Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

«‹›914 »

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Delivery McGee posted:

I'll occasionally turn up CF cards from old cameras from that era when I'm looking for something in a desk drawer, ranging from 16MB, came with a middlin' consumer point-and-shoot, to 256MB, issued to me by the newspaper for their Nikon D1, and generally plenty for a day's shooting, though we had a couple of 1GB IBM Microdrives in case somebody had an especially full day planned or was going off the grid for a weekend to shoot a feature on the local hermit or whatever:

We were cautioned to be very gentle with them. Didn't the original iPods have those, and were marketed to joggers, leading to a rather high rate of breakage?

For comparison, my current DSLR has two 32GB thumbnail-sized SD cards in it, that cost me as much combined as a a thousandth the space (and 1/50th the number of photos it could hold) as a 32MB card did back then. Throw the microSD card from the GoPro (with its adapter) into the rotation, and I have 96GB of storage for the big camera in like a sixth the physical size of two CF cards (a third the footprint, half as thick). Moore's Law is amazing, even if it did kinda run up against the laws of physics and flatten off lately.

To be honest, I prefer CF cards, they're easier to keep track of when you have spares, and small enough to be considered of negligible size for carrying around. OTOH, the only time I handle the pair of 32GB cards is putting them into the computer to process images, there's no swapping them on the fly -- I pretty much only dump them to a HDD and format them once a year. As opposed to every day or two for that 256MB CF card.

Compare that to 35mm film, which was the standard when I got started in photography -- for you kids, a 35mm can is about the size of a C battery and holds 24-39 frames (marketed as 24 and 36, but you can squeeze out a few extra if the camera is small and you're careful with loading):

And I own a 4x5 (that's the dimensions of the film in inches) camera, which holds two frames in a half-inch-thick plank:

Pull out the used one, slam in an unexposed one (press cameras had angled lips like the magwells on competition pistols to help guide it in), pull the dark slide, pres butan, replace the dark slide (no guide chute for the thin plastic card's slot), pull the holder out, flip, and reinsert it, pull the slide, press butan, replace slide, repeat.

There was, late in the life of the 4x5 press cameras, a six-shot quick-change film holder that telescoped out to shuffle the sheets of film like flipping through a stack of papers. Pull the dark slide, then pump it like a sideways shotgun to move the exposed frame to the back and drop a fresh one into position. Though if you didn't pull it hard enough you could jam it, and if you pulled too hard it'd come apart. And the loading procedure was a bit complicated, to put it mildly -- remember, that's performed by feel in complete darkness.

Anybody want an effortpost on the various film/digital formats? Teaser: Why DSLRs that cost less than $used car get a bonus with long lenses:

Also one of the Demigods of Photography was once fired by Life magazine for preferring a "miniature" camera -- W. Eugene Smith was an early adopter of 35mm when 4x5 Speed Graphics were the standard.

I got into film photography a little over a year ago. It's really something for serious photography nerds, not a person who gets a DSLR and takes fancy shots when they feel like it. The amount of effort put into the act of taking photos forces you to be careful with your pictures and only take shots that you want to keep, instead of rapid firing the shutter at everything you see and deleting the blurry ones out of the resulting 300 images. There's also the developing time, which is either more time and effort on your part or money you spend to take the negatives to a store (and good luck if you don't have a good photo store nearby and need to mail your shots elsewhere to get them developed).

# ? Mar 16, 2017 17:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 04:47

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Delivery McGee posted:

Yeah, but you at least had to get the leader aligned with the cog with 35mm, APS was true drop-in.

There was still drop-in thanks to 126 and other cartridge film. APS was just another alternative that was better for small cameras, and almost immediately got shoved out by compact digital.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 18:08

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Didn't APS hit the market just before consumer digital cameras started hitting a decent bang/buck ratio and the writing was pretty well on the wall for analog film?

