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Playing Duck Hunt on the NES by placing it directly onto the TV screen and blasting away at point blank range
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Feb 17, 2023 22:55
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Volmarias posted:Funny tech poo poo I just remembered: using a VHS recorder / player to record your TV shows. IIRC you had to leave the TV on to the specific channel, but the VHS machine had a clock and you could tell it to record for X minutes at YY:ZZ PM. the VCR had it's own tuner, you didn't have to leave the TV on the correct channel. that way you could record one channel while using the TV to watch another. our first VCR (an ex-rental machine acquired in about 1987, and probably already 3-4 years old) had a mechanical clock driven by a rubber belt, which slipped so the clock would lose ~10 minutes per day. you had to account for this when setting the timer, so you would often forget and end up with a recording that started late and cut off the first 10-20 minutes of the film. i missed the start of so many movies thanks to that Sweevo fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 17, 2023 23:13
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lol that sounds awful. pretty sure all of our vhs stuff had quartz clocks my parents used the same svhs mitsubishi deck for like 30 years before disconnecting it from regular use maybe a decade ago. i bet they still use it from time to time e: which itself is pretty remarkable. yeah we might have some reliable stuff now but in that interim there was a lot of junk that wouldn't make it halfway there Beeftweeter fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Feb 17, 2023 |
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Feb 17, 2023 23:22
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I remember programming my first VCR that supported those TV codes that told it when to start and stop rather than having to manually enter that data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code
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Feb 17, 2023 23:52
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Volmarias posted:Reaching behind the electronics cabinet that was further back than you could see, blindly fumbling around in the hope that you could actually figure out not only which port was which, but that you could actually plug in without being able to see it. The delays setting up videogames consoles was truly remarkable. Going over to a friend's house and flipping between channel 3 or 4 trying to get the Nintendo to work.
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Feb 18, 2023 00:03
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Beeftweeter posted:lol that sounds awful. pretty sure all of our vhs stuff had quartz clocks my parents bought that used vcr in 1987 along with a pack of 12 4hr tapes. they replaced the vcr twice, but those were the only tapes they ever owned, and were re-re-re-re-re-re-rerecorded over and over for the next 25 years until they got a DVR. i'm sure they were a smeary mess by the end, but the degradation was gradual so you didn't really notice.
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Feb 18, 2023 00:11
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Mantle posted:I remember programming my first VCR that supported those TV codes that told it when to start and stop rather than having to manually enter that data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/1391505308619530240
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Feb 18, 2023 00:17
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Volmarias posted:Funny tech poo poo I just remembered: using a VHS recorder / player to record your TV shows. IIRC you had to leave the TV on to the specific channel, but the VHS machine had a clock and you could tell it to record for X minutes at YY:ZZ PM. Later versions would have day of week, and then even simple calendaring iirc, so you could set things well in advance. Out of the house every Thursday at 3PM, but still wanted to keep up with Days of our Lives or whatever? Thanks to THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY you could capture it! As long as there wasn't a power outage that reset the clock, or a last minute rescheduling, or a breaking news thing, or ... in the drum and bass days one of my buddies would bring his 6-head VHS over to my place to record his mixes on, as apparently the audio quality was pee good
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Feb 18, 2023 00:20
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Also funny, mom got a second VCR so she could make copies for people, and eventually upgraded to a VCR with two tape slots. At some point I think she even got a video capture hookup for the computer so that she could do her own screen caps for the fanfic groups she was part of. It's strange thinking back on having a turbo nerd parent and not even realizing until later on.
