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I can recall in the early - mid 90s radios that had a "TV station audio" function were a thing, granted relatively useless unless you were blind/liked pretending you were blind/didn't mind awkward pauses where you had to see what was going on to follow what was happening in the show. Of course these are completely obsolete today with the advent of digital over the air...
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Sep 17, 2013 05:43
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Armyman25 posted:FM radio adapter for your 8-track. I want to believe that somewhere, there's someone with an AMC Gremlin that still has a factory 8-track deck, playing a smartphone through an FM transmitter and one of those...
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Sep 22, 2013 19:10
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Code Jockey posted:That FM tuner cartridge is just blowing my mind. I guess I just assumed that no matter what, car stereos just always had FM radio. On that note, the AM/FM stereo in the bottom/right of the ad would have cost over $200 in today's money. Its mind-blowing that as recently as the late-70s FM radio was still cutting-edge.
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Sep 23, 2013 16:41
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Taeke posted:I find it even more mindblowing that they got to the moon with less computing power than the navigation system in a modern car. Actually, isn't this more along the lines of "less computing power than a pocket calculator from the early 90s"?
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Oct 7, 2013 14:39
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^ Video editing is pretty much the only thing I can see it being actually useful for and not easily replaced with something that isn't a unitasker. Can you give it a good turn and it will continue to spin until you stop it or it runs out of momentum minutes later?
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Oct 9, 2013 04:41
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Platystemon posted:Should we use wood‐fired cars? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas#Internal_combustion_engine 
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Jan 3, 2014 10:34
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^ Seconding that, I too had a car made after 2000 that lacked any reasonable cost method for adding an auxiliary input (would have required a new head unit, which in turn would have required an adapter that cost more than the head unit.) The term he's looking for is FM modulator BTW. I used one in the aforementioned vehicle (a 2007 Chevrolet Malibu) for about two years and couldn't complain. Audiophile  aside about FM lacking the frequency range, it will output drat near CD quality audio with little or no interference.
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Jan 5, 2014 04:17
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eddiewalker posted:In the spirit of this thread, my 2007 Mazda had an unused cassette or Minidisc slot that I'm now using an an aux-in. Mazda has (had?) a shared stereo platform across their entire line up from 2003 onwards that included a universal expansion port that could be used for a cassette deck, MD player, disc changer and in later years, satellite radio. The sylfex auxmod is a plug & play addon that interfaces with this port and emulates a tape deck, allowing an 1/8" stereo input.
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Jan 5, 2014 05:11
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OttoVonBismarck posted:As an archival medium, film is actually pretty well suited. As long as you have the facilities to store it properly, it can be stored safely for decades (probably much longer). I've touched on this before; there's an expanding market for microfilm in government recordkeeping and anyone who has to adhere to government recordkeeping standards. Its not so much a primary means of archiving documents, but rather because once the film is processed it is extremely difficult to tamper with, unlike digital copies. From my understanding the idea is if a question is raised about the authenticity of a digital copy of a document the microfilm can be pulled for verification. I used to work for a third-party service provider to FujiFilm and as recently as 2008 they rolled out a new piece of equipment that exposes microfilm from digital sources. Phanatic posted:The way this worked is that you'd take three separate exposures of the subject, one through a red filter, one through a green filter, and one through a blue filter. Then the three developed plates could be precisely aligned, and you could either project light through a red filter, a green filter, and a blue filter, and then through the prints to yield a vibrant color projection, or use them to generate color prints with CMY inks. Ironically this is (kind of) how modern digital film scanners work. A CCD captures a color negative frame four times; one each in red, green and blue light and then a fourth capture is made with infrared, which the processing software uses to generate a mask and removes any scratches or dust present on the negative.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:24
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OttoVonBismarck posted:This is what is sometimes marketed as a "digital wetgate", right? I've never heard that term before but after looking it up, yes.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:45
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Oh, duh. Doesn't potassium do that too? Potassium (any of the alkali group, really) reacts so violently with water that it breaks the water molecules down into hydrogen and oxygen. It can't maintain a reaction by itself (say, in a vacuum) but its so reactive to everything else that it explodes unless contained in a very inert substance or a vacuum.
