Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

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.

It is neither obsolete nor failed but it's very old and very annoying.

Edit: here's a video of The Revenger in action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsQT35kF88M

My dad had one of these velcro'd to the dashboard in his car.

EDIT:
The one my dad had, had 4 buttons, but I really cannot recall what the other sound was right now.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2014 20:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 15:59

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Flipperwaldt posted:

I had a Diamond Rio PMP300 with 32MB of storage. It took about 8 128kbps songs, if they weren't too long. Free codecs were just terrible at bitrates lower than that.

Apart from the novelty value, the appeal to me was that it had noticably better sound quality than a cassette walkman, but wasn't susceptible to shaking or shocks, like a discman would be. Discmen weren't actually useable on a bike back then. Putting new songs on there, even through the parallel port, was slightly more convenient than putting new stuff on a Minidisc, that didn't allow file transfer at the time but required you to record them (starting and stopping the recorder manually for each track if you didn't have a cd player or computer with an optical cable). It was also way lighter than the portable Minidisc recorder/player I had.

So despite having most of the alternatives of that age, I used the mp3 player quite a bit during the short period that it wasn't obsoleted by some other model. I lived about 3km from school and wearing headphones while you were at school was not done, so the short playback time wasn't as big an issue as you'd expect.

That, and, you know, living in the future and all.

It was roughly a year or two when there were all those exciting new developments in portable music devices where you didn't know which way it was all going to go. Minidisc? Philips' Digital Cassettes? MP3s? And it was an exciting idea to be part of the vanguard of whichever team you felt offered the most quality and convenience wise.

Mp3 was a completely new concept at the time in the sense that you wouldn't need to keep buying additional physical disks/discs/cassettes all the time for your portable player in addition to the cds you had at home. You could also just pick out your favorite songs and compile them into a playlist on the fly instead of being stuck with fixed selection and order albums/compilation cds. That was a Big Thing. I liked that. It's hard to imagine a world now where that isn't self evident.

I had the Pine D'Music pictured in the previous post, expansion card and all, except it was silver. I think I still have it somehere in a box in my closet. I bought it because I went snowboarding like every other day back then, and I wanted to listen to something while doing it. Motorhead's Bomber was always a good song for starting that first run in the morning.

EDIT:

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?

Felt like answering this one. I wouldn't say that these things were pointless, it was a few more years before the iPod was invented. Questioning an old MP3 Player's usefulness ~13 years later is like questioning the usefullness of Smart Phones 13 years from now when we're all using Google Implants.

Iron Crowned has a new favorite as of 14:00 on Mar 6, 2014

# ¿ Mar 6, 2014 13:56

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

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.

But my goodness we wasted our money back then.

I'm sure in 10 years, the Nexus 7 tablet I bought a few months ago will seem like a waste of money.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2014 15:00

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Pham Nuwen posted:

Y'all scrubs. 40 GB storage, long-lasting battery. The only downside was that it's a bitch to upload music to it, you either had to use their software on Windows or (in my case) some reverse-engineered crap. No USB mass storage option.

I had one of those, until the hard drive in it died on me one day :smith:

# ¿ May 5, 2014 17:28

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

blugu64 posted:

I think it was 2001/2002 when I had this setup. It was my big worked all summer, buy a cool phone before going to college thing. Also had Wifi, but you had to remove the phone cartridge.

Ah the Handspring. I had a refurbished orange one around that time, never had anything for the expansion slot though, I always wanted something for it though. Served me great until 2004, when I dropped it right on it's screen.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 13:38

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

GOTTA STAY FAI posted:

I shelled out for the Eyemodule--a camera capable of taking FULL COLOR stills at a whopping 320 x 240 resolution.

http://www.amazon.com/Eyemodule-Digital-Camera-Springboard-Handspring/dp/B00004TDN7

I was really fond of the Handspring Visor. There were some really nifty apps for it, like one that used the IR port to allow the device to act as a TV remote. And, of course, the games. I must've spent hundreds of hours playing Space Trader on that thing.