# ? Mar 16, 2017 18:19

boar guy: Jan 25, 2007

would love to know the failure rate on these:

always seemed insanely complicated to me for a piece of hardware you swapped a disc drive out for

# ? Mar 16, 2017 18:23

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Collateral Damage posted:

Didn't APS hit the market just before consumer digital cameras started hitting a decent bang/buck ratio and the writing was pretty well on the wall for analog film?

I think there was a 8ish year span, unless I'm actually thinking of a different format. A little shorter if you count sub-5 megapixels

# ? Mar 16, 2017 18:28

pienipple: Mar 20, 2009; That's wrong!

Elias_Maluco posted:

I still have this little fella that I used for years

Quite simple, but worked pretty well, and didnt required any special drivers or programs to copy files from/to it, which is always a big plus on my book. 20 GB storage, very good battery life, pretty small

His weak point was that little control stick , which eventually broke. If wasnt for that I would probably be still using it

The screen on mine broke, and you can't get a replacement screen for love nor money. I tried.

Really good little player, used it for a long time.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 18:39

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

I have one of these that still works perfectly on my Handspring Prism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P148FDXfIg

# ? Mar 16, 2017 22:09

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

I used MP3 CDs for a good while.

Better than early flash MP3 players, IMO.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 22:13

Snow Cone Capone: Jul 31, 2003

aaaand now I'm looking up how to mod a CF card into a Zen Nano, thanks thread

# ? Mar 16, 2017 22:21

Samuel L. ACKSYN: Feb 29, 2008

I remember wanting this back in the day.

It plugs into your Playstation and then you can (presumably very poorly) play MP3s from a CD.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 23:12

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Delivery McGee posted:

I took a photography course in high school in the mid-90s (yes, yes, :corsair:

). I was never anything special at the artistic parts like shot composition, but I loved the hell out of developing the 35mm film and making prints in an enlarger. Partly because there was something so wonderfully chemical about the whole thing, and partly just because the darkroom was a cool place to hang out.)

# ? Mar 16, 2017 23:30

Magnus Praeda: Jul 18, 2003; The largess in the land.

Powered Descent posted:

I took a photography course in high school in the mid-90s (yes, yes, ). I was never anything special at the artistic parts like shot composition, but I loved the hell out of developing the 35mm film and making prints in an enlarger. Partly because there was something so wonderfully chemical about the whole thing, and partly just because the darkroom was a cool place to hang out.)

My grandmother taught me how to develop photos over the course of a few years and I took a couple summer classes in photography when I was younger that were all still done using 35mm. I agree that there's something wonderfully satisfying about developing your own prints that's lacking from digital. I won't ever knock the incredible convenience that is taking hundreds of shots without once thinking about swapping rolls and then just sorting out the crap later, though.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 23:50

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

And then there's stuff like rollfilm, where you need to pray that the film rolls up tightly on the take-up roll to avoid severe light leaks. I just love using lovely cameras like Holgas and Dianas for that. I even have a collection of Brownies and Ansco box cameras from the 1900s to the 1930s.

My current collection:

The boxed cameras in the back are an Ilford Sprite 35, a Kodak Junior Six-20, and an original Diana-F from the 1960s. The one in the leather case is an Argus C3 Matchmatic.

# ? Mar 16, 2017 23:57

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

Platystemon posted:

I used MP3 CDs for a good while.

Better than early flash MP3 players, IMO.

I had one of these before the Zen MP3 player. I realized I still had it while going through some old boxes. And yes, it still works.

I could get about 125-140 songs on a CD.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 01:22

Trabant: Nov 26, 2011; All systems nominal.

Mister Kingdom posted:

I had one of these before the Zen MP3 player. I realized I still had it while going through some old boxes. And yes, it still works.

I could get about 125-140 songs on a CD.

Oh hell yes, that thing was fantastic. Had that exact model and it saved my sanity on many Rochester-NYC train rides in 1998/9.

The only thing that sucked about the concept was entirely my fault: my cheap rear end insisted on using cheap CD-Rs, getting only about a 50% success rate with my burns.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 02:15

taiyoko: Jan 10, 2008

I went from a CD player (can't remember if it did mp3 cds or not) to the Creative Zen Sleek Photo around 2006 or so.

