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Konjuro posted:I still have an old 21 inch CRT monitor kicking around. I call it the Desk-Buster because it is literally too heavy to sit on most newer computer desks. I had the same monitor. Every surface I ever put that behemoth on began to bend almost immediately.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:28
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DrBouvenstein posted:This long and no one has posted Laserdiscs? They got a quick mention in the OP. I personally never met anyone who actually owned one of them. My school had a whole bunch of them, but I've never seen one outside of school use. How much did those things go for anyway, and what did a disc itself cost? I was about 8 when I remember them, so I wasn't that up to speed on price back then.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:32
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Konjuro posted:I still have an old 21 inch CRT monitor kicking around. I call it the Desk-Buster because it is literally too heavy to sit on most newer computer desks. It's a pre-cow Gateway too. Goddamn, that thing is a beast.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:41
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Konjuro posted:I still have an old 21 inch CRT monitor kicking around. I call it the Desk-Buster because it is literally too heavy to sit on most newer computer desks. Ah I think I know why that monitor is so heavy. Does it have one or two faint black horizontal lines in the picture, and if you were to smack the side of it, would the colors go funny for a second or so? If yes then you have a Trinitron monitor. Gateway 2000 monitors used the Trinitron design far as I am aware of. It gave you excellent brightness and sharpness, but the tradeoff were those one or two horizontal lines, and the things were heavy as gently caress due to the aperture grille design.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:45
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Zasraik posted:The beeper. Dennis The Beeper King Duffy is keeping the dream alive
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Jul 13, 2012 16:52
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 Oh Sega, your product ideas were so good, but your timing, market research, and price points were so bad. 
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Jul 13, 2012 16:54
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3Com Audrey. Still have ours, not sure why.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:55
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OneEightHundred posted:
Also its battery use. I remember the Game Gear taking 6 batteries for two hours of play time.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:55
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That's the Nomad, which was even worse about battery use. It was pretty much the best thing ever if you had a wall outlet, a handheld that played current-generation console games, but it cost some ungodly high price like $280.
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Jul 13, 2012 16:59
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Zasraik posted:The beeper. Don't medical people still use pagers? What with the whole "no cellphone use in the hospital" thing.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:02
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DrBouvenstein posted:This long and no one has posted Laserdiscs? There was a similar format called the CED that didn't suffer quite so much from these problems. The disc case was actually a giant sleeve, and you'd push it into the player to lock the disc in place. The disc therefore was never exposed to the outside world, reducing damage. On the down side, the CED was read with a stylus like a vinyl record, so the discs are still prone to wearing out.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:08
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Phy posted:What with the whole "no cellphone use in the hospital" thing. Pagers are receive-only so they don't really have that problem.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:10
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rockcity posted:They got a quick mention in the OP. I personally never met anyone who actually owned one of them. My school had a whole bunch of them, but I've never seen one outside of school use. How much did those things go for anyway, and what did a disc itself cost? I was about 8 when I remember them, so I wasn't that up to speed on price back then. Fun fact about Laserdisc players, they were still being made by Pioneer until 2009.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:18
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rockcity posted:They got a quick mention in the OP. I personally never met anyone who actually owned one of them. My school had a whole bunch of them, but I've never seen one outside of school use. How much did those things go for anyway, and what did a disc itself cost? I was about 8 when I remember them, so I wasn't that up to speed on price back then. I disagree on the "poor selection". Nearly every movie released on VHS from 1980-1997 had a LD counterpart. I still have a LD player, although I rarely us it anymore. I have a few titles that are not on DVD or any other disc format. Mostly concerts and Star wars things. One thing LD had that surpassed most DVDs, was PCM audio. DVDs usually had low bit rate Dolby 2.0 as their 2 channel option, while LD used the same format as CD. live concert discs were usually quite a bit better sounding on LD. Players could range from $500-$2000. Movies were usually $40-100, depending on the number of discs. Cornjob has a new favorite as of 17:33 on Jul 13, 2012 |
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Jul 13, 2012 17:30
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Laserdisc really took off in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, but not in North America, which is why it's stuck around for so long. Laserdisc hand a huge quality advantage over VHS and Betamax, but flopped in North America because the discs were expensive and non-recordable, as well as being confused by consumers with CED, which was marketed as Videodisc. ^beaten
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Jul 13, 2012 17:34
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Mister Snips posted:Carphones, yo
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Jul 13, 2012 17:38
