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I just discovered this thread and it's taking all I have not to spam it with a thousand pictures of vintage hi-fi equipment. I guess it technically qualifies as obsolete? Stuff like: or:  or when electronic equipment incorporates wood:  or dat Marantz font:  I'm too young to have been around for its heyday, but from a design perspective... 
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Oct 17, 2015 18:31
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Krispy Kareem posted:Which the local AM news station has been doing less and less of because they're too busy with talk radio. As long as we have brown people and old white people who are scared of them, AM radio will thrive. Anyway! Since my vintage hi-fi obsession does not seem to be entirely out of place, here's a few more: More switches = more better:   I would put VU meters on everything, honestly:   And some "oh, just casually holding up my heavy-rear end stereo equipment" ads:   OK, I'll stop spamming. Here are a few places I found those: https://www.flickr.com/photos/48136705@N05/ http://audioklassiks.tumblr.com/ http://www.audioclassic.org/ http://audioklassiks.de/wordpress/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/pintzul/sets/72157632508048978 http://cassetteplayers.tumblr.com/ I've made a Bluetooth stereo or two, either re-purposing an old housing or making one out of wood, so these are my inspiration bookmarks for when I start using metals. Plus, it's just beautiful and/or wonderfully goofy stuff.
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Oct 18, 2015 15:33
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:Jesus, that font. I know, it's just about perfect. Apparently derived from this: http://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/23744/metropolis
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Oct 18, 2015 22:57
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Putting SXM in my car (about 6 years ago) was the best thing for my commuting sanity. Every so often I'll get a rental without it, tune to FM, and just feel like punching the steering wheel until one of us bleeds. The commercials, the same goddamn songs, the same formats... If that's the best FM radio can do while fighting its own demise, it deserves to die.Computer viking posted:As a foreigner, my impression of AM talk radio is wall-to-wall racist religious ultraconservatives. That doesn't seem likely to be 100% true - so out of curiosity, what's the typical mix of content? 98%, tops.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:01
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Hmm. Either I listen to a few good SXM stations (Little Steven's Underground Garage, Liquid Metal, Deep Tracks, Lithium) or I'm just not listening long enough each day to see the repeats you're all describing. So I'll just say it works for me, at least compared to FM. Meanwhile, on obsolete technology: my car (base 2005 Infiniti G35) doesn't have line-in, Bluetooth, or any other audio input available. That means my after-market SXM radio actually uses an FM transmitter for playback through the car's speakers. So it's subject to (a) overpass interference, (b) terrestrial radio interference, and (c) lower audio quality. It's a beautiful combination Getting some of the more modern car conveniences would be very nice, and the gas mileage blows, but it's so hard to justify getting a new car when my current one still runs like new. Or maybe I'll just man up and eventually add an aux input plug myself.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:40
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JesustheDarkLord posted:It's important that you pick something you'll never forget. 
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Oct 21, 2015 16:49
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Stealing a nice piece of nostalgia from YOSPOS: boomshakalakakickitupmothafucka
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Oct 21, 2015 21:39
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If you were to revive a defunct web-based property from the last 15 years or so, what would it be? The answer is, obviously, MPlayer. It even has a tangential relationship to SA itself! Holy poo poo does this bring back memories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x-dQXQbiQI ... although they're mostly memories of how lovely the whole experience was  e: I want rack-based everything.
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Oct 22, 2015 19:59
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RC and Moon Pie posted:It looks something like this. That reminded me of the time I visited HP HQ and got to tour the founders' offices, one of which included a wet bar:  Really, the entire thing was just as early Silicon Valley you'd expect:  This is only tangential to the topic, but here's some tech from either HQ or the house/garage where they started. The actual pieces aren't original, but they're period-correct: The OG oscillators:   Where they typed up invoices:  took orders (probably):  and baked the plastic housing:  The shed where Bill Hewlett lived in the early days:  And some shots of their garage:    
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Oct 23, 2015 18:51
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Geoj posted:When was this? I worked for HP until March of this year (got laid off in the most recent round of "bought another overvalued company and now have to make the budget work" layoffs,) last time I was in Palo Alto for training (January 2014) they said the garage is was closed to the public and you can only see it from the street. Went there early this year, but it was for a Very Special Event, which meant they could actually plan for a guided visit. Otherwise, you're right -- off limits to the public. My guess is there's too much effort to staff the place and keep it open to the public. Not that it helps, but... sorry for getting laid off?  Hope you managed to bounce back.
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Oct 23, 2015 20:28
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In absolute abstract, probably not. What's hateful about it is the idea that eating is somehow a chore and an inconvenience, one that needs to be remedied or "hacked" by drinking gruel. If that most basic of living needs is somehow preventing you from devoting more time to coding or whatever the gently caress inspired Soylent, maybe you should re-evaluate your career choices.