20 gigs of hard drive based storage. Downside is the proprietary software for managing playlists, though files can be added via mtp. Also, proprietary connector to the USB cord, but that was still fairly common. Discovered the hard way that if you let the battery get too low that you have to charge it via wall charger, as it wouldn't wake up long enough to ask the computer for the higher charging voltage on usb. Would still use it for long car trips, except the battery is fubar and I can't be bothered to try ripping it open even if I could find a replacement. My phone's mostly good enough, aside from fiddling with the touch screen while driving.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 02:59

RC and Moon Pie: May 5, 2011

I also work for a newspaper. It's a treasure trove of technology dating back 10-20 years as no one has cleaned out anything since then. We also have an old darkroom, likely with some chemicals remaining. There are certainly the clothespins to hang drying images. Film was still in use until perhaps 2003ish, based on the CDs I can find.

Found these artifacts in some desk drawers:

There are LAYERS of these. I'm going to check the area Goodwills to see if I can find a reader. None will likely work, but I'm curious. Our online archives don't go that far back.

Also found some old laptops that came complete with a file listing free dialup numbers when using them on the road.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 03:30

Inco: Apr 3, 2009; I have been working out! My modem is broken and my phone eats half the posts I try to make, including all the posts I've tried to make here. I'll try this one more time.

Mister Kingdom posted:

I had one of these before the Zen MP3 player. I realized I still had it while going through some old boxes. And yes, it still works.

I could get about 125-140 songs on a CD.

This is the Memorex Who-Gives-A-poo poo. It's a portable CD player that no one cared about because it was clearly the "budget model". This is what you got when you couldn't afford a Walkman, let alone an iPod. It's the best goddamn CD player I ever had. AM/FM Tuner, MP3 CD support, on-board equalizer, bass boost, and a very capable anti-shock system. Built like a tank. This thing has survived falls onto pavement, onto tile flooring, down a couple of flights of stairs, and it's even had a car door slammed on it. The screen is completely destroyed, the spring that opens the device is broken, the hinge is cracked, it's over 15 years old and spent the last 10 of those in a box full of other electronic detritus. It still works.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 04:16

Wasabi the J: Jan 23, 2008; MOM WAS RIGHT

drat, you guys made me nostalgic for my old MP3 CD player, simply because it was really when I had all the time in the world to listen to music on the bus or walking, so having a pocket full of CD's meant I had days worth of music.

My musical tastes really expanded then.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 04:39

Rev. Bleech_: Oct 19, 2004; ~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Last Chance posted:

my gf had one and the battery died after a year and it never woke up again. My iPod 5th gen from 2006 still works

if you call having to use iTunes for anything "working" I guess. My 2007 shitbrick-colored 30GB Zune is still working for the relative I gave it to after I got my 120GB in 2008, which also still works just dandy. Meh.

Criticism of the Zune boils down to "it doesn't have an Apple logo".

# ? Mar 17, 2017 04:58

carry on then: Jul 10, 2010; by VideoGames
(and can't post for 10 years!)

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

if you call having to use iTunes for anything "working" I guess. My 2007 shitbrick-colored 30GB Zune is still working for the relative I gave it to after I got my 120GB in 2008, which also still works just dandy. Meh.

Criticism of the Zune boils down to "it doesn't have an Apple logo".

Trivially, no.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 05:13

Geoj: May 28, 2008; BITTER POOR PERSON

Efexeye posted:

would love to know the failure rate on these:

always seemed insanely complicated to me for a piece of hardware you swapped a disc drive out for

If my experience as a field tech at a third-party service provider to Fujifilm is anything to go on, probably pretty high.