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Jedit posted:There was a similar format called the CED that didn't suffer quite so much from these problems. The disc case was actually a giant sleeve, and you'd push it into the player to lock the disc in place. The disc therefore was never exposed to the outside world, reducing damage. On the down side, the CED was read with a stylus like a vinyl record, so the discs are still prone to wearing out. Yeah, Capacitance Electronic Disk system, I had one and around 100 movies for it. I kept that drat thing working for years and years. I had to take it apart every 3 or 4 movies to adjust the bits that removed the disk from the carrier since they bent incredibly easily. Other than them being VERY temperamental they were INCREDIBLY HEAVY. One copier paper sized box of them would rip the bottom out of the box if it wasn't reinforced with duct tape. They produced a VERY nice quality picture and the sound was great as well. Also if the disk got scratched or the player got bumped it would skip in audio AND video which was a fairly cool effect! The best disk that I had though was "Urgh! a music war" which didn't even make it to youtube until like 5 years ago. ALL of the VHS copies were pirated from the CED due to problems with licensing and copyright since the movie was exclusively released to CED (which then failed). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgh!_A_Music_War . Also neither the LPs nor the DVD release in 2006 include Invisible Sex – "Valium" so the ONLY place you can find that one is pirated from CED. THAT disk I cleaned up and still have along with The end of my CED player came when we had a fire in our apartment that resulted in the fire department pulling all of the plaster off the walls and foaming the whole place. The dust from the plaster mixed with the foam and got into EVERYTHING including the disk cases. They COULD have been cleaned but each one would have taken an hour and the little strips of stuff that brushed the disk clean as it was removed and returned in the machine would have had to be replaced for every disk.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:39
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Phy posted:Don't medical people still use pagers? Yeah, my wife is a doctor and she uses a pager when whenever she's on call. I'm not sure why they don't just call her cell phone, but I'm sure they have their reasons.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:42
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Zasraik posted:The beeper. I still have a beeper; Stupid feds being all antiquated and ludite'tastic. I got one of these at a Yardsale about 8 years ago...  The Virgin Webplayer It was a very simple, compact, flash based X86 computer. If you had an old school IDE notebook HDD and a 44pin mini-IDE cable you could put linux or windows on this thing. It was awesome for weather monitoring and other super low horsepower tasks.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:47
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I'd nominate the Chumby, although I don't think the company has gone bankrupt yet. Cool idea, good price point, but more or less immediately superseded by smartphones.
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Jul 13, 2012 17:52
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These are obsolete but I don't know that they actually failed per se;
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Jul 13, 2012 17:53
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indigenous nudity posted:Yeah, my wife is a doctor and she uses a pager when whenever she's on call. I'm not sure why they don't just call her cell phone, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I could be completely making this up, but don't pagers also have more reliable reception than cell phones? Particularly in buildings, underground, etc. Joining the mp3 player early adopters club. I had a 128mb Samsung that I paid about $100 for, and I thought it was baller as gently caress. Then I upgraded to a 256mb player for about the same price a year later and I was all "poo poo yeah, this'll hold like 4 goddamn cds."
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Jul 13, 2012 17:58
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indigenous nudity posted:Yeah, my wife is a doctor and she uses a pager when whenever she's on call. I'm not sure why they don't just call her cell phone, but I'm sure they have their reasons. From my understanding (at least in hospital settings) old analog cell phones used the same/nearly same frequency as a lot of wireless medical equipment so cell phones were generally banned from use. Modern digital phones are well outside of the spectrum used by medical equipment but a lot of hospitals still enforce the ban. My friend's wife is a physical therapist and up until recently had to leave her phone in her locker at work, but apparently the hospital she works at recently relaxed their rules to allow cell phone use anywhere but in operating rooms and intensive care floors. Pagers are/were widely used by health care professionals because they are receive only and didn't emit anything that could interfere with equipment. Geoj has a new favorite as of 18:06 on Jul 13, 2012 |
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Jul 13, 2012 18:01
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Konjuro posted:I still have an old 21 inch CRT monitor kicking around. I call it the Desk-Buster because it is literally too heavy to sit on most newer computer desks. I still used a monitor exactly like this at work up until about a year ago. Degaussing it made a very loud sound, and the degaussing jolt could be felt through the desk surface. This scared the poo poo out of me the first time I pressed the button. It was also the first and last monitor I ever saw with not only a VGA cable, but also individual RGB input ports.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:06
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Also, pagers are the only outside communication device allowed in places like this.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:07
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I'm a musician so I'm always on the lookout for old recording gear. Some of my favorites include the reel-to-reel tape recorder:  This old Akai SCSI hard drive recorder (and Casio hardware sampler and synth beneath it):  Here's a couple hardware MIDI sequencers:  While all of these can fill some specific niches they've been replaced with the functionality that a modern DAW and VSTs provides.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:12
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 Ever since, tennis gives me a raging headache.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:18
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Noblesse Obliged posted:
Yeah that's nowhere near the very best. I think one of the developers of it died indirectly because of it. (He got fired and was later hit by a car IIRC)
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Jul 13, 2012 18:20
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Landerig posted:Yeah that's nowhere near the very best. I think one of the developers of it died indirectly because of it. (He got fired and was later hit by a car IIRC)
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Jul 13, 2012 18:21
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Landerig posted:Yeah that's nowhere near the very best. I think one of the developers of it died indirectly because of it. (He got fired and was later hit by a car IIRC) I apologize that this isn't the best failure.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:24
