouvenstein posted:The other weekend I was in Goodwill and spied a couple of N64 controllers in decent shape. Not fantastic, but about as good as one can expect for 14-20 year old controllers. I bought them, and took them apart to clean them. Yep, looks like a tiny mouse got in there and made a nest with plastic shavings. As one of the first analog thumbsticks it worked alright, but they were real pieces of crap in the long term.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:20
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The Aphasian posted:Not sure how much this is worth to you: You can get replacements for the entire module for $5, likely made out of a more durable plastic than the original or the 3D‐printed parts. Platystemon has a new favorite as of 15:36 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 15:30
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Platystemon posted:You can get replacements for the entire module for $5, likely made out of a more durable plastic than the original or the 3D‐printed parts. Yeah, I'm thinking about getting replacement modules. The replacement ones are all essentially copies of the one from the Gamecube controller. They aren't used for much. I got them for my girlfriend and her roommate, not myself. They have an N64 and love playing Mario kart/Smash Bros/etc.., and only have two working controllers. ow they have 4, and I plan to clean out their older two as well...maybe I'll get new joysticks for all of them while I'm at it.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:53
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