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On the topic of old phones that maybe were/still are obsolete, I have a box phone in my office: It's made to look like an ornately crafted wooden box, but it's actually plastic. Because it's so old it only half worked on my U-Verse VoIP. You could receive calls, but not make them. Now I've got it hooked up to an Ooma VoIP extender and it goes both ways. It's neat, but a bitch to actually open, untangle the cable, make a call, and then put it all back in place so it closes.
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Mar 25, 2017 23:15
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Krispy Kareem posted:I have a box phone in my office: Cool, I didn't know these existed, so what is your PC disguised as? Oh wait, is that just one of your photoshops? 
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Mar 26, 2017 01:14
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Krispy Kareem posted:On the topic of old phones that maybe were/still are obsolete, I have a box phone in my office: http://www.paul-f.com/weDesignLine.html Above site has a full listing of the Western Electric designer phones - growing up we had a chestphone too. It looked cool, but was completely impractical for the reasons you mention above.
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Mar 26, 2017 01:36
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Goober Peas posted:http://www.paul-f.com/weDesignLine.html  
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Mar 26, 2017 02:03
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I always wanted the telstar
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Mar 26, 2017 03:26
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Krispy Kareem posted:On the topic of old phones that maybe were/still are obsolete, I have a box phone in my office: This is the kind of chunky, boxy, stiff plastic Important Machine that a little Satan's Onion imagined her grownup self would use all the time in the course of doing Grownup Stuff 
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Mar 26, 2017 04:24
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https://youtu.be/Sx_qTIhtLj8 8-Bit Guy does the Telstar answering system.
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Mar 26, 2017 04:36
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DiscoDickTease posted:I suppose my new old tv qualifies as long gone tech: a 1981 Zenith Console TV with Space Phone! They are both beautiful.
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Mar 26, 2017 05:00
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Three-Phase posted:https://youtu.be/Sx_qTIhtLj8 Also check out his other channel, 8-bit Keys. I have a knowledge of music through 20 years of clarinet playing, and I thought this other channel about keyboards etc would be boring. However, it's just as much about the technology as his main channel, and most videos are definitely worth a watch.
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Mar 26, 2017 06:00
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Goober Peas posted:http://www.paul-f.com/weDesignLine.html All of these phones are amazing. 
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Mar 26, 2017 20:30
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When I was a kid I had the biggest boner for handsets like those that had the kinda pointy, rectangular microphone part. You would see them in practically every wall street type office scene and I thought they were sooo cool for some reason.
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Mar 26, 2017 21:09
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CubanMissile posted:When I was a kid I had the biggest boner for handsets like those that had the kinda pointy, rectangular microphone part. You would see them in practically every wall street type office scene and I thought they were sooo cool for some reason. Heh. A part of my brain still thinks "cool" when I see handsets like that.
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Mar 26, 2017 21:15
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Mar 26, 2017 22:09
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You can buy a replica on ebay for $300, apparently they really liked dumb telephones back then. A part of me wonders what cellphone nostalgia will look like when we move on from the Nokia and start on olde-styl smartphones. Dedicated Apple fanboys fighting over first-gen iphones? Open source nerds celebrating getting Ubuntu 56.23 to run on the first Googlephone? Somebody giving a poo poo about blackberry in the 21st century? Who knows!
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Mar 27, 2017 05:06
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T-man posted:You can buy a replica on ebay for $300, apparently they really liked dumb telephones back then. A skeuomorphism skin for jailbroken iOS 15.
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Mar 27, 2017 05:42
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I've been considering getting an amateur radio license lately, and I can't honestly understand why because it seems like such a pointless and outdated thing these days that just ends up costing a lot of money (to build a station) and then gathering dust, but for some reason I still want to.
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Mar 27, 2017 17:16
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I got really bored and set up Alpine on my work computer. It's fun to use sometimes. I only wish there were an AIM/chat client that used the terminal so I could look like I was working more.
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Mar 27, 2017 17:26
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T-man posted:You can buy a replica on ebay for $300, apparently they really liked dumb telephones back then. They just announced a modern update to the Nokia 3310 for people like that. So yeah, it's already a thing. Keyboards on phones will never come back though because they're terrible.