I honestly loved my handspring, I replaced it with a Tungsten V, and didn't like it nearly as much.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 14:16

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

GOTTA STAY FAI posted:

Oh, Graffiti, you are the reason I curl the tails of my y's, even after all these years

Do any tablets these days use anything like that? I feel like I could do better using something like that versus the lovely on screen keyboard.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 14:52

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

GreenNight posted:

I live in the midwest (for 30+ years) and everyone I know and have ever talked to pronounce 'come' as 'cum'.

In Kansas everyone pronounces "burger" as "booger"

# ¿ May 15, 2014 16:21

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Krispy Kareem posted:

Anyone have those PS/1 model 25's at school? Those were the AiO IBM PCs with two 3 1/2 inch drives.

It was stepping into a time machine and seeing the future.

Yep! Keyboarding class in 1995-1996, this is how I learned to type.

I also took a programming class that year. It was BASIC on Apple IIs.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 14:43

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

I was more commenting on the programming class being Apple II Basic. They didn't offer that class anymore after that year.

I know I was a big pain in the rear end because the programs they made us write were fairly useless, and I kept adding functionality to them.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 14:55

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

High School, the iMac had just been released, we had our labs full of that funky variant with both a CD rom and a floppy drive (how else could we save our work?).

Considering I was like one of 3 kids who had a Mac, I knew how to reboot the machines without extensions and shut off Fool Proof. I got in trouble for installing the Marathon Demo and having death matches one lunch.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 15:08

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Antifreeze Head posted:

My junior high rolled out 25-30 machines running Win 3.11 that had some security program (Ace Win Lock or something) that limited functionality, particularly that I couldn't drop out to DOS. It was easy enough to get around though, since the program stored the password in plain text in the win.ini file.

The computer teacher was a little dismayed when I gave him a scrap of paper with the password on it. My parents were dismayed that I selected Parent Teacher Interview day as the day on which to do that.

And you can hide a lot of stuff on office/school/whatever PCs if you rename it to .dll and just sock it away in the Windows root directory. There's probably some equivalent for Macs, but I don't care because I hate them.

One of my teachers told us about something similar. They had the command line locked down in Windows, and someone made a text file that just said "CMD" and changed the extension to a .exe

So stupidly simple.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 16:51

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

WebDog posted:

Back in the day kids would trade photocopies of codes for Leisure Suit Larry 2 where you had to check the photo ID for a phone number.

The original, LSL 1 I had didn't have a copy protection, but it had an "age check." When you started a new game, it would make you answer the same 5 multiple choice questions, that were supposed to be above a child's knowledge.

The only two questions I remember at the moment are "What does IBM stand for?" and "how many kids were in the Brady Bunch?"

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 13:28

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Dick Trauma posted:

I've been browsing that site and I'm amazed by how many of these products I've owned or at least handled, back when they were new. That Toot-a-loop radio was such a piece of poo poo but it was certainly unique. I can still remember when digital watches started playing tunes and one at the local department store could beep out "Yellow rose of Texas" which was entertaining, but a little weird for being sold in Canada.

EDIT: No loving way! How is it possible the internet remembers this no name watch from... 1979? 1980?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arKFaO206SU

There's definitely a handful of those things I remember floating around the house when I was a small child. I even had that portable microscope, or at least a knockoff version of it, and it may very well still be in a box somewhere.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 20:49

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

GOTTA STAY FAI posted:

Netbooks get a lot of poo poo, but it's just like you said--they're good for light stuff. Hell, I use my old Eee PC more often than I do my brand-new tablet. It's cheap enough that I don't mind scuffing it up, rugged enough to endure being tossed in a backpack and jostled around all day, and does all the light-duty crap I need done.

I do feel sorry for people that bought them thinking they were just tiny-yet-full-featured laptops, though.

Yeah, I got one for free from a friend who didn't want it anymore. I really liked it for all that stuff, I just used it as a web browser really, and I switched to a tablet when I spilled beer in it and it stopped working. I don't think the tablet is as good for what the netbook used to do for me.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2015 16:11

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Krispy Kareem posted:

Before iTunes, there was a lot of smaller providers with weird restrictions - like you listen to the music on your computer but not your Rio PMP. Some you could burn to a disc, others you couldn't. iTunes standardized all the DRM rules so after they came out a bunch of other stores opened up using the same policies. Wal-Mart had one, Buy.com had a store, and I think even Coke built a MP3 store in the UK. It was an odd time. All went out of business. Now it's iTunes, Amazon, and a bunch of smaller - usually niche sellers.

