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Krispy Kareem posted:I had an used one that I picked up for $100 off eBay (retailed for $4000 originally). Really cool hardware, but it always felt more like a proof of concept than an evolutionary design. And a bitch to install anything on as it had no floppy and no CD-ROM. I can't remember if it had ethernet. I think I may have had to use a PCMCIA card for that. Dammit! I read this entire thread in hopes this hadn't come up yet, but there it is. A completely pain in the rear end laptop. The Canon BN22, I had one, and hated it:  LONG POST WARNING A few other things I remember from days gone by: The StarFox game watch:  Spamtron7000 posted:Anybody posted this thing yet? I was just at my parents' house for Christmas and they still have it sitting in a drawer in the living room. My dad got it for me when I was still in high school (I graduated in 1989). This loving thing still works AND it still has the original duracell batteries in it. I opened the back to check the batteries and they are straight up 9-volts with the year 1988 printed on them. I used to love annoying the hell out of everyone with it. I had a Robocop action figure that had maybe 8 buttons on the back that made various noises. Those three were present. Also if you pushed certain combinations of buttons it would tweak out and actually play a sound assigned to a completely different button. No pictures of this unfortunately. Also when i was in grade school the Commonwealth bank had a kids banking program where you brought in your swanky yellow bank book with money your parents put in it and it got deposited (I had a separate allowance/chores money for my other lovely purchases):  Fast Forward a few years and half way through highschool I ended up getting myself an EFTPOS card linked to it 'for emergency purchases' and immediately spent the majority of my childhood forced savings on this bad boy: D Music Pine 32MB MP3 player that connected via Parallel port and also acted as a generic portable storage device:  I even splurged on the 32MB additional Smart Media card. It wouldn't work with the 64MB varieties. I was well chuffed with the purchase, but my parents went insane at the waste of money. (I want to say $400 at the time) This program was a mainstay of my Ipex Pentium 75 with 16MB(?) of RAM and Napster/Audiogalaxy/Soulseek:  A friend had a similar air mouses back in school and swore it made him awesome at Descent and Fury 3D:  My father had a car phone in his work truck but as a builder the phone would always ring when he was up scaffolding so went all out and got a OKI (yes THOSE OKIs that certain people had lots of fun with, as did I when I got a little older). As I was an ultra nerd I got myself one of these babies in school so I could email on the run! The Pocketmail:  No cellular network or anything, just an acoustic coupler type deal so you could email from a payphone:  My first mobile phone was the Ericsson A1018s:  No games, 10 SMSs storage including sent messages. I had that thing right up until I joined the army and on my first day out of the base I spent $1300 on this piece of futuristic technology: Ericsson T68i - Right on the cusp of the Sony/Ericsson partner.  I also had that chatboard and the camera, I had the Bluetooth USB dongle that cost $300 at time too. Having a colour screen phone was pretty impressive for the day too. They even tweaked it a little the next year as a SE product T68mei or something - firmwares were interchangeable and even had secret games! The Telstra store hated me because I had them send my phone to Ericsson to get whatever new firmware I read about on esato.com. A few weeks later I needed something to listen to music on so I got a Nokia 5510 (sidetalkin' NGage's father):  Essentially a 3310 in a different housing, 64MB of space, QWERTY board, USB and line in to digitize from my discman.  .This was also a fun little overpriced gadget for every Sony Ericsson fanboy (like me at the time): Bluetooth RC car that you control from your phone and charges by plugging into your phone.  My first smartphone was the SE P910i and gee I loved it.  Touchscreen, the scrollwheel on the left was awesome for navigating the silly Symbian OS and the external memory had a max of 1GB MS Pro Duo cards which cost me about $500 at the time. I distinctly remember watching 'The Machinist' on it during a work conference. And VRally (pictured above) was epic to play at the time (Doom too). I recently decided to get into buying random old videogame consoles that and my god the Powerglove really really is bad. Want to stay in shape and play games at the same time? Strap on the Martial Beat peripherals for PS1:  And look like a dork copying the game movements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAqvUKnvRE8 Can only find footage from the second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkrZJutopcw For Train Porn, Australia is still fazing out Semaphore signals (but as per the rail system in itself - nothing is obsolete, just upgraded when no spares are left). It's all now 3 colour aspect signals/approach beacons/warning beacons/repeat signals and even those are now upgrading to LEDs as the lens lights were focused to a certain distance so drivers could clearly see signals kms away. This may all be flase for inner city, but the cross country and mineral areas its true. They even sold a bridge to a scrap steel buyer, and a week later a sister bridge failed and the cost in re-engineering and rebuilding was too expensive, so they brought back the old bridge from the scrap dealer and hugely inflated prices. Easiest $$$ they guy ever made - it wasn't even broken down into pieces for removal yet.