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Mar 27, 2017 18:49
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The seventies was the golden age of bad phone design. There was a surge in 1930s/gangster nostalgia so candlestick phones made a comeback. My aunt had one and they were as cumbersome to use as you'd expect. There's a reason telephone design evolved from the wood box (like my father had in his home when he was a child) to light, slim handsets meant to fit a human being's dimensions. That 1930s nostalgia wave didn't just give us terrible telephones. It also birthed other things of Great Cultural Value like one-hit-wonder Paper Lace. 
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Mar 27, 2017 21:07
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Dick Trauma posted:The seventies was the golden age of bad phone design. There was a surge in 1930s/gangster nostalgia so candlestick phones made a comeback. My aunt had one and they were as cumbersome to use as you'd expect. I swear my parents had this exact same phone in their bedroom when I was a kid. I remember it from the early 80s so yeah I'd say it was acquired in the 70s some time.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:36
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ReidRansom posted:I've been considering getting an amateur radio license lately, and I can't honestly understand why because it seems like such a pointless and outdated thing these days that just ends up costing a lot of money (to build a station) and then gathering dust, but for some reason I still want to. I went down this rabbit hole a few years ago because this old 70 year old guy at work heard I was interested in it and was really enthusiastic and encouraged me to get certified and get a radio setup. We were probably out of touch (I was about 24 at the time) in every other way but it was really  that he was so eager to talk about it. I ended up getting a radio and antenna and intended to get the basic certification but never did and sold it to the guy and felt bad about it.  Our local amateur radio club is less than a dozen and the vast vast majority of them are in their 60s+ and the others are pushing 50 themselves. I'd hate for HAM use to die with them. Unperson_47 has a new favorite as of 21:49 on Mar 27, 2017 |
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Mar 27, 2017 21:41
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I miss CB radio being a thing. Good times.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:55
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YeahTubaMike posted:I got really bored and set up Alpine on my work computer. It's fun to use sometimes. I only wish there were an AIM/chat client that used the terminal so I could look like I was working more.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:57
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Pftt, you can't fool me. That's not 1970s. That's last weekend in Portland with a filter.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:10
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Unperson_47 posted:I went down this rabbit hole a few years ago because this old 70 year old guy at work heard I was interested in it and was really enthusiastic and encouraged me to get certified and get a radio setup. We were probably out of touch (I was about 24 at the time) in every other way but it was really It's a lot like freemasonry in that respect, really. Skewing super old and not really attracting new blood despite their efforts. Or not retaining those who do come along. I'm an inactive mason like 10 years now. GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:I miss CB radio being a thing. Good times. My friends and I all installed CBs in our cars in high school back in the early-mid 90s. Good times.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:10
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Unperson_47 posted:Our local amateur radio club is less than a dozen and the vast vast majority of them are in their 60s+ and the others are pushing 50 themselves. I'd hate for HAM use to die with them. This is part of why I keep thinking about getting into it. But its also a rabbit hole I probably don't need to fall down.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:10
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Johnny Aztec posted:Pftt, you can't fool me. That's not 1970s. That's last weekend in Portland with a filter. The differences in fashion between decades are much more subtle now, to the point where average people from 2007 look indistinguishable from 2017. Try doing that with people from 1977 and 1987, or even 1987 and 1997. I find it fascinating that the technology used to capture an image is more telling than the content, like images taken on film, or early digital cameras/smartphones.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:35
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Disney's Hilton Head Resort has one of those in their lobby, but with a modern handset hanging off the side.
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Mar 27, 2017 22:40
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John Big Booty posted:Finch should do the trick. I don't think Finch is available for systems as new as my work computer (OS X, El Capitan).
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Mar 27, 2017 22:51
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ReidRansom posted:It's a lot like freemasonry in that respect, really. Skewing super old and not really attracting new blood despite their efforts. Or not retaining those who do come along. This isn't to put you on blast or anything, but is that really a surprise? Unless you're part of the Continental branch the rules of your order are pretty freaking antiquated, to put it gently. Getting young people interested in something that -- in 2017 -- is exclusively male and requires a belief in a supreme being... You're catering to a very specific subset of people who you might not actually want around.