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Feb 18, 2023 01:41
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Manzoon posted:I don't like to, I like having physical buttons I can push in a pocket. Those little SanDisks have batteries that last for a couple of weeks between charges.  but the ones I got always broke after 18 months almost on the dot so I gave up and just use my phone now.Volmarias posted:Also funny, mom got a second VCR so she could make copies for people, and eventually upgraded to a VCR with two tape slots. At some point I think she even got a video capture hookup for the computer so that she could do her own screen caps for the fanfic groups she was part of. Your mom owns
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Feb 18, 2023 02:01
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Mantle posted:I remember programming my first VCR that supported those TV codes that told it when to start and stop rather than having to manually enter that data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code people these days love to talk like these were incredibly complex unknowable glyphs and not a 6 digit number you plugged into your vcr from the tv guide, we had a videoplus vcr and it was a heavily used feature
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Feb 18, 2023 03:51
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Volmarias posted:Also funny, mom got a second VCR so she could make copies for people i remember watching the godfather part II as my dad copied it and being entirely too young to do so. i think we'd borrow/lend vcrs with my aunt and uncle and one of the times we all went to dinner while we copied batman because it was so long Kitfox88 posted:Your mom owns yeah. that's super cool, in a bunch of ways. that stuff was like magic to me as a kid and that would have been almost unimaginable to me then
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Feb 18, 2023 04:29
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Volmarias posted:Also funny, mom got a second VCR so she could make copies for people, and eventually upgraded to a VCR with two tape slots. At some point I think she even got a video capture hookup for the computer so that she could do her own screen caps for the fanfic groups she was part of. i just kind of figured out on my own that i could hook the vcr into the video camera and copy tapes so i could watch the goonies as much as i wanted to. thus began the trend of having piles of ep tapes with 2 or 3 movies each on them. it probably wasn't the best thing for a 7 year old to be able to marathon major league, followed by the naked gun, followed by robocop, but that's how it was the first vcr we had also used 24 hour time, so that's what little me learned how to use, since i needed to know that to record thundercats meant setting the vcr for 15:30. to this day i will not buy anything that can't be set to 24 hour time, because 12 hour time is stupid The_Franz fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 04:35
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The_Franz posted:i just kind of figured out on my own that i could hook the vcr into the video camera and copy tapes so i could watch the goonies as much as i wanted to. thus began the trend of having piles of ep tapes with 2 or 3 movies each on them. it probably wasn't the best thing for a 7 year old to be able to marathon major league, followed by the naked gun, followed by robocop, but that's how it was we had a remote with a jog whell that did frame-by-frame and the vcr would roll back a few when stopping so i figured out exactly how many and would live-cut commercials out of mini-series premieres to maximize tapes
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Feb 18, 2023 04:41
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Olivil posted:my non-gamer dad used a ps3 as a bluray player for so loooong a ps3 is still my bluray player, works fine, no need to replace it
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Feb 18, 2023 05:27
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yep i was looking around a few years back and found the best cheap bluray player is still a ps3 now you can get them for about £40-50 while pawn shops still want £70-80 for a standalone bluray player
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Feb 18, 2023 05:35
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git apologist posted:they are quite good at making playstations. totally dominate the market, no other manufacturer even produces playstations anymore Beeftweeter posted:they're really not that good at it. you couldn't buy a playstation for years, they were too popular lol Sagebrush posted:Good point. Otoh dozens of companies have made Nintendos The_Franz posted:Not dozens, just Sharp (twin famicom, tv with built in snes) and Panasonic (GameCube with dvd player) lmao double woosh
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Feb 18, 2023 05:54
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taping over the square on vcr tapes to make them recordable
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Feb 18, 2023 06:02
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Progressive JPEG posted:taping over the square on vcr tapes to make them recordable on cassettes too, takes me back
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Feb 18, 2023 06:04
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some of the barcode recorders came with a book of barcodes which listed specific start and stop times. programming involving to the page for the day of the week then scanning the barcode closest to the start time then scanning the closest to the end time.