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Mar 6, 2014 05:24
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kris_b posted:Here in NZ, ASB Bank (now owned by Commonwealth AU coincidentally) still run this programme. Even now that switching banks is easy and common, many people I know still keep the same ASB account that they have had since they started school at 5 years old. Hell I still remember my account number and mine got closed down 15+ years ago. I still have that exact same account number and I'm in my thirties. The look tellers give me is priceless when I recite it and it's obviously 'dollarmite' numbering system from back in the day .
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Mar 6, 2014 07:30
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Wanamingo posted:These were a little bit before my time, so I'm sort of wondering what the point of them even was. I know it was just a status symbol and that the only practical use was to wow people with how fancy it was, but poo poo, could that thing even hold a single album on it? No tapes, and no bulky CD walkman to lug around, essentially small enough to fit in my pocket. It really was hard deciding which songs to not transfer. I also went with Minidisc (NetMD one) because well damnit, that kid in the Bom Funk Mcee's video was rocking it hard. I do remember calling bullshit on the BT song 'Never gonna come back down' though; "Bullshit the songs will load that fast!"
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Mar 6, 2014 12:46
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Daimo posted:Hey Symbian maybe but that poo poo was about 5 years ahead of its time! I vaguely remember there were TomTom or similar DUO PRO cards that actually had a GPS receiver in them for it. Also some enterprising coder found a way around the 1GB file limit of the regular DUO PRO cards, but the trade off was no bluetooth or something.
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Mar 6, 2014 13:54
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Krispy Kareem posted:But it goes to show just how mind boggling those next generation MP3 players were. You went from flash based space measured in mb to gigs of room on a hard drive. I think of it as the schoolyard arms race. Before that the biggest one I remember was with marbles. One cheeky bugger brought snooker balls and huge ball bearings. He called them 'super jupiters' and 'stellar steelies' respectively. The MP3 arms race started with a kid who brought in his tape walkman that was soo drat slim we couldn't believe a standard cassette tape would fit in it. I cannot find pictures, but wow it was amazing. So imagine my smugness bringing an actual real life mp3 player to school. This was the time where in Australia they weren't really known to the point where my science teacher asked for me to do my speech assignment on how they work. I just bullshited the whole thing and said there was a tiny spinning HDD in it, and the SM cards were floppy discs cut to size. EDIT: I remember an aussie kids show called 'Spellbinder' and the main character had a video camera that I think took VHS, but it also had a screen on it to playback tapes. That thing amazed me. Also, the day I found porno Laser Discs I laughed soo hard. Imagine having to turn the disc over mid way through a session? Furthermore on LD, a co-worker was having a party and bringing out vinyls to play and drunken showed me what he thought was a record of the Total Recall soundtrack. Nope, Laser Disc. Blew his mind. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 14:58 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 14:56
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Collateral Damage posted:I recall there were SD cards for the Palmpilot that had built-in Bluetooth and I thought they were the awesomest thing ever, but I never got around to buying one before the Palmpilot became obsolete. Remember the buzzword "Road Warrior" describing business people who always work on the road? It was almost an incarnation of the buzzword "yuppie" from what I recall and it even spawned dedicated tech magazines which I might still have floating around in a box somewhere. All I wanted was a laptop with a data cable for a Nokia 9xxx series Communicator phone as a modem and hit the road with my Palm Pilot to write my meeting notes in, while talking on my bluetooth headset. HAHA! Speaking of laptops, this failed but awesome design: gScreen Spacebook:  and its cute friend: 
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Mar 6, 2014 15:21
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mints posted:http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-ex618 No unfortunately, I kind of remember it being silver and the battery compartment (AA) clipped onto the end of it. A modular design. Sorry, that's all I remember of it. EDIT: I'm assuming it was Sony, but may have been Panasonic. I'm searching though that site right now. EDIT 2: Oh my, while GISing for it, I came across the bane of my existance for many years. SD Video 'Decks' for digitizing tapes to AVID. drat I hated those drat things and like a watched pot, it only hosed up and lost the timecode when you walked off for a coffee. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 16:28 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 16:14
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Cleaning out a closet I just found 40 sealed disposable film cameras along with 40 little motors and wiring. These were going to be forming a low budget bullet-time rig back in 2002 or so to emulate what they did with The Matrix. Oh the memories of silly old film disposable cameras. Great for making tasers and not so good at taking photos if you were too cheap to get the one with a flash. I have maybe 7 photos from my time in the military due to trying to save $5 each camera. No flash = lovely photos.
