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 Yup a force feedback mouse. You have to zoom in to attempt to read the text but it's advertising that you'll get a jolt when tracks are laid down or trains crash in Railroad Tycoon. I wonder how annoying this got and how much it knocked off your aim.  One way to reuse VHS I guess...
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Aug 1, 2015 17:21
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WebDog posted:
If anyone has this version (the external one) please send it to me thanks in advance.
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Aug 1, 2015 17:27
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WebDog posted:
quote:Throughput is up to 9MB/min, so backing up a gigabyte of data would take at least an hour. What does is look like when played
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Aug 1, 2015 17:43
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WebDog posted:One way to reuse VHS I guess... 
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Aug 1, 2015 18:01
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Lurking Haro posted:That doesn't really add up. http://linbacker.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
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Aug 1, 2015 18:14
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Lurking Haro posted:That doesn't really add up. They're probably compressing the data and figuring a "typical" compression rate when giving the "hour for a gig" spec. Every crappy consumer-focused backup device I used in the old days did this (qic-80, Travan, Castlewood Orb, etc)
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Aug 1, 2015 18:39
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Tape backups are still a thing. in the 80s and 90s, there were around for PCs and they were pretty goddamn expensive. They weren't for home use, but small businesses and people who ran a business from their house used the desktop version. I can see that an inexpensive device that used VHS tapes instead of special, horribly expensive, data tapes could have it's use. 4GB were an insane amount of data in the 1980s. Hard disks were typically 20-40 Megabytes in the late 80s. I remember seeing ads for a device to record your records to VHS tapes for better audio playback than Compact Cassettes. Now that didn't go anywhere.
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Aug 1, 2015 18:45
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pienipple posted:Google Now's voice recognition seems to work okay, not infallible but it's usually pretty close. Yeah its surprisingly accurate now. As in I can speak normal sentences into it and it gets it 95% of the time.
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Aug 1, 2015 18:55
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Went back and watched the first Mission: Impossible film before seeing the newest one. It's great seeing everyone toss around Magneto-Optical discs; pretty sensible choice for the amount of information they hold in the film.
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Aug 1, 2015 19:54
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axolotl farmer posted:Tape backups are still a thing. in the 80s and 90s, there were around for PCs and they were pretty goddamn expensive. They weren't for home use, but small businesses and people who ran a business from their house used the desktop version.
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Aug 1, 2015 20:40
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axolotl farmer posted:Tape backups are still a thing. in the 80s and 90s, there were around for PCs and they were pretty goddamn expensive. They weren't for home use, but small businesses and people who ran a business from their house used the desktop version. The pawn shop I worked for in the early 90s used VHS tapes as backup. Not sure what system they used.
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Aug 1, 2015 20:48
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Mister Kingdom posted:The pawn shop I worked for in the early 90s used VHS tapes as backup. Not sure what system they used. My dumbass uncle had the fantastic idea to back up all his music to VHS. In his own words, you could get 8 hours on one tape and it's in high fidelity. You just had to remember the tracking number for each song.
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Aug 1, 2015 23:53
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Krispy Kareem posted:My dumbass uncle had the fantastic idea to back up all his music to VHS. In his own words, you could get 8 hours on one tape and it's in high fidelity. You just had to remember the tracking number for each song. I do remember that back in the day some people were mixing their 4 track cassette down to VHS. Fake Edit: http://homerecording.com/vhs.html
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Aug 2, 2015 00:07
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axolotl farmer posted:4GB were an insane amount of data in the 1980s. Hard disks were typically 20-40 Megabytes in the late 80s. My current PC has 40 times as much RAM as my first PC in 1994 had hard drive space. It is indeed crazy.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:13
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Cephalectomy posted:Having used the most basic of phones since the 80's I can. Honestly say smart phones suck at being phones but are okay as handheld media devices As someone who held off on getting any cell phone at all until two months ago because having a phone with you all the time seemed pointless, having Internet access anywhere is even more useful than I expected and I still have yet to make or receive a single phone call on it.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:36
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Jedit posted:My current PC has 40 times as much RAM as my first PC in 1994 had hard drive space. It is indeed crazy. And yet it takes just as long - if not longer - to boot up to a usable state.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:37
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pienipple posted:Google Now's voice recognition seems to work okay, not infallible but it's usually pretty close. I have the Moto 360 watch, and I set a timer for 10mins today while walking around at Quincy Market in Downtown Boston (relatively busy area for those of you that have never been or heard of it) and all I did was hold the watch up to my mouth and it picked it up perfectly.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:38
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spog posted:And yet it takes just as long - if not longer - to boot up to a usable state. Normal boot times have been between 45 seconds to, say, two minutes tops for decades, but my current laptop boots in 15 seconds flat to a honest to god usable state.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:51
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Krispy Kareem posted:My dumbass uncle had the fantastic idea to back up all his music to VHS. In his own words, you could get 8 hours on one tape and it's in high fidelity. You just had to remember the tracking number for each song. That'd be useful for a restaurant that needed eight hours of background muzak with minimal effort. Not now, of course, but back then.