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Oct 29, 2015 17:09
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Zaphod42 posted:Some people, like myself, have appetite problems, because of different medical issues. So its not all about maximizing your 100% uptime on coding efficiency or whatever. So you can get off your high horse on that one dude. OK, fine. You're approximately 1% of 1% of people who might buy Soylent because it genuinely helps them. The rest are Valley shitheels who would also subscribe to this, because feeding and clothing oneself is apparently beyond their capability as supposed adults.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:22
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ZALGO! posted:it had a 286 Intel processor and it's own custom version of Windows 3.1. It's the inspiration for XBox One!
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Nov 1, 2015 18:27
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Because I'm a sucker for old photos, here are some of Ye Olde Computer Shoppes (from here):       which somehow brings back memories of roaming CompUSA in late 90s for the latest, unreliable, obsolete-the-next-minute way to expand storage and eventually settling on...  Suck it, Ziphavers 
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Nov 12, 2015 20:02
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Exit Strategy posted:Now I'm just remembering my old stack of size-of-a-modern-laptop SCSI-1 HDDs that I used to store my porn on and disconnect from the family computer when I was done. Sharing a computer really helped develop good opsec habits.
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Nov 12, 2015 23:04
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Humphreys posted:Now for the opsec the discs were actually opened and the platter was covered in paper to prevent anyone reading it that didn't know that you had to remove the paper to read it. Genius  Forget encryption, that would probably defeat most hacking attempts today.WebDog posted:Apparently one used disk read sounds to simulate heavy breathing. Oh yeah baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qz9a8kYYkA
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Nov 13, 2015 16:29
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^ CompUSA supremacy!  In other news -- I"m not obsolete, you're obsolete! https://news.vice.com/article/windows-31-is-still-alive-and-it-just-killed-a-french-airport quote:the computer failure had affected a system known as DECOR, which is used by air traffic controllers to communicate weather information to pilots. Pilots rely on the system when weather conditions are poor.
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Nov 13, 2015 22:29
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FIL has old computer mags collecting dust on a shelf, and some of them have better-not-make-a-typo code included in the back for the readers:   BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY  Love the accompanying drawings:  
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Nov 29, 2015 21:51
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I enjoy making silly poo poo, so I'm always on the lookout for design inspiration and found this place: http://future-forms.com/     I like how they have a "Novelty" section. As opposed to all other very serious and staid designs.
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Dec 4, 2015 20:13
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WebDog posted:
My stupid brain skipped to "lamprey", which I won't post here because gently caress that nightmare creature.
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Dec 5, 2015 00:57
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Collateral Damage posted:A friend of mine loves the clit mouse and laments that only Thinkpads still have them. I don't understand him. My first laptop ever (at my first job out of college) was a Thinkpad and I too feel in love with the nub. Ten years later and I'd still take it over most trackpads. It's probably like if your first crush was your chubby babysitter and ever since then you have a thing for heftier women/men/nonbinary lifeforms.
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Dec 12, 2015 19:46
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I remember dual-booting into Windows and Red Hat back in '99, or at least trying to. Right up to the point that someone told me the "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" line. It was so very, very true. The space taken up by RH was then filled up by many Napster downloads.
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Dec 14, 2015 03:40
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Well, that's three for the majors (iTunes, Google Music, Amazon) and two for the indies (Bandcamp, eMusic). So many choices for the consumer! SoundCloud too, I think? But I think they all sell the same catalogs at the same prices, or at least the ones serving major labels. My guess is that anyone else out there selling downloads from major labels' artists is pretty much guaranteed to be doing so without a legal agreement. Those places will get shut down right quick these days, unlike the relatively long lives Puretunes or allofmp3 had.
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Dec 15, 2015 07:44
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Neat if you have 15 minutes to kill: bunch of computer scientists and engineers talking about their first computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r4Cmwd_7vA Technically, mine was a homegrown school computer back in the Old Country  Just look at this beast: code:
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Dec 16, 2015 17:36
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I found a few ancient files on my system with .S3M extensions! God, that was a nice little blip in the years just before computers really became ubiquitous. For a good long while it was easier to find and download a (pretty faithful) tracker version of Robert MIles' "Children" than the MP3. Also, I would like to thank FastTracker and Scream Tracker for proving beyond any doubt that I had no business trying to make music. edit: YESSSSS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UUvrj9yVVw Trabant has a new favorite as of 20:44 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 18:00
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robodex posted:I used to be obsessed with tracking back in the early 2000s. Used to spend hours making stuff in Modplug. I was a terrible musician, but there was just something charming about it, halfway between programming and art. Same here -- I enjoyed the process so much that for a while I was able to ignore how bad I was at it  axolotl farmer posted:The music in Unreal and Unreal Tournament 99 and some other games are just regular module files that can be played and opened in trackers like ModPlug. Kinda surprising, I have to admit. It was probably done to save on filesize?