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Jan 11, 2014 21:57
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eddiewalker posted:It shipped with parallel port adapter to load up music and transferring 32mb took so drat long that I never rotated anything on. I can remember loading up my RCA Lyra's 64 MB compact flash took something silly like 20 minutes on its included parallel CF reader. It took less time to transfer my MP3s from our desktop to my dad's work laptop with a crossover cable and then write them to the CF with a PCMCIA adapter. Also god help you if you had one of the early HDD based players before USB 2.0 and/or 1394. Geoj has a new favorite as of 23:15 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 23:12
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Mister Kingdom posted:I bought one of those new in 2002 or so. Cheaper than an iPod at the time and pretty durable. Never did fill up that 30Gb drive. I last used it about a year ago and it still works. I still have my Nomad 3...works to this day, other than the actual headphone jack being worn out and not sending audio to the L channel (line out the back still works fine but isn't volume-adjustable.) Geoj has a new favorite as of 00:02 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 23:46
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Doctor Bishop posted:All this talk about CRTs makes me wonder; anyone here happen to know why SED technology failed to take off like it did? From this article it sounds like they couldn't get costs down enough to the point where they'd be attractive vs. LCD or plasma displays. They'd probably be selling to a niche market of home theater spergs and maybe a slightly larger market of image/video editing professionals.
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Apr 17, 2014 21:29
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Captain Trips posted:I have to use a fax machine at least every other day at work. I literally just mash buttons until something happens. Ugh fax machines  I do phone support for a major tire manufacturer's retail stores so we inevitably end up fielding "our fax machine from 1994/bargain basement level all-in-one printer with fax capability isn't working" calls. Upper management has already decreed that they aren't supporting fax machines anymore, but the stores inevitably have a sob story about why they can't use the e-fax service provided by corporate - typically "we do business with whatever government agency and need a standalone fax machine."
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Apr 19, 2014 05:25
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DarthBlingBling posted:The first MP3 player I had was 32MB in size and could be expanded with memory cards of type that escape my memory (up to 32MB in size again). Highly likely it was either smart media or compact flash. SD/xD/memory stick weren't really a thing until the early-mid 2000s. Since we're revisiting MP3 player chat, my first was a RCA Lyra:  Was initially available with a 32 or 64 MB CF card, which had to be removed from the player to write to. It shipped with a parallel CF reader that was painfully slow and I typically ended up using a PCMCIA adapter with my dad's work laptop and a crossover network cable to write files to it, which was marginally faster. Later when I had my first full time job out of highschool I bought a Creative Nomad 3:  20 GB platter drive and featuring a 1394 connection for fast data transfer, this released about a year before USB 2.0 was available. Fortunately my soundcard - an original SB Audigy - had a 1394 controller built in, otherwise I would have been stuck with USB 1.1 speeds or have to buy a separate controller card. This thing was a tank, and actually still works aside from the headphone jack being worn out. Geoj has a new favorite as of 17:18 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 17:13
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Base Emitter posted:
My little brother went through three or four warranty replacements of those because the buttons would stop working after about six months' use.
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May 6, 2014 03:39
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Ultimate Mango posted:As for obsolete car tech: Honestly the non-navigation side of Sync is probably the best implementation of a "smart" car stereo I've interacted with. I had two company cars (a 2010 and then 2012 Fusion) that had Sync w/o the in-dash navigation and its execution was nearly flawless for playing back digital media and interfacing with a mobile phone via bluetooth.
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May 7, 2014 15:54
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Code Jockey posted:Speaking of fond memories of old machine sounds, someday I need to hook up my C64 dot matrix printer. Maybe I'll fire up Print Shop Pro or something, make some nice banners for the next birthday party I throw. I had a service call a few weeks ago on a Printronix line matrix printer dating back to the early 90s. If you think home dot matrix printers are loud you should hear one of these in production. They generate so much noise that they're typically installed in a soundproof enclosure:  Instead of a single x pin head that moves back and forth across the page there is a "hammer bank" that nearly spans the entire width of the page, which then oscillates back and forth as it prints.  I'm not sure if these really qualify as obsolete because AFAIK there isn't a laser or inkjet printer capable of the 2-3000 LPM print speeds they can achieve, at least not at the price point line matrix printers can deliver.
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May 8, 2014 19:42
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Terrible Robot posted:The other is kept in a storage room for spare parts in case anything happens. This is probably a good idea. While looking up prices on parts to quote for the customer, a network interface card was $1800, and the main control PCB was $3500 (they keep having problems with it dropping from their network.) From what I gather this is primarily due to parts scarcity. Needless to say they're considering other options right now.
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May 8, 2014 20:46
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Boiled Water posted:Electric cars don't have gears at all so soon it'll all be for naught. Most electric cars have a single reduction gear between the motor and the drive wheels, but you are correct that they don't have "gears" in the traditional sense of a multi-geared transmission. It will probably be a long time coming before purely EVs replace ICE and parallel gasoline/electric hybrid powered cars.
