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twosideddice posted:That's pretty fascinating. Have you got any links for how one of these engines actually worked? As far as I understand the way turbine engines work, they rely on shooting air out the back of them at high speed, which wouldn't really work on a train. So obviously it's something else and I'm pretty curious. Turbine referrers to the fact that the steam rotates a turbine ( sort of like a propeller) instead of pushing a cylinder in a traditional steam engine. Almost forgot that content:  A rotating current train. It needs three overhead lines. Although some models got around with two lines, by putting a voltage directly on the actual tracks. VictualSquid has a new favorite as of 19:45 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 19:24
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This was the first commercially successful public electric tramway: If you look closely you notice that there is no pantograph and no third rail. It was simply supplied with those 160V DC current through the tracks themselves. The uninsulated tracks running through the middle of Berlin. After too many incidents of people and horses getting electrocuted, they put up a fence and tried to turn off the current on the crossings if no train was nearby. But there still were various incidents of people and horses getting shocked. The city youth also found a new hobby of throwing wires between the tracks to watch them spark and melt as a nice cheap firework. It operated like this for almost 10 Years. Then the pantograph got invented.
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Jul 1, 2013 15:58
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So this is not actually obsolete, it still has some niche uses. But it used to be pretty big and crazy awesome. There is a piece of technology called a Motor-Generator. It used to be the easiest way to transform DC to AC, AC to DC, AC to AC of a different frequency, and DC to DC of a different Voltage. These days ( since the 80s) this is done electronically. They are still used for converting extremely high AC power to a different frequency. So the left over ones are big, this one converts 50Hz network power to 16.7 Hz for use on the German railway net. :  A common variant is this:  This looks like three different motors/generators on the same axis. Because that is what it is. Motor 1 drives the axis using power from the normal net. Generator 3 generates a small voltage which is used to excite the coils in Generator 2. Generator 2 generates DC power. This power is pretty stable and easily controllable by controlling the exciter voltage. It can be made more stable by adding a flywheel which would be replace by a capacitor in a modern setup.  Now one place where you would want controllable high power and voltage DC current is to drive the motors on a train. So you would send your voltage through that set before sending it to your engines, if you are designing an electric train. Another somewhat similar quirk was the idea to generate the low voltage needed to run the lights on a train from a generator attached to a empty running wheel. But people very quickly noticed that this was a bad idea. So if you want to turn on A turbine turns in the power plant driving an axis. This axis goes in a generator to make some current. The current turns a Motor in a traction substation. The Motor turns a Generator in the same substation. The current turns a Motor on a train to turn an axis.* This Axis creates a current in Generator. This current excites another Generator to Generate a Power. This Power turn the motors driving the train. and if we get really crazy: This movement turns an undriven wheel on the same train. This creates Power in a Generator. Which you use to turn on the lights. I have heard, that British Rail used those much more even after the had become outdated. So maybe Axeman Jim can supply some better pictures. * On a modern train there would be a switching power supply here to drive the wheels and the onboard current.
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Jul 4, 2013 16:34
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Geoj posted:But can you use it as a life raft in the event of flooding?
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Jul 23, 2013 20:05
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TotalLossBrain posted:I am not sure what it really is, but it sure looks like a horrible mechanical Furby face. The modern ones look almost exactly the same, until digital TV took over.
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Aug 18, 2015 12:59
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Have you considered using actual cash money.
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Jun 12, 2018 17:04
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Jerry Cotton posted:What the God drat gently caress are you even talking about?
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Jun 14, 2018 15:02
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I remember reading an old engineering thesis where the author included thanks to his girlfriend for writing in the math in a readable way after he typed the text.
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Oct 5, 2019 20:53
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Also, when I was in school I learned how to use those in my technical drawing course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettering_guide You traced one letter/number after another with your ink-pen. It was surprisingly fast with even a bit of practice. That intermediate time where most normal text came through computers and printer, but anything unusual was made by hand and then optically copied was quite strange.
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Oct 5, 2019 21:24
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Cojawfee posted:What are the red lines for?
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Oct 5, 2019 21:42
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Stencils used to be very popular. I used one of those through college, it probably still is in some moving box in storage.  Back in those days there were supply stores near colleges and tradeschools with large racks of useful stencils, right next to the crayons for the younger kids. Starting from the common stuff, like circles or metric screwheads. Ending with more exotic stuff like NATO symbols or hydraulic logic circuits.
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Oct 5, 2019 22:11
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Cojawfee posted:Electricity and math combined is just great when you get to AC stuff. You know how complex numbers are a + bi? Well, you can't use that because I is current because C is the speed of light. So you use j. But the j also goes in front. So it becomes a + jb. Then when you're figuring out phase angles, you use phi, except for when you use theta, and then sometimes you use both theta and phi because each one represents a phase angle for a different component, but then later on they become the same and you add them together. And then you specialize in the wrong subfield and nobody talks about current I because the current density j is much more useful. And you still stick with j for the imaginary number.
