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When I was a preschooler, around 1980, my mom used to take my brother and me out for walks to get us out of my dad's hair while he worked at home. She often took us to the campus of the University of Oklahoma, where both my parents had gotten their degrees, and one of my favorite things was going to the math department where we would walk around and see if anyone had any of these in their trashcans that we wouldn't mind taking: Discarded punchcards are great for scribbling on. 
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May 25, 2015 02:59
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This one, I presume: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/25/chap_mines_bitcoin_with_punch_cards_and_ancient_mainframe/quote:Vintage hardware enthusiast Ken Shirriff has shown that a model 1401 mainframe, which IBM announced in 1959, can mine Bitcoin. If, that is, your definition of mining includes “chugging away at the problem until pretty close to the heat-death of the universe.” The subhead, IBM Model 1401 can hash, will produce a Bitcoin some time after the Sun explodes, is not actually an exaggeration. ETA: When did bitcoins start having real value again? I though they were very close to worthless, and now they're over $200 each? pookel has a new favorite as of 15:36 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 15:33
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Code Jockey posted:Wait people are laughing at the C64? Who are these people, I want to have words I recently downloaded a C64 emulator thanks to this thread and nostalgia, and my 7-year-old saw me using it and got interested enough to learn some simple BASIC programming. Yesterday I showed him how to use it to write Mad Libs. The C64 still rocks, is my point.
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May 31, 2015 15:59
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The Oklahoma City Zoo had one of those plastic mold machines when I was a kid. I don't know if they still do. I still have the plastic elephant I got there, though. C64 chat: When we got our Commodore 64, my family's very first computer, in 1984, the guy at the computer store also gave us a floppy disk with a bunch of games on it. Considering the titles (Zork I&II, Jumpman, Impossible Mission, and maybe a dozen others, popular commercial games) and the handwritten label, it was clearly pirated, but I don't think any of us understood that at the time. So we loaded up the disk, looked at the file listing, and tried to load the games. But nothing would load. We just got error messages on every game. Except one, a file labeled "Boot Game." This sounded boring (a game about boots, really?), but since it was the only one that even started, we kept trying it. We loaded Boot Game, and then it asked what game we wanted to play, so we'd type "Boot Game" and nothing would happen. This was very frustrating until one of us got the idea to try typing the name of another game from the disk, and lo and behold, it loaded! And that is how my parents, my brother and I all learned a new definition of the word "boot."
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Jun 2, 2015 15:48
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Speaking of the early days of downloading, I just remembered something I am NOT going to go looking for on a work computer. Who else remembers surfing warez sites in the 90s - and the horrible bestiality porn banner ads that inevitably accompanied them? It was never just regular porn, not even just BDSM porn or any standard kink. Always bestiality. There were a few different site names, but I suspect they all had a common owner. I did not click to find out.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:47
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Another thing I don't miss is the Russian roulette that was Napster downloads. Saw one thing once labeled BDSM that I'm 99% sure was an actual rape. I closed it and deleted it as soon as I started to suspect, but never could get it out of my head. Or you'd download something labeled "The Matrix" and it'd be porn. Now that I have kids, I'm really, really glad it's not as easy to accidentally stumble across disturbing poo poo on the internet. I mean, I know it still exists, but at least now you have to actively search for it.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:28
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I thought it was Napster, but who knows after all this time. Might have been limewire - I used that for a while. One of those programs, I can't remember which, allowed you to see in real-time what other people were searching for. That was depressing. It was about 30% rape and 30% some variation of "young" or "child" or "teen."
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Jun 3, 2015 18:53
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Geoj posted:Napster was music only, IIRC it only shared MP3s. After the RIAA shut it down there were a bunch of P2P sharing protocols that popped up - eMule, Limewire, Kazaa, BearShare (to name a few) that worked with any file. I'm pretty sure I used every single one of those. 
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Jun 3, 2015 19:35
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Speaking of songs that were all over the place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qN72LEQnaU Edit: dang, that's the remix. Here's the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WpMlwVwydo pookel has a new favorite as of 20:55 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 20:52
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I never did have Bonzi Buddy. However ...
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Jun 3, 2015 22:42
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Speaking of blue screen, I think the ubiquity of this counts as obsolete: I had to explain the term "blue screen of death" to some younger friends recently. Not kids, people in their early 20s. "But why was it called that?" "Well, see, the error message screen is blue ..."
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Jun 4, 2015 15:22
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SwissCM posted:Eventually the internet will become pervasive enough that not having access to the internet won't be a thing unless it's a personal choice or whatever. There's a difference between choosing not to have internet at all/not having access at all, and not having internet *at the moment* because you just moved in or your router died or you're switching providers or .... I mean, 20 years ago basically everyone had phone service, but I wouldn't have wanted a TV that didn't work unless I could call the company and log in. What if my phone was out just when I needed to?