After Apple did the hard work making the record labels agree to terms, it cost roughly the same for everyone to sell music. At that point it was all marketing.

Personally I'm a fan of Amazon thanks to the AutoRip feature where I can buy the physical disc and download an MP3 version right away :shrug:

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 17:03

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

GOTTA STAY FAI posted:

I've never tried it, but that sounds great. Is there some dumbass DRM software you have to install in order to access the files or do you just get a link to .mp3s?

So far no DRM that I've found as I've downloaded and used them on different machines. I did get a notice that I can only download them from a limited number of devices when I did a download via their Amazon Music App on my phone. I have run across a few odd things here or there that are missing AutoRip, but most things are.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 17:43

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

KozmoNaut posted:

Oh yeah, I remember Sonique:

I remember a lot of people would get into serious fights over if Sonique was better than Winamp. Winamp

# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 18:04

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Buttcoin purse posted:

I don't know, maybe it actually almost makes sense. All the electronic components, including the memory card, are going to radiate some noise, and while the noise might not bother the digital circuits, there's got to be some analog somewhere before it gets to your ear, so I guess now this SD card won't generate as much noise. I have no idea how much noise an SD card would have to make for you to like hear a buzz when you're playing music on your MP3 player though, although I kind of bet it's 1000x more than any SD card has ever made anyway.

Sadly most people don't understand even the basics of electricity, and while there are ways to reduce RF noise, anything with a current in it is going to produce some kind of RF interference. You have no idea how many times I've attempted to convince people that the massive amount of power running through thing A, is what is interfering with thing B.

Also, chances are if you're listening to it on headphones, the odds are it's the wire on those that's picking up the buzz.

evobatman posted:

I remember an anti-piracy campaign that had details on how to identify a pirate DVD:

-Lower price than retail
-Goes from theatre to DVD faster than normal movies.
-Lacks non-skippable ads and FBI warnings before the movie.

So basically, they advertised the advantages of piracy.

Would you download a car?

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 20:19

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

ElwoodCuse posted:

I remember an article from some PC magazine right before DVD came out that promised all this pie in the sky bullshit for the format. Like, the entire Star Wars trilogy on one disc. The multiple angle stuff. Different versions of the film (like, TV edits for parental control).

I don't think it was all "pie in the sky bullshit," most of that could be done, it's just easier, faster and cheaper to plop the film on a disc with a few cut scenes, trailers, and maybe a commentary track and call it a day. I doubt that the average person even looks at the special features (and boy were some of the early ones really dumb)

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 14:47

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

I had a Pine D'Music back in like 2000, the thing could hold 16mb, and had an 16mb expansion card. When encoded just right I could fit a whole two albums on it!

At the time I didn't realize that my computer had USB ports on it, so I selected this one because it connected through the printer port. I still have the thing in a box somewhere although the cable has been long lost, and I'm pretty sure that Pine is now PNY and makes flash sticks and motherboards.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 18:29

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Potato Salad posted:

gently caress printers.

I dunno, printers are pretty OK, maybe you shouldn't walk 5 miles carrying one.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 14:48

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

mobby_6kl posted:

Oh I almost missed the MP3 player chat again! Here's my Zen that I still use to this day with aux inputs everywhere. It's on its first ebay battery but otherwise works perfectly:

More space than my phone too.

This was my second MP3 player, I loved it until he day the hard drive went kaput on me.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 17:46

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Pham Nuwen posted:

I have a similar model, full name: Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen NX. Got it for $20 new in box at a garage sale back in 2005 and it carried me all the way through college. The screen eventually stopped working, though; it plays music and the backlight comes on, but there's no text on-screen.

If either of you don't intend to resurrect yours, PM me... I bet my battery and hard drive would drop right into the Zen XTRA chassis.

Edit: I think I've mentioned it before but I won a Zune from something back in college, and because I was so happy with my Creative player I tried to sell it... couldn't even get $30 on Craigslist for it, brand new in box. I eventually gave it to a friend, who hated it.