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Feb 6, 2020 21:28
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Fun fact: the good TI calculators used the same Motorola 68k cpu that also powered the Sega Genesis, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and early Apple Macs. I actually had a teacher who used to work on analog computers back in the SU. According to him, those were generally more accurate then computations with 8 bit numbers and cheaper/faster then computation with larger word-sizes. That reminds me, anybody remember the octet? Back in ancient times byte referred to what is called a word these days, and was machine dependent. So telecoms and network people decided to call 8-bits an octet.
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Feb 7, 2020 21:19
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Kwyndig posted:I remember reading about an engineer who set his alarm up so it could only be disabled by a keypad in another room by entering today's date on it. The android app thread used to have recommendations for several different apps that do that. In the thread title.
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Oct 7, 2020 10:59
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Cojawfee posted:Holy poo poo they are 200 dollars. I think HP could definitely make a new one and sell it to people into retro computing. A lot of those features seem like they would be really useful for assembly stuff on old microprocessors.
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Mar 19, 2021 21:03
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Yes, the pacemaker seems to have been a special dongle at it isn't even mentioned on the German language sites. But while looking I found an east-german cnc kit:  That seems to have used an infinite punch strip rolled on a tape roll, instead of punch cards or tape. This looks like a tape drive, but the rolls are made of paper with holes: 
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Sep 13, 2021 20:46
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namlosh posted:There’s nothing in this picture for scale, so in my head those reels are 4feet in diameter and the cabinet in the center is the same size as those old IBM punch card readers for the 1401 I also found an integrated conversion office space:  Bottom left shelf has the hole tape unit. Bottom right has 8 inch floppy, and cassette. Top right is a magnetic tape drive. Stats of the hole tape unit: 47kg weight, 482x266x720 mm The whole robotron fansite is full of great old tech: https://www.robotrontechnik.de/html/komponenten/datentraeger.htm#lochband
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Sep 14, 2021 20:25
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Actual obsolete technology, pic from the robotron site: How do you get a map or blueprint into a computer before scanners were invented? Digitizer!  You got this device that looks like a mouse. And is basically a mouse with a small aiming sight. You put your blueprint on the table and trace it with your mouse. You mark the endpoints the lines that you want to copy into your computer. Simple. For the bigger devices you could even build it as the same unit as a plotter. If you don't know what a plotter is: You have a pen attached to two axes or motors, and so you can have the pen draw according to electrical signals. Not always digital, even. A unified head, with aiming point for the digitizer mode and two holders for a pen or a pencil or a cutter to make lithographic masks.  This is how the combined plotter and digitizer unit looked in 1980. Big enough for A0 paper, weighs in at 340kg. 
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Sep 15, 2021 00:10
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So, I mentioned that plotters don't have to be digital. Have you heard the good word of x-y writers?  You see those lab connectors? This is where the signal goes. You generally have a function generator that generates a fairly slow triangle wave on the X. And some sort of result to this on the Y input. I used one in a university lab, they are a good match with analogue oscilloscopes. You got your function generator on one channel applying a voltage on a diode or something. And a probe at a resistor in series to it. Old scopes have a mode for XY display, so that you can see the U vs I curve directly. For more complex equipment you got Lissajous displays in old broadcasting equipment, to compare two rf signals. An acquaintance told me a story of a scope they had at Wendelstein displaying the same figure for 30 years with appropriate burn in once it was finally turned off.  In that lab exercise we looked at the scope display and then attached the exact same lines to the analogue plotter, to get figures for our lab report. This was around 2005, so the more advanced labs had replaced them with digital scopes that could export files. Originally the competing technology was taking photographs of the scope screen. Analogue photographs, with films and a week of development.
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Sep 16, 2021 18:36
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I thought mp3 cds and their dedicated players were outdated and failed, but there was one for sale at aldi today:
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Aug 8, 2022 08:27
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I remember when I was young there was a minor tech conference near by that held an open day, where students from nearby school could look at the stalls without paying. One company was showing off an ultra high end server. It took a whole rack, fully filled almost 2 meters of tech. It had 2 cool new memory expanders taking 2 or even 4 U each. With that the system had more ram then all the hard drives I had used before that day taken together. One whole gigabyte.
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Sep 21, 2022 11:30
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Finally a workout that you can do in high heels.
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Sep 30, 2022 21:24
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I really love this Chernobyl video, it features explanations by a guy who actually started work at the plant after the famous accident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU
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Jan 23, 2023 19:24
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lobsterminator posted:Lemmings on Amiga also had a two player mode with two mice. Because joysticks and mice used the same port so you could use either. By either you mean that nobody owed two mice, so the second player had to use the joystick which sucked for controlling lemmings.