The biggest issue with the autoloading feature on an APS canister was the end of the roll would inevitably curl too much for the extraction mechanism to catch. This isn't an issue if you have access to a detacher and end shaping tool - remove the film from the canister and cut a new end (very specific shape cut by a die, you could probably do it with scissors and a template if you were patient and had a very steady hand) or worst case scenario feed it manually into your carrier like a roll of 35mm, but home users wouldn't have access to any of that. And on top of that the mechanism that interfaces with the cartridge was very complex and failure-prone on professional photofinishing equipment costing well into 6 figures, I can only imagine the corners they would have cut on a consumer-grade film scanner.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 05:26

The Fuzzy Hulk: Nov 22, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT CROSSING THE STREAMS

The very first thing I ever bought from Amazon was an 80gb iPod. I filled it with music and got a cord to hook it to my car deck, it was incredible (for ten years ago). My girlfriend would pick songs while I drove and I even put some shows on it for my son to watch during car trips. I remember thinking that I would keep it forever.

10 years later and it's been 100% replaced with my phone almost as an afterthought. Now I just get in my car, say "hey Siri play Colin Hay" and it does it like I own KITT.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 06:03

Remulak: Jun 8, 2001; I can't count to four.; Yams Fan

RC and Moon Pie posted:

Dammit somebody figure out the Cover Story disk with Batman on it. What the hell is i?

# ? Mar 17, 2017 06:25

DoctorWhat: Nov 18, 2011; A little privacy, please?

send me that ipod please I'd give it a good home

# ? Mar 17, 2017 06:26

RC and Moon Pie: May 5, 2011

Remulak posted:

Dammit somebody figure out the Cover Story disk with Batman on it. What the hell is i?

Weekly syndicated packages for newspapers, from what I can find.

It's c. 1995-96. Perhaps it's an interface for accessing an FTP or some kind of binaries database. That's the only thing that makes sense to me as to why there would be several different versions.

Everything like that now is a simple PDF. I can only imagine how horrendous it would have been then.

I'll bring the disk home and see if it's still readable.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 06:49

InediblePenguin: Sep 27, 2004; I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.

For Christmas in the mid-2000s my mom bought me a Chinese-made mp3 player that was externally designed to vaguely resemble an iPod and had one of those drives that lies about how much space is on it -- when you plugged it in it claimed it had 5 GB but it was actually only 128kb, most of which was taken up by the operating system. It could play tracks, but the nav-button circle on the front was just a sticker, so you couldn't actually skip tracks or otherwise have any control over it. I never asked her how much she paid for it because the answer would have been "too much" no matter what it was

# ? Mar 17, 2017 06:50

Wasabi the J: Jan 23, 2008; MOM WAS RIGHT

DoctorWhat posted:

send me that ipod please I'd give it a good home

I have two of the 6th gen (""Classic"") ones with 120GB in a kitchen drawer.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 07:02

KakerMix: Apr 8, 2004; 8.2 M.P.G.

The Fuzzy Hulk posted:

The very first thing I ever bought from Amazon was an 80gb iPod.

I went back and looked at the first thing I ever bought off Amazon.

Physical media is most certainly obsolete.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 07:48

DoctorWhat: Nov 18, 2011; A little privacy, please?

Wasabi the J posted:

I have two of the 6th gen (""Classic"") ones with 120GB in a kitchen drawer.

pm me

# ? Mar 17, 2017 07:53

Cat Hassler: Feb 7, 2006; Slippery Tilde

My best friend in junior high had an Atari 2600 but my dad was loyal to the Magnavox store in town

So for Christmas in 1981 we got this:

I have this in my basement with basically every game cartridge that came out for it.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 08:07

Serperoth: Feb 21, 2013

Cba for screenshots, but the first things I bought on Amazon were a Simpsons t-shirt for my dad, a buckle-less belt and two belt buckles for me.

I remember being pleasantly surprised that they were here Monday morning, when I ordered Friday afternoon.

Are pre-paid cards obsolete? I remember them being the first measure of security when ordering online, so that your card info wouldn't have too much consequence (if they got it, they could only take how much you put in, which generally wasn't a whole lot), but I haven't heard of them being used any time recently.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 11:04

Kwyndig: Sep 23, 2006; Heeeeeey

Better consumer protections have effectively phased out the use of prepaid cards except for those who don't, for various reasons, have bank accounts.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 11:33

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

The only time I hear about prepaid cards nowadays is when people are talking about scams.