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Mar 28, 2017 00:44
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  Obsolete but not failed. The Ericofon was produced from 1954 up until 1982 with only minor design changes. The early versions had no ringer. Instead you had a separate ringer device mounted on the wall next to the phone jack. When marketed in the US it came in 18 different colors, but back in Sweden you could only have it in one of five different colors.
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Mar 28, 2017 01:22
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A few people get their ham license every year at a small conference some of my friends host so there is at least a trickle of nerds picking it up
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Mar 28, 2017 01:28
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Trabant posted:This isn't to put you on blast or anything, but is that really a surprise? Unless you're part of the Continental branch the rules of your order are pretty freaking antiquated, to put it gently. Getting young people interested in something that -- in 2017 -- is exclusively male and requires a belief in a supreme being... You're catering to a very specific subset of people who you might not actually want around. Yeah I was absolutely into Freemasonry when I was younger, until I did a few weeks of research and found out the requirements are completely inflexible and it was really the brotherhood of old white guys.
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Mar 28, 2017 01:36
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Collateral Damage posted:
My grandfather did a lot of telephone work before he retired. He has like 8 or 10 of those things stashed somewhere.
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Mar 28, 2017 02:00
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Collateral Damage posted:The early versions had no ringer. Instead you had a separate ringer device mounted on the wall next to the phone jack. That was an outdated way of doing things even in 1954.
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Mar 28, 2017 02:02
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Platystemon posted:That was an outdated way of doing things even in 1954. There are still vestiges of this around in the form of outside ringers at places like car lots, junkyards and the like. I bought a couple of old phones from http://www.phonecoinc.com and in their catalog you can see all manner of interesting items. I like the spacesaver phones from the bakelite era. They also have "answer only" phones that don't even have a ringer for places that anticipated receiving but not making calls.
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Mar 28, 2017 02:51
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Unperson_47 posted:I went down this rabbit hole a few years ago because this old 70 year old guy at work heard I was interested in it and was really enthusiastic and encouraged me to get certified and get a radio setup. We were probably out of touch (I was about 24 at the time) in every other way but it was really Well, back in the late 80's, I got into some radio stuff as a couple buddies (one of them a professional radio engineer) and I were putting together a pirate FM station. (We followed all the FCC rules and even had copies of the main FM station in town's commercials we played for free). Anyway, that led me to tinker with the 2 meter stuff (which was dorkily fun). Especially when you considered the local ham club had a telephone linkup with their local repeater (forgive me if I get some of the slang wrong... It's been decades!), and, coupled with the DTMF touchpad on my radio gave me a call out only phone for a $5 a month donation. So I rocked a pager too.
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Mar 28, 2017 03:14
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YeahTubaMike posted:I got really bored and set up Alpine on my work computer. It's fun to use sometimes. As in the email reader based on PINE? YeahTubaMike posted:I don't think Finch is available for systems as new as my work computer (OS X, El Capitan). My guess is it should be portable. You might just need to compile it yourself. Or run it in the cloud, and SSH there from work. Or run it in a VM. I mean you're not looking for a simple way of doing things, right?
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Mar 28, 2017 03:23
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Trabant posted:This isn't to put you on blast or anything, but is that really a surprise? Unless you're part of the Continental branch the rules of your order are pretty freaking antiquated, to put it gently. Getting young people interested in something that -- in 2017 -- is exclusively male and requires a belief in a supreme being... You're catering to a very specific subset of people who you might not actually want around. The exclusively men thing is pretty outdated, yeah. The belief in a supreme being thing is I feel pretty open to interpretation, but maybe that's just me. I certainly don't believe anything like that. It's all fine. But in any case I've been inactive for like ten years and agree they do need to change.
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Mar 28, 2017 03:53
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Also check out his other channel, 8-bit Keys. I have a knowledge of music through 20 years of clarinet playing, and I thought this other channel about keyboards etc would be boring. However, it's just as much about the technology as his main channel, and most videos are definitely worth a watch. TechMoan also has some amazing obsolete tech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?Techmoan Any other similar YouTube channels? I love watching these at the gym.
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Mar 28, 2017 04:04
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