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Jan 30, 2023 12:48
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Those 1 page of notes allowed tests were very popular where I went to college. Common enough that most of those pages were 50% cutouts of older pages from the prerequisite courses that got optically zoomed or cropped on a photocopier. All the way down, until you get that one prof that insisted on handwritten notes. And there was always one nerd who tried to typeset his note sheet using tex or something, and spent much too long on it. Some of the tests allowed (additionally or alternatively) an usual unanotated maths reference book. Do people still do that? Funnily, once I got to grad school and actually used the book for something useful I started adding some notes, and had to buy a new one for some test. VictualSquid has a new favorite as of 18:50 on Apr 5, 2023 |
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Apr 5, 2023 18:47
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Table calculators are doing well, thanks to the fact that it's always 100% easier and faster to use them instead of calc.exe. Until you don't use it for a few days and it gets buried under a stack of paper. Finding it might be faster then calc.exe, but it is not faster then the table calculator emulator on my phone.
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Apr 6, 2023 10:27
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Literally anything is faster than that, what the loving heck? Like, Jordan Peterson is less slow than digging out your phone, unlocking it (which always takes 40 000 years), and opening the calculator app. Then it takes 40 000 000 years to press any key because you actually have to look at the thing since there's no actual keyboard for the calculator, with a home key. My phone is generally lying on the desk next to my mousepad while I am working. Probably on top of the stack of papers that has buried my desk calc. I suppose once you find your touch typing rhythm for your desk calc it becomes faster. But for me my touch typing is too used to a full sized pc numpad and I need to look down on the desk calc, too.
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Apr 6, 2023 10:40
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3D Megadoodoo posted:The keyboard on my calculator is just a bit larger than on my computer (which is a full-sized IBM). The phone is in my bag somewhere so I can plausibly say I didn't hear it if some fucko calls me. Looks like a logic analyser or a logic analyser probe. Or maybe a programmer. What does googling the serial number say? I can't really read it.
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Apr 6, 2023 10:49
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DrBouvenstein posted:Is that partly because, on average, most young people in general can hear a higher frequency range than older people? So it might part "old people like the sound, as far as they can remember what it was" but mostly "they literally can't hear the more annoying frequency." England. Tom Scott mentions them in the video you quoted. And he mentions that he could hear them until he was 30.
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Apr 10, 2023 21:15
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Books and drawing things by hand are both outdated. And I found a book about drafting from 1996, I got for free during a library cleanup around 2005: It starts with an errata printout page about the new EN10025 names for steels, which is an actual example of failed technology afaik.  I really like the strange combination of basics and advanced info: What is pen? what is compass? what is protractor? what is Oberflächenangabenschablone? It is a stencil for surface condition markings.  Stencil for isometric and dimetric distorted things. Stickers with symbols as an alternative to stencils. Some kind of hand held plotter.  I think there was also a lego technik version. Found the pic of the catalogue:  How to fold paper and draw a line:  How to write letters:  How to find the middle of a line: How to draw two rods touching each other:   NC without the first C. Which means you need to write your own G-code. The next page has an example g-code listing for that example object, but the book has no general g-code reference section.  A CAD workstation needs an high end PC with at leas 8MB of RAM:  Actual failed tech, android showed me a document scan to google drive button while I was making those photos. It changed the photo to look like this: 
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Apr 13, 2023 23:37
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3D Megadoodoo posted:What am I missing here - those look like the names that are still in use? I don't have current knowledge so they might finally have succeeded, but afaik they never actually managed to replace the old names outside of textbooks.
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Apr 14, 2023 00:24
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The beginning of punch tape writer restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlOT6TRbI88
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Apr 22, 2023 21:08
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Dick Trauma posted:https://twitter.com/friendschurches/status/1670310384010403840?s=20 So that is why it is called cumbrian.
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Jun 18, 2023 20:16
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Cojawfee posted:Is that a salt pile and a pork pile, or is it two salt pork piles. Should be several salt pork piles, at least judging from the townsends video about it.
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Jun 22, 2023 21:51
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Some old games came with printed backstory novels, back before cinematic intros were invented. Loom came with a audiobook backstory novel on cassette: 
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Jul 2, 2023 17:08
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Jul 4, 2023 18:03
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Phanatic posted:It angers me that they haven't just remade that and Master of Magic. Update the graphics and interface and give them a decent AI, and change nothing else. There have been almost 3 official remakes for MoM in the last few years. They weren't impressive though. One is basically a balance and AI mod. One is a widescreen patch with some minor interface changes for the mod. One is a hex based remake. It lacks soul, just like the Alpha Centauri remake from a few years back.
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Jul 5, 2023 08:54
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Computer viking posted:Civ:BE would have been a perfectly fine game in a world where Alpha Centauri didn't exist, agreed. But it's hard to get out of that shadow, even if that's unfair to a game that never claimed to be AC:2. I thought Civ:BE implied to be AC:2 until release, and then back-pedalled once reviews made unfavourable comparisons. Kinda like with Stardock's Elemental and MoM.
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Jul 5, 2023 13:45
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“A rather charming seat on wheels. The little pot underneath is filled with burning peat to keep baby’s feet warm.”
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Aug 13, 2023 21:14
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"openttd changelog posted:14.0-beta1 (2023-02-03)
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Feb 5, 2024 13:59
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