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Aug 2, 2015 00:52
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Jedit posted:My current PC has 40 times as much RAM as my first PC in 1994 had hard drive space. It is indeed crazy. My phone has 3 gigs of RAM; my family's IIc had 128 kb still had good games, though. hard hat mack, conan, spy vs spy and california games...haven't come across a decent hacky sack simulator since.
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Aug 2, 2015 01:24
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There are still people in this world who really love their Apple II machines.
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Aug 2, 2015 02:44
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taiyoko posted:There are still people in this world who really love their Apple II machines. I was honestly a little surprised this wasn't a link to that TLC show about people who fall in love with inanimate objects.
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Aug 2, 2015 04:29
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taiyoko posted:There are still people in this world who really love their Apple II machines. Yeah, and some of them are goons. I still have a Woz Limited Edition that has an OctoRAM board that gives it 4 GB of RAM (using Mac SIMMs) , with the 512MB static RAM option; I modified GS/OS 6.01 to fit in it, giving me a machine that could cold boot from an internal RAM drive years before the term SSD was even invented. I visit the storage unit I keep it in every year to make sure it still boots. I keep meaning to download GS/OS 6.02, an incredible effort by Apple //gs hackers to patch bugs in an OS whose last official update was 22 years ago. If you ever suddenly hear the strains of Zany Golf echoing while walking through a storage vendor, that'll probably be me.
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Aug 2, 2015 05:17
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Someone did get their Mac Plus up and running with today's internet. The secret was to feed most of the processing through a Raspberry Pi along with some wrangling of data to get things onto the Mac itself in the absence of any floppies.  
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Aug 2, 2015 05:56
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It's basically the opposite of obsolete but I was in a bar today where you used your phone to tune in audio from one of the 50 TVs. Why do other people keep realizing my ideas  ?
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Aug 2, 2015 06:03
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Go Classic... Owned one. It worked!
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Aug 2, 2015 06:46
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0dB posted:Owned one. It worked! For sufficiently small values of "worked," at least going by that article.
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Aug 2, 2015 07:02
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:As someone who held off on getting any cell phone at all until two months ago because having a phone with you all the time seemed pointless, having Internet access anywhere is even more useful than I expected and I still have yet to make or receive a single phone call on it. For me the biggest deal was mapping. Being able to know where you are in basically any city or town is huge.
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Aug 2, 2015 08:20
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That Mac Plus story is interesting, I wonder what the oldest machine capable of posting to SA is? Seems like the big bottleneck would be the browser, but if something like Lynx were to work I think you could go quite far back, since there are open source OSes designed for ancient computers that support modern networking. Of course, the physical connection is another barrier, they make Ethernet ISA cards but I have no idea if they would work with whatever distribution you choose.
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Aug 2, 2015 08:38
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Konstantin posted:That Mac Plus story is interesting, I wonder what the oldest machine capable of posting to SA is? If you allow another device to assist (like the Raspberry Pi in the Mac Plus’s case), it becomes a question of exactly how much help you’re willing to allow. A typewriter could post to SA with the proper assistance.
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Aug 2, 2015 09:01
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Well you can buy typewriter to USB input conversion kits. Or you mean something where the display is typed out in realtime. https://vimeo.com/16311288 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndJewdRu_4A
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Aug 2, 2015 09:11
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NLJP posted:For me the biggest deal was mapping. Being able to know where you are in basically any city or town is huge. It wasn't until this year or last year that I suddenly had a realization as to how revolutionary smartphone GPS has been, despite using it for several years by now. I've been going on extended road trips and long drives regularly since 2007 (I've spent probably a month or so of this year in hotel rooms already) and never had a vehicle with GPS. It wasn't until 2012 that we had our first road trip with Google Maps every step of the way. Before then, we used printouts of MapQuest directions and asking for help if we got too turned around. Having 24/7 access to a satellite map of the entire planet and automated routes (that correct themselves immediately if you miss a turn or exit) makes it virtually impossible to get lost as long as you have a connection. Even without using the directions myself, I'm able to use the excellent Google Maps imagery to look at roads and plot a quick route myself; this happened on our business/legal trip to Douglasville a few weeks ago, when a massive backup on I-75 led me to create a route to I-20 via back roads that had us arriving on time anyway. I do think smartphones are a brilliant leap forward in other directions, though. Constant internet access means you have basically any information you need wherever you are. We've kinda lost the old days where you could have long arguments about what a character's name is after seeing a movie or someone trying to spread bad facts and urban legends, as you can now immediately pull out your phone and Google whatever's being talked about for confirmation. The prevalence of unlimited texting allows for silent or nearly silent communication with anyone at all hours across the world. It also provides a great boon for people with social anxiety; I think that gets discounted by people who don't suffer from it, but it's really valuable to have a means of communication where you don't have the stress of actually needing to talk to someone (especially not face to face). There's even text-based suicide hotlines now, for people too nervous to actually speak. It honestly makes me wonder just how much farther we're going to be able to go. I know that we will eventually reach peak resolution for cameras (we're already approaching or exceeding the point where the human eye can readily tell a difference in detail), which means instead focusing on making them cheaper and smaller for their power. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually develop phone cameras that can match current DSLRs for image quality in normal conditions (the iPhone 6 can take really amazing shots with the right setup), which means some amazing things for the amateur film scene....and espionage.