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 Gaze and weep at the greatest instrument that never was  You can actually pick these up for pretty cheap on Ebay. I love the bastards but as far as I know, there isn't really much in the way of digital midi controller guitars anymore.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:29
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Geoj posted:From my understanding (at least in hospital settings) old analog cell phones used the same/nearly same frequency as a lot of wireless medical equipment so cell phones were generally banned from use. Modern digital phones are well outside of the spectrum used by medical equipment but a lot of hospitals still enforce the ban. My friend's wife is a physical therapist and up until recently had to leave her phone in her locker at work, but apparently the hospital she works at recently relaxed their rules to allow cell phone use anywhere but in operating rooms and intensive care floors. What ancient rear end place does she work at, I've worked in numerous hospitals around the US and not one have given a poo poo about Cell Phones being carried around anymore. The only thing they care about is HIPAA violations and getting your work done and not texting constantly. Believe our Docs use Blackberries and we send them text pages and/or call. (All ICUs and numerous Cardiac ICUs such as the one I work in now)
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Jul 13, 2012 18:43
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Landerig posted:Yeah that's nowhere near the very best. I think one of the developers of it died indirectly because of it. (He got fired and was later hit by a car IIRC) You're probably thinking of Gunpei Yokoi, a fantastic man who, along with Shigeru Miyamoto pretty much made Nintendo as successful as it is. He supervised a lot of the old famous games, including Donkey Kong and Metroid. He invented the Game&Watch and the Game Boy. (And the Virtual Boy.. I guess every genius has a bad idea every so often) Oh, and he invented the D-pad. How's that for awesome? Sadly, he got hit by a car and died soon after retiring 
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Jul 13, 2012 18:44
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In the mid 1980s, my dad was enjoying his new middle-upper class paychecks so he went and splurged on one of these: One and a half inch black and white screen. Mono sound. Only picked up the really strong broadcast channels. But it was awesome and the batteries lasted a fair amount of time for the time. I found it in the attic recently. It still turns on and tries to show stuff, but outside of somehow attaching it to a converter box it's useless now.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:47
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Your Computer posted:You're probably thinking of Gunpei Yokoi, a fantastic man who, along with Shigeru Miyamoto pretty much made Nintendo as successful as it is. He supervised a lot of the old famous games, including Donkey Kong and Metroid. He invented the Game&Watch and the Game Boy. (And the Virtual Boy.. I guess every genius has a bad idea every so often) Yep. One can speculate had the Virtual Boy not prompted him to retire, he might not have been on that highway that day. Who knows. Fearless_Decoy posted:In the mid 1980s, my dad was enjoying his new middle-upper class paychecks so he went and splurged on one of these: If you really wanted to you could just wrap some bare wire around the antenna and plug it into the RF out on a convertor box, if anything just to see if it still works properly.
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Jul 13, 2012 18:56
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Fearless_Decoy posted:In the mid 1980s, my dad was enjoying his new middle-upper class paychecks so he went and splurged on one of these: I had one. Somehow. I think my dad stole it from someone's car because there's no way he would have bought one. Then again it was probably around like 2000 so it was cheap as heck. It takes a good 10 minutes to warm the bulb up to visible quality but that's probably because it's old as poo poo
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Jul 13, 2012 19:17
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Landerig posted:Ah I think I know why that monitor is so heavy. Does it have one or two faint black horizontal lines in the picture, and if you were to smack the side of it, would the colors go funny for a second or so? If yes then you have a Trinitron monitor. Yes, it is indeed a Trinitron. Plugged my laptop into and it still works perfectly. I also have an ancient Datas brand monochrome monitor, but I have no way of testing if that thing works anymore. crumpuppet posted:I still used a monitor exactly like this at work up until about a year ago. Degaussing it made a very loud sound, and the degaussing jolt could be felt through the desk surface. This scared the poo poo out of me the first time I pressed the button.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:25
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ChlamydiaJones posted:Yeah, Capacitance Electronic Disk system, I had one and around 100 movies for it. I kept that drat thing working for years and years. I had to take it apart every 3 or 4 movies to adjust the bits that removed the disk from the carrier since they bent incredibly easily. Other than them being VERY temperamental they were INCREDIBLY HEAVY. One copier paper sized box of them would rip the bottom out of the box if it wasn't reinforced with duct tape. They produced a VERY nice quality picture and the sound was great as well. Also if the disk got scratched or the player got bumped it would skip in audio AND video which was a fairly cool effect! First, thanks for making me aware of Urgh! Secondly, look at this thing:  There's an hour of video on there, per side. Considering that disc is supposed to be physically read with a stylus, and that disc rotates at 450 RPM (500 for PAL) and I for one consider it a minor miracle that the things even worked to begin with.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:34
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Konjuro posted:Yes, it is indeed a Trinitron. Plugged my laptop into and it still works perfectly. Oh yeah, a 21" Trinitron. Desk buster is very appropriate. I once lugged home a free 32" Sony Trinitron, by myself. (Free to anyone who could lift it) Beautiful picture but it sat for 3 weeks on my living room floor before I decided to just sell it. I mean I could have reinforced the TV stand with 4x4's, or maybe just built a new one out of reinforced concrete, but I decided to let it go to a new home, where it probably still sits like the living room monolith.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:37
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:You can actually pick these up for pretty cheap on Ebay. I love the bastards but as far as I know, there isn't really much in the way of digital midi controller guitars anymore.
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Jul 13, 2012 19:41
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