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Dec 22, 2015 20:59
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KozmoNaut posted:I mean seriously, how can anyone stand a desktop that looks like this? You are clearly not a l33t haxx0r
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Dec 28, 2015 18:03
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My first job out of college was in photolithography engineering at a semiconductor fab that for let one of our vendors treat us as an alpha site for new tech. They rolled out this fancy new thing that varied laser intensity across very small distances to improve across-chip transistor gate length variation. It was very cool and the hardware was very much ready, but the software... ehh, not exactly a priority for them. So the hacked together solution was to make laser exposure calculations in Excel, transform the numbers into a very specific format with a macro, and then paste the output into an XML template that the hardware could (for some unfathomable reason) read and follow. Nobody there, myself included, had any clue about what XML was and how it worked. We were physicists, chemical engineers, etc. So we entrusted this "system" to run our $25 million tools on product worth many millions more. I've no idea whether that's still the process of record there... I sure as hell hope it isn't. Well, that's my XML story. It's 12 years later and I still don't know much about it.
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Jan 3, 2016 04:00
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Wait, SAS? Worked there for a while after leaving the ASML + XML job I described. At that point I wasn't in photo, but still 
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Jan 5, 2016 23:15
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Shifty Pony posted:Yup, I was there when they were building out the 300mm line. But Fab 1 fits the thread topic perfectly!  Anyway, following links from the  thread dedicated to the same topic, Gene Roddenberry's floppy disks were finally read:quote:Several years after the death of Roddenberry, his estate found the 5.25-inch floppy disks. Although the Star Trek creator originally typed his scripts on typewriters, he later moved his writing to two custom-built computers with custom-made operating systems before purchasing more mainstream computers in advance of his death in 1991. from this article. Custom OS? That's... wholly unnecessary, even in the 80s. Hardcore though.
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Jan 6, 2016 23:37
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This chat reminds of a technology I've never been exposed to myself but have read about : AGA stoves: It's one of those things that's horribly divisive, but having never been around one I can't offer a personal opinion. However, when you read this line: quote:This would indicate that the smallest traditional two-oven gas AGA providing simple cooking functions (i.e. no water heating or central heating) consumes almost as much gas in a week as a standard gas oven/hob does in nine months. I mean, if you were actively trying to make something horribly inefficient, you'd probably have a tough time meeting the standard set by this thing.
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Jan 8, 2016 19:24
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re: VCDs I only ever bought exactly one:  and because here in the US nobody had heard of the movie, I had to order it on VCD from Hong Kong. So back in '99 (?) I order it for a few bucks. It arrived two weeks later with: 1) Left audio channel dedicated to the original French 2) Right audio channel dedicated to Cantonese dubs 3) Permanent subtitles in English Good for them for finding ways to squeeze all that on a CD!
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Jan 11, 2016 22:24
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That faux leather case with contrast stitching is so 90's that the tips of my hair are spontaneously frosting! Actually, on the MP3 player topic: is there a consensus rec about a non-iPod standalone MP3 player these days? The entire standalone category has gone largely obsolete and I'd actually like something of the sort instead of bringing my gigantic phone to the gym.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:12
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JediTalentAgent posted:Same token, at Walmart they used to have some pre-loaded theme MP3 players for a few years. I don't know if they could take external memory or hold more songs, but they were things like Elvis and the like. Tech that appeals to a younger crowd, but applied to music that appeals to an older crowd. Genius!
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Feb 16, 2016 16:42
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Humphreys posted:Obsolete tech related. Anyone remember Bom Funk MCs? Holy poo poo, thought I imagined them!
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Mar 5, 2016 19:10
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The Gasmask posted:I'm so glad I gave away my tube tv. It was 32 or 34", widescreen pseudo-HD (720 in the middle "square" of the screen, much less on the widescreen "edges"), had an actual flat glass screen, was much skinnier than normal, and weighed more than 150lbs. Lemme guess -- Sanyo?
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Mar 8, 2016 23:32
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Unrelated to the most recent chat, but I came across these pics of Braun products and thought I'd share.        Fifty years later and it still looks like some kind of retrofuture that never arrived:
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Mar 17, 2016 20:48
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Flipperwaldt posted:There's no limit. Wow 
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Apr 19, 2016 00:13
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I mean, if you're gonna troll with bad info likeatomicthumbs posted:can never, ever drive more than 145 miles (or less, depending on trim level, conditions, how worn out your battery is, etc) from either home or the SF-LA supercharger corridor at least put in the effort to be wrong just by a little, not literally be off by 100 miles or more. atomicthumbs posted:5. I post in AI regularly. Pay attention. "As an experienced AI poster, I"
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May 1, 2016 20:43
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atomicthumbs posted:Hint: divide the Tesla 90D's range by two to figure out how many miles you can go away from your charging point before you have to go back. Assuming you can't charge at all at your destination, sure. Which would be akin to driving your gas-powered car to a place where you know there is no gas. You wouldn't do that in your Volvo, so why would anyone do that in a Tesla? If you're not trolling then... I guess it's clear you hate Tesla, mission successful. But come on, don't make up completely illogical stuff.
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May 1, 2016 20:59
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