Sadly mine was lost somewhere along the line. It was probably in the pile of crap I gave up on putting in my car when I moved a few years ago.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 18:39

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Exit Strategy posted:

I went from being a Linux server admin to being a Windows 2012R2 admin, and the sheer lack of intelligible scripting and task automation in what's supposedly a server-grade OS is astounding. Making that migration actually made me quit IT forever.

In really, really specific obsolete tech I'd like to raise the prospect of the Gyrojet. My dad gave me his presentation-grade set of the MBA Gyrojet, a carbine and a pistol. Pictures aren't mine, of course, the set's in North Carolina still.

The Gyrojet was an experimental weapon using self-propelled ammunition. The advantages are obvious: Velocity doesn't drop after leaving the bore, you can reach longer distances much more easily with no real added weight, and rockets are loving awesome. The reasons it didn't "take off", as it were, are simple: If the rocket's spin-stabilized, it's because of angled nozzles in the rear. It doesn't spin fast enough to stabilize until it's well underway, meaning that your accuracy is about minute-of-city-block instead of minute-of-angle. Also, its possible to stop a Gyrojet round with your finger placed over the bore, as the velocity isn't there yet by the time it reaches the end of the pistol barrel.

That's actually pretty neat. I'm guessing there really isn't a recoil to it. Although I can't exactly tell what is initially propelling it out of the barrel.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 17:59

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Platystemon posted:

The same solid rocket fuel that propels it the rest of the way (plus whatever the primer contributes), it�s just that the barrel isn�t sealed. Think of the barrel as being more like a guide rail.

The propellant is, apparently, nitrocellulose.

AH, ok, I didn't parse that it used rocket fuel.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 18:09

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Platystemon posted:

Vintage shaving technology:

I don't think that you can use those beans as fuel until they've been digested.

# ¿ May 5, 2016 13:11

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

mng posted:

They've come a long way!

Nah, this is just the robot that's had enough of your poo poo and quit!

# ¿ May 24, 2016 15:34

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Imagined posted:

Not to mention they always cheap out and use low-sensitivity resistive touchscreens so half the time it feels like the machine doesn't even register what you press. Aside from tablets and smartphones I hate touchscreen poo poo. Especially at the checkout of the grocery store where I have to mash the resistive touchscreen three times, then hit one of the actual buttons, then pick up the pen. PICK ONE INTERFACE.

When there are only 9 options and only one application that's ever going to be run on a system, WHY THE gently caress WOULDN'T YOU USE BUTTONS. They're a proven interface! Have a flashy LCD display or whatever but poo poo, buttons are so much better for so many applications!

I've never had those issues with a self-checkout, you must just be an idiot.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 15:07

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

DrBouvenstein posted:

I agree with you on the long rear end time for the menu and the cleanliness issue, but I've never had an issue with getting remnants of the previous drink. There are plenty of fountain soda dispensers that use one nozzle for all soda, even on "regular" machines, and it seems to me that they all "end" with a little bit of plan, carbonated, water to "flush out" any remaining syrup.

If it's an issue for you, just hit the water button for a second before you put your cup in.

My biggest issue with them is that for some reason the designers saw fit to restrict the drink choices arbitrarily.

I believe the flavor choices are vanilla, lime, lemon, raspberry, strawberry...and maybe cherry as well? Also maybe orange? But you can't get any flavor with any drink. Want Raspberry Root Beer? gently caress you, Root Beer only in regular or vanilla varieties.

I'm not saying I want raspberry root beer, I'm just saying I want the option of raspberry root beer.

Now I want to try a raspberry rootbeer

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 16:52

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Computer viking posted:

Win+R .

For some reason that reminds me of going to high school in the late 90's.

My Computer sciences teacher told us the tale of someone getting past disabling the command prompt, by making a text document with "CMD" in it, and changing the extension to .exe :laugh:

# ¿ Jun 29, 2016 19:37

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Collateral Damage posted:

Another way if the Run command is disabled on the start menu is to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, bring up task manager and use File->New Task.

Also handy whenever Explorer crashes and takes the taskbar/start button away, just start explorer.exe from task manager.