Humphreys has a new favorite as of 08:59 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 08:01
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Just something else that was a mysterious wonder from the 90's before there were PVRs there was: G-Code/VCR-Plus!  quote:The central concept of the system is a unique number, a PlusCode, assigned to each program, and published in TV listings in newspapers and magazines. To record a program, the number is taken from the newspaper and typed into the video recorder, which will then record on the correct channel at the correct time. The number is generated by an algorithm from the date, time and channel of the programme, and so does not rely on anything being broadcast over the air. This means it will not compensate for a disrupted schedule due to live sporting events or news bulletins, but many video recorders with these systems also incorporate Programme Delivery Control (PDC) and will use that to alter times if possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code
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Mar 11, 2014 00:28
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WebDog posted:I think I was the only kid who couldn't program the VCR. That G-Code thing was just utterly frustrating to access, let alone program, that I just resorted to pressing record at the right time. Somehow my parents (who get confused with how to turn their TV to HDMI) managed to wrangle that. My grandmother taught us all how to program our VCRs....and even wrote little guides. I don't know if it is because she lived in the outback and had nothing better to do after feeding the chickens and managed to figure out the drat things like an expert. WebDog posted:Oh I loving wish. Come over to sunny Australia where you have obscenely small data caps. I was kinda lucky to stumble across a brief deal where my Internet provider gave me 150gb a month, but with upload and download counted. Australia really is terrible with data costs. My 4G connection costs about $90 and I get 2GB (I could me wrong, I haven't used it in a while. Even talking to Telstra about my Broadband woes, I mentioned the costs to the Indian callcentre person and tehy even admitted that it was amazingly expensive.
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Mar 11, 2014 02:33
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RC and Moon Pie posted:tracking Now there is a word that brings me back!
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Mar 11, 2014 04:17
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JediTalentAgent posted:I've been thinking of color e-ink for a while and I'm not sure if it's been posted or not or if it qualifies. Oh man I would really love for colour e-ink to be on this device when it launches:  http://www.meetearl.com/
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Mar 11, 2014 05:22
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More phone stuff: WAP - "I can get the internet on my phone now?" I personally hopped on the bandwagon and even coded a WAP site full of glorious monophonic ringtones many years ago. MMS - when this came out it in Australia I distinctly remember Telstra having a promotion on New Years Eve stating that all MMSs throughout the night were free (a big deal at the time). Unfortunately no one I knew had a mobile that could receive MMS. That and we were too drunk.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:47
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cowtown posted:Ours was one of these, with a single slider for all the channels. It was really easy to get to channel 2 quickly! I had 2 TV channels as a kid. I could never have imagined having soo many channels as a kid. My brain would have exploded.
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Mar 12, 2014 08:51
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Collateral Damage posted:lovely failed technology: I never got the Blackberry hype. People said it was great for business and what not, but I just don't know why any other established manufacturers weren't good enough. Was it just BBM?