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Feb 18, 2023 08:30
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it was a pretty good idea imo. maybe it could be brought back as qr codes you can scan to add/download stuff to your watch queue from the streaming services
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Feb 18, 2023 10:19
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funy tech I do not remember, thankfully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHnYVeaTLsY Shocking wastefulness, absolutely unsurprising for the era tbh. (good channel overall if you like old tech chat that's not the usual LGR-style computer stuff)
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Feb 18, 2023 13:52
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they are never going to willingly let people curate a collection again. the streaming rights are too valuable as a bargaining chip as long as they can arbitrarily pull something, artificially create remand and then release it again for more money, anyway
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Feb 18, 2023 13:54
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 is a moral imperative
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Feb 18, 2023 14:23
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Volmarias posted:Also funny, mom got a second VCR so she could make copies for people, and eventually upgraded to a VCR with two tape slots. At some point I think she even got a video capture hookup for the computer so that she could do her own screen caps for the fanfic groups she was part of.
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Feb 18, 2023 14:41
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misconfigured X11 security log in to a shared linux box someone else had an X session going on, set your display variable to their address, open goatse
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Feb 18, 2023 15:28
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setting ffplay to xlib output and scripting that is pretty fun
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Feb 18, 2023 15:29
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Volmarias posted:Another funny tech thing, setting the clock on the VCR being considered an impossibly difficult act of technomancy. While this might have been true when the VCR had three buttons and you had to know a magic code of some kind, later versions were very obvious on what to do but the learned helplessness had set in.
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Feb 18, 2023 15:41
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jesus WEP posted:your mom whips rear end, get her posting in here not quite as cool but my mom got me a dual cassette deck for my 8th birthday specifically so i could copy tapes from the library
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Feb 18, 2023 16:16
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I got a stereo with dual tapes when I was 8 or 9 and I found all my dads old tapes and copied them so I could listen without him knowing. it’s how I was introduced to cheech and chong, all the dad rock you could muster (doobie brothers, steely Dan, that kinda stuff), and classic country. I also figured out how to connect it to the tv and I’d record music videos’ audio for use in my Walkman but i wasn’t good enough to cut out the interludes and skits a lot of videos of the era used so I’d do chores and hear all that too drat, core memory unlocked edit: oh and now I collect vinyl and it turns out he has this whole collection stored in his closet with beatles and Elvis and lots of other rad stuff that he won’t give me even tho he doesn’t have a turntable. for his bday this year I’m gonna get him a nice table with some decent speakers so he can listen to them again. and maybe give them to me before he dies
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Feb 18, 2023 16:38
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obviously blu-ray won because James Williamson was involved in its creation. you get a Stooge behind something, and people are going to love it.
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Feb 18, 2023 17:51
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my college radio station would use an svhs vcr for the overnight music, as it sounded good and could do 8 hours on an extended tape.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:15
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speakin' of sony, just found a CDP-C85ES at the thrift for 13 bucks (similar) 
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Feb 18, 2023 21:18
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remembering my parents' onkyo 5 cd thing like that when opening/closing the cd tray it would rotate the circle of cds a bit just to show off
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Feb 18, 2023 21:47
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Progressive JPEG posted:remembering my parents' onkyo 5 cd thing like that My parents did the same thing. Always loved opening it part way and just cycling through the CDs
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Feb 18, 2023 21:51
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lol the pioneer multi cd decks had a cartridge, kinda like cars at the time
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Feb 18, 2023 22:54
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Beeftweeter posted:lol the pioneer multi cd decks had a cartridge, kinda like cars at the time exactly like cars at the time. pioneer 6cd bricks work in late 90s bmw changers
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Feb 18, 2023 22:59
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oh i didn't know they're literally the same that owns i really liked the big tray spinny 5/6-cd changers but i mean, that pioneer crap still works today. lol
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Feb 18, 2023 23:08
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Progressive JPEG posted:remembering my parents' onkyo 5 cd thing like that  its not to show off, its cause the laser is at the back and its showing you the disc it was playing so it needs to spin
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Feb 18, 2023 23:17
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Olivil posted:
it’s showing off at least a little bit
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Feb 18, 2023 23:20
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