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Aug 2, 2015 09:24
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Platystemon posted:If you allow another device to assist (like the Raspberry Pi in the Mac Plus’s case), it becomes a question of exactly how much help you’re willing to allow. A typewriter could post to SA with the proper assistance. Especially if you have an electronic typewriter that has an RS232 port on it (which actually exist). Hook it up to any Linux/BSD box and you have the most hipster of dumb terminals on your hands.
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Aug 2, 2015 09:27
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spog posted:And yet it takes just as long - if not longer - to boot up to a usable state. While throwing around hundreds of times more data. Efexeye posted:My phone has 3 gigs of RAM; my family's IIc had 128 kb I said "my first PC", not my first computer. My first computer had 1KB of RAM, expanded to 16KB with a module. Fun fact: if 1KB was represented by 1 pixel, graphing the trend for typical home computer memory over the last 40 years would require stacking 3884 1080p monitors on top of one another.
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Aug 2, 2015 09:38
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Was it a zx81?
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Aug 2, 2015 12:03
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Jabor posted:Voice recognition actually works really well if your accent resembles the training data used to program the voice recognition. I can't set the navigation on my phone using voice commands, because I have no idea how it wants me to pronounce "Wijchenseweg", the text to speech that reads street names out pronounces it as wye-chi-chi-ann-see-wok. Which is certainly an interesting way of pronouncing it, very wrong nonetheless but interesting.
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Aug 2, 2015 14:18
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Kazinsal posted:Especially if you have an electronic typewriter that has an RS232 port on it (which actually exist). Hook it up to any Linux/BSD box and you have the most hipster of dumb terminals on your hands. I think you'd have to make a restriction that the web browser and probably the network stack must run on the hardware; I've browsed the web on a 1977 ADM3a terminal connected to my desktop; with a little work, you could pretty easily read websites using an ASR33 printing terminal. The bigger challenge is getting a web browser running on a PDP-11 or a ZX81
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Aug 2, 2015 16:00
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NLJP posted:For me the biggest deal was mapping. Being able to know where you are in basically any city or town is huge. I think the best thing about smart phones is internet access if you really want to know a bit of info (not browsing as such, but price shopping, train timetables etc), music, and these days paying for things (can use a linked card). That said, I gave mine to my partner, now got my old nokia 8250 for phone calls/text only, so the last couple of pages in this thread make me want to upload some tunes and images. If I feel like I need a "smart" device for maps, music and info, I might get a tablet where it's easier to browse the net and if the battery goes flat it's no big deal. But right now I'm not going anywhere that I'm a stranger to, (I know my city very very well), and don't listen to music much any more. So I'm enjoying the only need to charge once a week old phone that's really tiny.
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Aug 2, 2015 16:28
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Jedit posted:I said "my first PC", not my first computer. My first computer had 1KB of RAM, expanded to 16KB with a module. Fun fact: if 1KB was represented by 1 pixel, graphing the trend for typical home computer memory over the last 40 years would require stacking 3884 1080p monitors on top of one another. The first one I used back in the day was an AIM Rockwell 65 with a wooden chassis that my dad made. It had the 16k upgraded RAM, 40 character display, and only worked with Machine Language. I discovered by using it that I would never be a programmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-65
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Aug 2, 2015 16:47
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Deedle posted:I know and that is exactly what makes it worthless to me, because 99% of my life isn't in Murraycan. Well, that's not so much a problem of "voice recognition isn't good" as "nobody's making good voice recognition for your market". In the 90s, the company my father was working for was one of the leading companies in the natural-language voice recognition field, and they were working on a Dutch product, but they got bought by Lernout & Hauspie which turned out to be a nightmare tangle of financial frauds and I don't know what's happened to the product since then.
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Aug 2, 2015 17:02
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