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May 12, 2014 21:47
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Caedus posted:If I put a robertson, torx, or allen on my drill then have to operate it upside down with one hand, any one of those will stay on the bit until it catches. I have met no such phillips that allows me to do that and irritates me when they are included in stuff where that is clearly going to be a problem. This is because phillips are designed to cam out as torque increases. I used to service Japanese photo printers that used JIS (Japanese industrial standard) head screws that are the opposite - designed to not cam out as torque load increases. You could put the driver into a vertically mounted screw and it wouldn't fall out. Technically they aren't phillips head screws but the tips are cross-compatible between the two (and you actually do get a bit of extra purchase when driving phillips screws with a JIS driver.) Of course you aren't going to find JIS wood screws, and I've had yet to find a JIS tip for a drill driver... Geoj has a new favorite as of 05:29 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 04:31
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Sir_Substance posted:Are the tapes both driven by one wheelspike? (is there a technical term for these?)  Capstan.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:44
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duckmaster posted:What kind of range do they have? The hotel runs on several fuseboxes, would that be a problem? Would each access point need its own password or could you roam between them? You're mixing up two technologies here - what these basically do is allow you to run a wired connection across the AC lines in the wall. So you end up with router > ethernet cable > outlet adapter > AC wire in the wall > other outlet adapter > ethernet cable > client computer. They're cost prohibitive to use in large numbers (like a hotel setting,) and you tend to take a bandwidth hit if the connection has to run across breakers. In your case you'd be better off running a couple of ethernet cables to each floor and installing access points throughout the hotel.
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Oct 16, 2014 02:43
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WescottF1 posted:I stopped by for a quote and just parts alone was gonna be around $600 due to the replacement dash plate costing $200 (on Amazon, even!). Honestly this is what is killing the aftermarket car audio market more than cars coming with Bluetooth and auxiliary inputs - integration of the factory stereo into the dash and to a lesser degree, making the stereo also perform non-ICE functions like trip computer and backup camera. Often the adapter costs more than most middle of the road head units and doesn't integrate with the rest of the interior well, sticking out like a sore thumb. e: WescottF1 posted:My wife's 2003 Mazda 6 came with a stock in-dash 6 disc changer. The drat thing stopped ejecting CD's two years ago so she's been listening to the same ones since. Do her a favor and install a sylfex AuxMod. Mazdas of that vintage (early 2000s up to 2013s) used a common stereo platform that included an expansion port that could connect to a tape deck, minidisc player (available in the Japanese market), trunk mounted disc changer and in later years, satellite radio. The AuxMod uses the port and emulates a tape deck, allowing an 1/8th inch stereo input. Geoj has a new favorite as of 19:04 on Oct 20, 2014 |
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Oct 20, 2014 18:55
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MondayHotDog posted:In my first year of high school we were still using floppies. In my last year* of highschool we were still using floppies. To be fair though the size of the files I was dealing with wouldn't have required any more than 1.44 MB anyways, certainly not enough to justify the $50+ price tag for a 8 or 16 MB thumb drive. *2001
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Nov 25, 2014 03:59
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mobby_6kl posted:I hope docks don't become obsolete technology. I don't think this will happen until laptops themselves are rendered obsolete. They're far too useful in corporate/office settings to go away, and I'm sure they're a highly profitable accessory for OEMs. Before I had an office job I didn't think they were worth having but when you routinely connect your laptop at the same place every day they're indispensable.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:10
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Platystemon posted:3½″ floppy quality went to poo poo in the twilight years. I wonder how much of it was "manufacturing QC went down the drain" rather than "everything being sold today is new old stock that has been collecting dust in a warehouse for 10+ years." I used to work for FujiFilm, who used 3.5" floppies for backup data, and any time the software driving the printer was updated or reloaded we had to make a fresh set of backups. From about 2007 until I left in 2012 it wasn't uncommon to have a failure rate in the high 60% pulling from a "new" box of floppies.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:17
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MondayHotDog posted:Seriously? A real, actual corporation like FujiFilm was using floppies for backups in 2012? Is that common? This was on equipment that was developed in 1999-2000, was new/installed in 2003-4 and has since reached its end of life. I remember hearing rumblings just before I left that they were looking into patching software that would allow using a thumb drive for backups because finding floppies - much less working ones - was becoming a major challenge. Geoj has a new favorite as of 20:06 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 19:53
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Computer viking posted:It's getting very hard to find an actual dock, though - I think the only ones Dell had last time I checked was a few specific latitudes. The rest have USB3 docks, and those are ... not quite the same. I work in an office that exclusively uses HP hardware and drat near every desk has a laptop dock, including people using the current generation of ultrabooks. YMMV based on which OEM you buy from apparently...
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Nov 27, 2014 07:12
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Pastey posted:Is microfilm considered a different beast from microfiche? Kind of like what CDs are to DVDs. Microfiche is a sheet whereas microfilm is a strip of film on a reel. There's actually still a market for microfilm, as government record keeping standards require it. Not as the primary means of storage, but because once exposed and processed microfilm is extremely difficult to modify so it provides a tamper-proof backup that can be accessed if the digital copy's authenticity is questioned. Back when I worked for FujiFilm I was trained on a microfilm exposer they released in 2008 - it was basically a LED array, two mirrors set at opposing 45 degree angles and a pair of lenses and film drive mechanisms in a chassis the size of a large mini refrigerator.