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Jun 8, 2015 14:43
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I think it took companies a long time to realize that what they saw as "theft" was often motivated by convenience, not money. I remember, back in the days of Napster, ranting that I'd happily PAY for music downloads as long as I could get music on demand, easily, from home. But no one was selling it back then, or not widely. Of course, sometimes it's about money, too - I'm not the only one in my workplace who has a pirated copy of AutoCAD at home to dink around with. My workplace pays thousands for me to use it there, I'm not going to spend that kind of money just so I can occasionally test something out from home.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:42
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AutoCAD actually gives out free student licenses, which I think is pretty neat.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:54
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The actual problem with Netflix is the lack of an advanced search function. Please don't tell me those are also obsolete.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:17
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Back in 1999, when I got my first real adult job as a newspaper copy editor, the paper I went to was still using its custom network of 386s for page layout and 286s for writing/editing. The 286s were cute little things that we were told never to turn off (and they almost never needed rebooting). When we rearranged the furniture and had to unplug everything, two of those 286s never woke up again. On the 386s, we used a page design system that involved a copper-coil mouse on a tablet. When you started the computer, the first thing you did was align the cross-hairs of the mouse over the matching cross-hairs on the tablet. Then you could almost, almost use it like a regular mouse. Remember this was 1999. I had a Pentium II at home and I was coming from a college paper that used Quark 3 on Power Macs. But this system had cost millions back when it was new, and the paper was reluctant to upgrade. They finally had to, though - the old system couldn't handle dates past 1999, and so everything had to be upgraded for Y2K so that everyone's newspaper would have the right dates on the page corners. I would love it if anyone else knows anything more about the system we used and those copper-coil mouse tablets. Google has turned up nothing. All I remember from the ~6 months I used it is that it involved typing a lot of code that looked a bit like HTML, and that there was something called "quad left" and something called "format merge."
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Jun 10, 2015 21:53
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OK, I googled some more with different terms and came up with the answer: it was the Harris Pagination System with NewsMaker editing software. Couldn't find any actual photos, but I did find this: http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4799&context=theses It's a thesis on the manual for Harris operation, and if you scroll down to page 87, you can see a sketch of the "mouse" and a description. The dark circle around the crosshairs was copper, and the four diamond-shaped buttons were different colors and had different functions.  ETA: spog posted:
None of those match, but thanks for the link - that is really cool to read. I miss working with the old guys who could still tell stories about the hot metal days. pookel has a new favorite as of 22:30 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 22:28
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SubG posted:Yeah, that's a what's commonly called a puck. The surface it works on is called a digitizer. Type those two search terms into google and you'll get a whole shitload of similar devices.
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Jun 10, 2015 22:54
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Are Microsoft BASIC and Commodore BASIC the same? I know they are similar. My mom got a book of science activities for my kid that was printed in 1990, and it includes a program you can type in, written in Microsoft BASIC. He already has a C64 emulator since he saw me using one. Speaking of which, I skipped Steam last night in favor of Gateway to Apshai. 
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Jun 11, 2015 13:50
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One of our sports guys insisted on using a Tandy laptop from the 1980s when he was out on assignment until it finally died sometime around 2000. For years afterwards, he bitched about the lovely laptops he was forced to use instead - an iBook, or a Windows laptop of a similar vintage. They were all inferior to that Tandy. Also, LOGO was loving awesome. In 1985, when I was 8 years old. In 2005, not so much.
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Jun 11, 2015 17:56
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KozmoNaut posted:I wish I could go back in time and experience the golden age of radio, good heart and soul type local stations with knowledgeable and funny DJs, back when radio was important and relevant. In fact, it would be great to experience the whole growth of radio and then TV, to see it all happening while it was new and amazing. I'm old enough to have grown up with black-and-white TV that had fewer than a dozen channels*, and I would not ever want to travel back in that direction. * In the 80s. We were poor.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:10
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I find it depressing that the local "oldies" station plays Pearl Jam and Nirvana, not just because holy poo poo I'm old, but because the actual oldies never get played at all anymore. I realized this when I was sitting at Taco Del Mar and realized that they were playing a steady stream of music from the '50s and '60s. I heard "Chantilly Lace" and got a wave of nostalgia. I am not always in the mood for Elvis and the Beach Boys and the Supremes, but dammit, there should be ONE station that still plays them.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:42
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Unfortunately, what's best for customers isn't always what's profitable. See also: print journalism.
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Jun 12, 2015 17:12
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I was poking around the internet looking for more information on my current obsession, Gateway to Apshai (a 1983 dungeon crawl for C64 and Atari), and found this neat comment on a blog review of it:quote:Just a few notes from the programmer/artist/producer/everything else who was responsible for Gateway to Apshai. It remains the favorite of all the games I ever created, simply because of one thing - it was incredible tight and efficient. Remember how long ago this was - all of that stuff fit into one 32K (K, not M) cartrige, and would run with as little as 16K of RAM. Quite an achievement, all things considered. I'd always thought the AI was primitive because it was 1983 and programmers hadn't figured out how to make it better. I hadn't thought about that 32K space limit. (The best strategy in this game was to get monsters stuck on walls, then kill them from the other side.) Also, it's hard to fathom that the whole game was the creation of one person. And it wasn't a small indie release, it was a mainstream, popular game you could buy at Target.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:00
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flosofl posted:The title Saving Ryan's Privates will always have a special place in my heart. Don't know if it's a real porn or not, but it should be. IIRC, it's real, and it's Shaving Ryan's Privates.