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Mar 12, 2014 12:55
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To take one step back from MMS - wasn't SMS itself a hack of the networks internal messaging system between phones and towers? My memory is a little hazy on it, but I'm sure it was a byproduct of something that happens anyway and now monetized.
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Mar 12, 2014 14:54
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Thanks to everyone who clarified it. KozmoNaut posted:I work for a telco, and by far the largest income source aside from wholesale traffic from other operators, is text messaging. Think of it, it costs literally nothing to send 128 bytes. Even unlimited messaging plans have an absolutely ridiculous profit margin. Yeah I thought it was trivial for operators, cheers. This thread is making me feel so  and I love it.A friends dad just got himself an alcohol still (legal here), and man it's high tech. I remember them being much simpler. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 15:44 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 15:38
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I was reading an article about wrist watches in movies and this thing took me back to my childhood: Seiko M516 'Voice Note' Watch  Used in Ghostbusters, I would have done anything at the time to have one.
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Mar 13, 2014 05:28
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I'm gonna go on a limb and predict failure: Oh Sony... "Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc, a new optical disc standard for long-term storage"  http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/10/sony-panasonic-archival-disc/
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Mar 14, 2014 06:12
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smackfu posted:WhatsApp is already bigger than SMS in message volume. In some lower-income countries, you can get data plans that only give you access to WhatsApp for a buck or two a month. A few years ago I was working in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and EVERYONE had a mobile phone. Mind you these were villages where they all wore the traditional tribal clothing (grass shirts, bone through nose etc). It was surreal to see a flip phone hooked onto their hips. Turns out a Private firm bought a bunch of government telecomms gear and made it dirt cheap. $5 a month and they could call anywhere. And I'll be damned if I didn't have better reception 400km from the nearest major town than I do back here in a metro area in Australia. Humphreys has a new favorite as of 02:37 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 02:25
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semiavrage posted:I was reading earlier in the thread about Microsoft BOB and the Pac Bell Navigator. Both crappy "room metaphor" guis that ran over Windows. I do vaguely remember something like this in the mid to late 90s. Our school's IT was horrible, we had Win3.1 and had to logout and back in to 3.11 if we wanted to use Pegasus WinMail. Also, every computer had either a No Fear wallpaper or something from rotten.com.
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Mar 16, 2014 03:17
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Sorry to bust into CPU chat. But remember when PSUs also powered the monitor?
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Mar 16, 2014 15:20
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Collateral Damage posted:It didn't really. It was just a bypass directly from the AC input to output, some times via the power switch. Ah I was probably thinking of that - I do remember a barrel connection involved on one of my old computers back in the day. My bad. I really find it hard to imagine what the heck people were doing wrong with CPUs that had pins?
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Mar 16, 2014 15:37
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stealie72 posted:"It goes in this way right? Is it all lined up right? Ok, good? Man, this is a little tight. Oh...gently caress. there goes $300." I spent years scared due to horror stories, but when the time came to do my own it was a case of reading the piece of paper and having the arrow correlate with the socket, carefully place it, throw the lever and then deal with the stupid loving bullshit that was tension screws for heat sink. The CPU was least of my worries, the 4 drat screws and potential to crack the motherboard was much worse.
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Mar 16, 2014 16:00
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Greblin posted:When I worked in an electronics shop, I had a customer try to return a mb/cpu bundle when he'd jammed the cpu into the socket the wrong way round, then tried turning it around with the pins still in the socket. Sheared off half the pins, bent the others, and got pissy when I refused him a refund. He just took the next logical step after trying to force a PS/2 keyboard in.
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Mar 16, 2014 17:06
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My god chat programs were horrible back then. 