I think they had Ctrl-Alt-Del blocked out or something. Remember this was in the Windows 95 days

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 12:39

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

RC and Moon Pie posted:

That's why Download Accelerator existed.

36K would have been a dream. My dial-up didn't go past 14.4K. The first modem I had was 2400 baud. Even going to an interface as simple as Yahoo's was back then needed about 10 minutes to download a single page.

Ugh, my neighborhood took forever to get cable internet, so my family shared a single 56k line. My brother hated that me doing anything at all on the internet would give him lag on his precious Counterstrike, so it was very frequent that my connection would somehow come out of the router at night.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 14:02

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

mostlygray posted:

You can't stop an NMI. The computer must respond in some way, even if it's another login screen.

I don't remember the details, this was like 1997

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 15:06

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

spog posted:

But only if the chinese manufacturer has a demand for thousands of the simple object.

Tooling and set-up costs means you have to a lot to get anything like a reasonable cost per piece.

Not necessarily if you can get someone with a CnC. Of course, someone would have to create a model and drawing for said part.

The place I used to work at, had a lot of orders come through for replacement parts. Quite a few that hadn't been built in 20+ years had molds that the casting house lost. For one or two parts being made, it was much cheaper and efficient to redesign it for CnC and run it through a 5-axis machine than it was to have a new mold made.

I mean, sure it would be more expensive than buying an off the shelf mass produced part, but this is a theoretical time when there are no more existent spare parts.

Edit:
On top of that a rapid prototyped part can be really durable. I redesigned a part, and for a machined prototype it was something like $2000 for one, and $60 for two via the rapid prototype (keep in mind this wasn't a home-user level 3D printer). This part held up an aircraft door and only a small piece chipped off and didn't compromise the part otherwise.

Iron Crowned has a new favorite as of 14:04 on Jul 7, 2016

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 13:56

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

atomicthumbs posted:

filament-based 3D printers are an obsolete technology

I'll agree to that

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 18:35

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Elliotw2 posted:

I had a late model netbook from Toshiba and the little thing was actually surprisingly powerful for what it was. It was one of the 2010 Atoms, but it could handle HD video and libreoffice pretty well once I threw Linux on it.

I have an HP somewhere in my closet from about the same time. I pretty much just used it to surf the internet while watching TV, and then I spilled beer on it.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2016 17:11

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Samizdata posted:

I miss my Palm Pilot.

I mean, I have a tablet and all, but Palms were just so amazing for the size and portability.

although I think for me what I miss is being able to write instead of type. If I could use graffiti on a modern smart phone, that would be aces

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 21:02

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Kelp Me! posted:

YMMV for sure, but Boston and NYC were total no-gos for me.

Good thing I was making a generalization regarding car audio options and not specifically singling out a post, then!

USB is annoying because of what you mentioned, but at least it's functional - I've gotten wrong track orders, no folder structure, system that doesn't read disc numbers so it plays disc 1/track 1, then disc 2/track 1, then disc 1/track 2, etc. but at the very least I've been able to get my own music blaring in the car. OTOH I carry a USB drive with nothing but music folders all in the root directory in my travel bag, so I'm more-or-less prepared; I've definitely heard endless complaints about trying to get music on a smartphone to play via USB connection.

In-dash systems are starting to get better though, especially now that Android Auto or whatever is starting to get popular. That's really the only downside to an audio jack, the fact that futzing with the music involves messing with your phone while driving. My Passat has some annoying quirks, but it also has an SD card slot, which is nice because I don't have to worry about breaking off the USB drive sticking out of my center console or dashboard.

Yeah, I was just saying that Transmitters are generally pretty awful is all, I'm sure that thing works well

Speaking of USB, apparently Chrysler started using a universal harness for their 2010 lines, so if you didn't pay for a USB port, there's very likely one tied up behind your dashboard. Unfortunately my car is a 2009, so my rooting around was fruitless, despite my stock head unit having USB pinouts.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 15:10

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 15:59

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Platystemon posted:

Sounds like something from the Creative Zen line.

I had one, I loving loved it because it fit my entire music collection on it and still had room to spare, that was quite the feat in 2004. Then the hard drive in it went kaput on me

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 20:06

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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