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Jun 15, 2015 20:27
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Here's something I miss doing: My smartphone is great for texting, surfing the internet, and playing games, but it kind of sucks as an actual phone. Hands-free is basically impossible.
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Jun 16, 2015 16:17
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thespaceinvader posted:Most smartphones ship with headphones with a built in mic these days, use that. Mine didn't. Besides, headphones aren't the same thing.
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Jun 16, 2015 18:50
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My smartphone likes to think that my cheek is trying to use the touchscreen, and turn itself off in the middle of calls. OTOH, I'd usually rather play Candy Crush than talk to people anyway, and it gives me a handy excuse not to call them. "Sorry, my phone sucks! I'll just email you later. Bye!"
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Jun 16, 2015 20:06
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I'm in a Dakota (the northern one), and A) we have only one area code, and B) we only have to dial it for long distance. Newcomers often find it odd that people who share an area code with us might be long distance.
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Jun 17, 2015 05:40
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Geoj posted:These are usually in IR emitter/receiver than a purely PV cell (in which case it would turn off the screen in the dark.) I don't actually want to return to the days of corded home phones (and I don't want a replica to plug into my smartphone, since it won't fit in my pocket), but I do miss them sometimes.
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Jun 17, 2015 14:35
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Living in North Dakota has taught me that this isn't just a matter of perspective. A town of 10K or 20K people around here will probably have its own airport and hospital, and maybe even a university, and be the biggest metro area in a 50-mile radius. I realize that there aren't very many people living there and it is not "big," but it's also not the same sort of small village that a town that size would be in a more populated state.
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Jun 24, 2015 02:59
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Yeah, basically it's not any kind of technology problem, it's just American banks being assholes and making it difficult for people. Most people's paychecks are direct-deposited these days, and bills are easily paid online, but for person-to-person transactions you use cash or a check. I had occasion to appreciate checks recently, when I left my wallet at home but had a loose check in my purse for no good reason. I was picking up prescriptions, and the girl at CVS let me write a check - for controlled substances! - with no ID, no driver's license number, nothing. (Mind you, I go there all the time and she knows me. Still, I appreciate North Dakota at times like that.)
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Jul 2, 2015 16:20
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Now I wonder, in countries where nearly every transaction is handled electronically and no one carries cash - how does the black market work? Do you still use bank transfers to buy coke from your dealer? Does he use them to buy from his supplier, or would he be worried about leaving a paper trail?
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Jul 2, 2015 17:35
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I just ran across this in a web search. This is like my freshman year of college encapsulated in a single Angelfire site. http://www.angelfire.com/me/GOTHGIRL/stuff.html quote:YOU HAVE NOW ENTERED THE DARKNESS!! This page contains information about Gothic & Industrial Music yes... I like Industrial just as much. 
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Jul 3, 2015 18:28
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There are a few places on the internet where you can watch old porn, back to the 1920s or so. The two big differences I notice are body hair and body shape. More hair, more fat, more imperfect-looking people. But the sex is pretty much the same.
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Jul 8, 2015 16:14
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quote:Its miniscule software lineup mostly comprised of dating sims and "dress-up" games, and the Loopy itself came with a built-in printer that could turn whatever was onscreen into stickers. Good lord. This was marketed to adult women? Eight-year-old girls might like this sort of thing. Maybe.
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Jul 12, 2015 05:56
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Before smartphones were ubiquitous (with credit card apps), those little card-imprinters were very popular at street fairs and other locations where vendors had temporary booths set up. It was that or take cash only, or trust your customers enough to accept their checks. I also saw a store use one in the last few years when the power was out but I wanted to buy stuff anyway. Lucky they had one. Some vendors would just copy all the info down by hand, but those things made it much faster.
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Jul 13, 2015 16:28
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In America your debit card is almost always indistinguishable from a credit card - not just in the sense of "they work the same way" but as in "your bank issues you a Visa debit card that says VISA on it and looks and works just like a credit card on credit card machines, except the money comes directly out of your account instead of you paying it off later." Or you can get an actual credit card through your bank, which does have a line of credit, but shows up as simply another account on your bank website, and you can set it to automatically pay it off in full every month ... The point is, they're functionally identical.
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Jul 13, 2015 17:41
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Speaking of money, does old currency count as obsolete tech? I understand that the newer (U.S.) bills have better anti-counterfeiting technology, but I still get nostalgic for the designs of my childhood: Old $100 bill:  New $100 bill: 
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Jul 14, 2015 14:36
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Antifreeze Head posted:United States currency has to be the most depressing currency in all the world. It is just so boring, a dead old white man on the obverse and a bland building on the reverse. Dollar coins would be a big improvement though, imo. Up here in North Dakota we were big fans of the Sakakawea* dollar coin, but it didn't really catch on.  * NOT Sacajawea. She was a local girl, dammit, and we spell her name correctly, as it was pronounced. There's even a lake named after her here.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:41
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