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Nov 28, 2014 16:24
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Last Chance posted:When did RGB even become a thing? I remember having several large, decent-for-the time TVs (late 90s) that had S-Video but no component. I think they became widespread when CRTs were going through their last hurrah in the early 2000s. I still have a 24" Samsung I inherited from my little brother in 2005 that has component, and the picture quality was very good from what I can remember. They were also common on early flat panel LCD TVs, before HDMI. The first LCD TV I had in 2006 had two or three banks of component inputs along with DVI, VGA, S-Video and composite RCA.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:47
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Zopotantor posted:Patents. I think everyone is missing the real reason for a mechanism that automatically flips the tape - what's going to look cooler when showing off your multi-thousand dollar HiFi stereo system; a 4 track head with auto-reverse or a tape deck that turns the tape around? Just like those 50 disc carousel CD players from the mid to late 90s, sure, its a solution in search of a problem or something that could be done much more easily but someone who is going to dump that kind of money into a sound system wants something to show for it.
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Dec 16, 2014 20:53
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In later years at least I think a lot of it had to do with retailers selling new old stock, as I can't imagine there were many/any floppy disk manufacturing lines still in production past the early 2000s. Like I said several pages ago -Geoj posted:I used to work for FujiFilm, who used 3.5" floppies for backup data, and any time the software driving the printer was updated or reloaded we had to make a fresh set of backups. From about 2007 until I left in 2012 it wasn't uncommon to have a failure rate in the high 60% pulling from a "new" box of floppies. There was a definite dropoff after 2005 in the "quality" of floppies being sold.
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Jan 23, 2015 17:47
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mng posted:While we're down memory lane; early CD-ROM burners that did not have buffer underrun protection. Having to sit and wait for up to an hour for the disc to be burned, and then discover it had turned into an expensive beer coaster was a bit frustrating, to say the least. This, but when you ran the burner through a "simulation" run first and it still failed. Two hours and several dollars down the drain 
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Feb 11, 2015 04:19
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Jerry Cotton posted:What happened to sublimation printers? Pretty much killed by high speed inkjet printers. A lot of photofinishing is now being done by 600-800 print/hour inkjets that can do full sheet coverage and don't require the footprint, chemistry, waste treatment or maintenance requirements of a wet process printer. I worked for FujiFilm (well, their service contractor) until 2012 and the whole industry is moving to inkjet. That said, they did have a product line that was popular with grocery and drug stores without dedicated photo labs that put two dye-sub printers and a photo kiosk into the rough footprint of a mini refrigerator. From my understanding in talking with come of my former coworkers all of those accounts have dropped the drat things and its widely been viewed as "good riddance."
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Feb 11, 2015 19:31
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stealie72 posted:Those arent that obsolete. I was using one to play my iPod and then my phone through an old boombox in my workshop until a couple years ago. A few pages late, but if you want really really obsolete car tech look no further than an 8 track FM adapter: 
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Mar 3, 2015 19:03
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 Yes, this was a thing. Old medicine cabinets had a slot that opened into the cavity between wall joists, into which you inserted your worn dual-edge razor blades.
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Mar 14, 2015 05:19
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Delivery McGee posted:Yeah, the hand cancer. I used to have a sterling silver ring, it rotted away in the photo chemicals over a year or so. That can't be good for you. Think about this statement for a moment. Chemistry intended to dissolve silver salts destroyed a silver ring. I worked for a third party service provider to Fujifilm for the better part of 10 years and was in almost daily contact with photo chemistry, worst thing that ever happened was a mild case of contact dermatitis. My father has been working around photo processing in some capacity or another for nearly 40 years (went to college and finished with a BFA in photography in the 70s, he was a photo lab manager from the mid-80s to late 90s and now works for the same company I used to work for in the same capacity) and has shown no ill effects. As long as you aren't stupid and directly ingest it photo chemicals are about as dangerous as most household cleaners. Geoj has a new favorite as of 21:20 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 19:57
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Gobbeldygook posted:You can't generalize this because dark room photographers used an astounding number of chemicals. Dark room photographers sometimes used utterly deadly and toxic compounds. I've read dark room photography recipes that called for potassium cyanide, chromium salts, mercury salts, uranium salts (not as dangerous as it sounds), and so much more. C-41 process is the most common (especially now with film circling the drain) and the previous statements about photo chemistry being relatively harmless definitely apply to it. Yes there are some exotic mediums that generate some nasty poo poo but your average hobbyist level darkroom isn't going to use them. Geoj has a new favorite as of 03:00 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 02:04
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