I don't know if it's common in the US, but prepaid cards got obsoleted by virtual cards here ( :sweden:

). I just log in to my online bank and generate a temporary card that draws from my regular account up to a chosen limit.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 11:44

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

Collateral Damage posted:

The only time I hear about prepaid cards nowadays is when people are talking about scams.

I don't know if it's common in the US, but prepaid cards got obsoleted by virtual cards here (). I just log in to my online bank and generate a temporary card that draws from my regular account up to a chosen limit.

Prepaid cards are still attractive for underage kids.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 11:50

Shrieking Muppet: Jul 16, 2006

Serperoth posted:

Cba for screenshots, but the first things I bought on Amazon were a Simpsons t-shirt for my dad, a buckle-less belt and two belt buckles for me.

I remember being pleasantly surprised that they were here Monday morning, when I ordered Friday afternoon.

Are pre-paid cards obsolete? I remember them being the first measure of security when ordering online, so that your card info wouldn't have too much consequence (if they got it, they could only take how much you put in, which generally wasn't a whole lot), but I haven't heard of them being used any time recently.

I will admit to still using one to keep myself from buying crap I don't need. other wise things like gas and groceries go on my regular credit card that gets paid off at the end of the month.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 12:11

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

KakerMix posted:

I went back and looked at the first thing I ever bought off Amazon.

Physical media is most certainly obsolete.

We already know digitally distributed commercial content will become not only obsolete but extinct in the near future (it has already happened a few times for certain content).

# ? Mar 17, 2017 12:18

spog: Aug 7, 2004; It's your own bloody fault.

SEKCobra posted:

Prepaid cards are still attractive for underage kids.

I guess if you are buying underage kids, it makes sense to use a prepaid card and not one tied to your identity.

# ? Mar 17, 2017 13:07

Last Chance: Dec 31, 2004

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

if you call having to use iTunes for anything "working" I guess. My 2007 shitbrick-colored 30GB Zune is still working for the relative I gave it to after I got my 120GB in 2008, which also still works just dandy. Meh.

Criticism of the Zune boils down to "it doesn't have an Apple logo".

Also some of them were poo poo brown lol

# ? Mar 17, 2017 13:15

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 04:47

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Speaking of prepaid cards, Sweden had a hilarious fiasco on that subject 20 years ago. The four major banks banded together and launched something they dubbed the "Cash Card" in 1997. It was a simple, unauthenticated prepaid chip card that intended to replace cash for small transactions, while being much faster to use than a traditional Visa/MC. At the time most stores still had dial-up card terminals that could take up to a minute to process a credit card.

You added money to the card by using terminals that were installed near ATMs, in shopping areas, in grocery stores etc, and you could at most store 1500 SEK (about $170 at today's rate) on the card. Using it was similar to using a chip and pin card today except you didn't need to enter a pin, you just hit a green OK button to confirm the purchase. At the time it was much faster than using a regular card.

The whole thing fell flat for a variety of reasons. I had one and can probably count on my fingers the amount of times I actually used it.

The main one was that the banks got greedy and charged fees both by the consumer and the retailer. For the consumer there was a fee when you added money to the card, and for the retailer there was a per transaction fee which was counterproductive to the goal that Cash Card should be the favored method of payment for small purchases.

Because of that, it was only ever adopted by a few large grocery and gas station chains. So even if you had a Cash Card it was hard finding a place where you could use it. The banks never attempted to market or integrate it in places where an alternative to coins would be welcome, such as parking meters or vending machines.

Adding money to the card was annoying and time consuming, and the terminals you had to use often broke down or threw errors. You also couldn't get money back off the card after it was loaded. e: This also meant that if you lost your card any money on it was gone.

The final nail in the coffin was always-online card terminals becoming more common which process a regular credit card in seconds, removing the only advantage of the Cash Card. The entire system was shitcanned in 2004, although by then it had been pretty much dead for a few years.

Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 13:35 on Mar 17, 2017

# ? Mar 17, 2017 13:16

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

«‹›914 »