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Mar 18, 2014 06:04
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davidspackage posted:Eugh. I remember a website offering some videos from a Dreamcast game that I wanted to see, but they were Realmedia. I probably gave my computer a dozen STDs installing Realplayer, and then when it would finally launch, the videos were basically animated thumbnails. Quicktime had an ungodly startup time too. On one hand it's crazy how much things have changed, on the other hand, that's like 12 years ago. My life... Eeek I still have the Star Wars Christmas Special on a lovely thumbnail sized .rm
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Mar 18, 2014 12:12
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WebDog posted:Did someone say obsolete and dated music videos? Oh why the hell not: Do these count as a parody videos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk Humphreys has a new favorite as of 06:57 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 06:04
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Ron Burgundy posted:I have a few reels of old porno on 35mm and they are stunning. I've seen porno on Laserdisc. I asked the owner what it's like and he said "havent ever flipped it to the other side to see" - immediately wished I hadn't asked. I have had a cheapo AOC 3D monitor that would convert videos into 3D - I fired up a 1080p porno and wow, that razor rash.
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Mar 20, 2014 14:35
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Wilford Cutlery posted:How have neither of you posted in this thread yet? Train people choo choo choose to post here
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Mar 22, 2014 13:19
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Lowen SoDium posted:Fun fact, the animators behind that music video went on to start Mainframe Entertainment and the tv show ReBoot. Holy poo poo - Reboot! I still have cards from those days in a folder somewhere!
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Mar 22, 2014 16:38
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Jedit posted:It always amuses me that with the sole exception of the first episode, South Park has been made using the same animation software that was used for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. WOW that is a knowledge bomb on me (I an ex 3D animator). I remember having to delve through my win95 temp files for the quicktime file for trailer of that movie. That trailer with 'Ich Will' by Rammstein playing on winamp takes me back.
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Mar 23, 2014 16:48
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Forgive me if I am wrong, but didn't Nokia have an alien with an actual blue tooth as a mascot for Bluetooth back when it was originally marketed as a feature? I kind of remember it but my google skills are lacking.
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Mar 26, 2014 08:12
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Sunshine89 posted:
I think this is amazing. A while ago in the thread someone brought up those cheezy projection lenses that you build into a box over a TV. I JUST found one I bought way back when I was a kid, still unused, so thought I would take some crummy photos of it for you all (click for huge):    
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Apr 1, 2014 05:59
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Bacicot posted:You can/should use that thing to start fires in direct sunlight. I will take you up on that offer/challenge tomorrow.
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Apr 1, 2014 07:14
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:You had to flip the TV over for these to work correctly, and it made the colors on all of my sets go all wacky. Also, the picture was mirrored horizontally, so subtitles were a "no." Well dammit, just as I was going up load a GIF of it burning grass (it works great!). I will reset and go for a can. EDIT: Not bothering... Here is lovely attempt at filming it do grass: 
Humphreys has a new favorite as of 03:48 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 03:39
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My work car had 3, one in the boot/trunk (guessing for 12v fridge) and two up front. Although they are only the outlet and don't have the push lighter. Just a door over them stating '12 Volt'. My new personal car has an outlet inside the armrest cubby, and is meant for GPS or mobile phone chargers as there are a number of cabling channels leading out of the flip up arm rest.
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Apr 5, 2014 03:02
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I cannot believe I completely forgot about some of the obsolete tech in one of my old cars The Toyota Sera wanted to be the beacon of the future.  (Not my old one) It's name was devived from the french word for 'Will Be' It had it all: > Gullwing doors > A really fancy Stereo: quote:Super Live Surround Sound (SLSS) > Air Filtration/Fragrance Systems > AAAAAAAND the option for a fax machine that was in the glove compartment (I don't have photos of this anymore) There were soo many random things about this car that as a teen I was overwhelmed and MUST HAVE (and must ruin modifying it more).
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Apr 5, 2014 08:58
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Collateral Damage posted:Weight, cost, complexity. And gullwing doors always leak. The gas struts went bad on mine, but what a workout getting out haha. $600 a pop to replace too so it's a stupid fad. Someone mentioned earlier that they are good for tight parking spaces - that is the only true benefit.
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Apr 6, 2014 07:10
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Horace posted:That car, and most glass roofs, look amazing. I suppose that's why we never ever seem to learn how impractical they are. There was an aftermarket glass roof available for my current car, which also looks fabulous: The Sera got so hot in the Australian summer it melted my stereos remote control!
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Apr 7, 2014 02:06
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