Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

Guilty as charged. Thumb-driven trackballs are the best.

I am currently in deep regret for letting go of my left handed thumb trackball. Magic Mouse is okay but the left handed thumb ball with three butans was totally awesome.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 02:02

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 17:16

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Krispy Kareem posted:

Meh, those are scrubs. I was using trackballs in the 80's on my PCjr.

Speaking of failed technology:

I've had this thing for 6 or 7 years, it's currently glowing bluely on my desk. I've never found a use for it. I've only seen one in the wild and that's for kids to sign in for appointments at my daughter's orthodontist.

So cool, so pointless. I guess it's not a total failure since you can still buy them, but I have no idea what they're being used for.

Yeeeeep, I've got one of these as well. Tried to pawn it off on my stepfather who wanted an analogue volume knob for his Mac but he couldn't get it to work. I need to get it plugged in. And glowing uselessly once again.

You can actually program them to do all sorts of stuff. Anyone remember the game Airburst?
I used my powermate as the controller.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 03:38

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Collateral Damage posted:

Even modern film audio is optically coded on the reel for cinemas that haven't gone fully digital yet.

Below a "modern" 3D film frame. The blue bitmap tracks on the sides are SDDS sound and the black bitmaps between the holes is Dolby Digital. If you look closely you can see the DD logo in the center of each bitmap. Then there's the old stereo analog track, and finally the dashed line is for DTS. With DTS the actual soundtrack comes on a seperate CD-ROM and the dashed line is a time code for synchronizing sound and picture.

Stuff like this is awesome and deserves more chat here or in a new thread.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2014 03:13

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Speaking of the flight sim talk there is a more recent A10 simulator whee all of the switches and controls in the cockpit are modeled. Someone started a game without reading the manual and tried to fly the plane. Recorded the whole thing. It's several hours of ranting and frustration.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 19:46

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Pham Nuwen posted:

My parents had an 80s Cadillac with lighters and ashtrays in each back-seat door.

My Studebaker has only one lighter, but there's an ashtray under the radio, one in the center console, and one on the backside of each front seat. drat.

My 2008 bmw has two cigarette lighters and an ashtray for every single passenger. I think two for each backseat smoker actually. Ashtrays freaking everywhere. Strangely it also has two or three twelve volt outlets that are separate and distinct from the lighters. I still take one of the lighters out to plug in my phone charger.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 05:32

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Phanatic posted:

BMW's *current* nav system, iDrive, is a horrible piece of poo poo that literally everybody hates.

Seriously, look at the interface for inputting an address into the nav system:

Rotate wheel to first letter. Click. Rotate wheel to second letter. Click. Note how that even though it's pretty sure you want to go to Home Depot after the first few letters, the address display on the right doesn't show you the distances or even the full address unless you go and select one of them. Whatever usability engineer thought this was a good idea needs to be beaten with pipes.

Modern automobile infotainment is making tremendous improvements, and not literally everyone hates every kind (even iDrive, which did suck until recently).

You certainly did pick the worst possible scenario to showcase here. The screen you use is for a search (where you enter any character after another), not address entering. Entering an address in most systems these days is predictive where it jumps to letters that can possibly come next. Of course you can also just use your voice to do it. Or in newer ones draw letters on a capacitive touch surface (iDrive top surface for BMW, number pad in Audi, someplace in MB and Lexus).

As for obsolete car tech:

Sync needs to die, but those capacitive buttons below the screen. Pretty sure those cause accidents because they are hard to use just by feel, you usually need to look down to hit the right button.

The coming battle between Google and Apple to own the car interface will be fun to watch.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 15:27

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

This thread made me realize that I may have accidentally purged both my Newton Message Pad 120 and Newton 2000 with keyboard case, PCMCIA modem and Ethernet cards. I had a dancing baby animation in the 2000 complete with the music.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 03:22

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Humphreys posted:

I. WANT. IT.

We must know more. This cannot be a one off system, can it?

# ¿ May 30, 2014 15:56

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Y'all with your fancypants C64s. I had a VIC-20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20

Best part about it was the original, OG original Adventure game. Find the jar. Get some mud. Climb the tree to see the message. Chop down the tree. Then descend into one motherfucking challenging maze cave of trying not to die. It was awesome.

Edit: I think it may have been adventureLAND by scott adams? Someone scanned the manual here, NOT my hosting, Museum of Computer Adventure Game History, which I didn't even know existed until just now.

Ultimate Mango has a new favorite as of 23:47 on Oct 22, 2014

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 23:44

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Pham Nuwen posted:

Maybe the absolute original Adventure, but it was on pretty much every other system before too long.

The PDP-10 was a pretty kickass system too. If you use Linux and have ever wondered why Emacs keybindings are just a bit different than other Unix tools, or why RMS seems to love Info so much instead of man pages, check out ITS. That's the pre-Unix OS he used on a PDP-10 and, like many things about RMS, has maintained a rose-tinted view of throughout the years.

I remember it on the VAX (something like that at least, dumb terminal system) at my grandfather's business. That and Hunt the Wumpus. I hated that loving Wumpus.

Ultimate Mango has a new favorite as of 05:28 on Oct 25, 2014

# ¿ Oct 25, 2014 05:22

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Pudgygiant posted:

Relatively obsolete though, as almost all airplanes use minijack for the IFE now anyway

You must fly on all the fancy airlines. In the past year I have been on a hundred hours or more in planes where those little adapters were a godsend and allowed me to use my own headphones on long haul flights.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 06:22

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Geoj posted:

I think everyone is missing the real reason for a mechanism that automatically flips the tape - what's going to look cooler when showing off your multi-thousand dollar HiFi stereo system; a 4 track head with auto-reverse or a tape deck that turns the tape around? Just like those 50 disc carousel CD players from the mid to late 90s, sure, its a solution in search of a problem or something that could be done much more easily but someone who is going to dump that kind of money into a sound system wants something to show for it.

I loved my high capacity CD carousel. I had a lot of CDs and being lazy and not having to swap CDs was fantastic.

Oh god I wasted so much money

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 04:04

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Jerry Cotton posted:

At least some Sony (200-300 disc) changers stacked.

And you could use a keyboard hooked up to it for text entry. The early models where you had to use the remote or jog dial to enter text sucked big time. The Apple iPod totally changed things for me, and now I am tied to that ecosystem, which will one day end up in this thread.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 06:40

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

The best thing about fancy VHS tapes: the 'counter' that let you watch movies that you weren't supposed to while nobody else was home and rewind to the exact spot where it was when you picked up the tape.

I mean, I can't be the only one who did that, right?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 23:03

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

T-man posted:

I learned how to program via the VIC-20 programming manual. I never got the VIC-20 to work, but I knew BASIC by writing out programs on paper.

I was too young to program on the Vic-20 growing up. I did basic style scripting on my calculator eventually though.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2015 04:04

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Cunning Plan posted:

I remember using one of those on work experience at an IT firm in the mid/late 90s... At the time it was pretty incredible to have a machine that size running the full version of windows!

This post makes me wish I kept my two way pager. Not just 1.5 way, but two way, with a keyboard and email capability!

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 00:23

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Ron Jeremy posted:

I guess not technically obsolete, this is one of the first projects I worked on our of college:

BMW iDrive. We did the hardware, Alps and BMW did the software interface. Force feedback knobs with effects. The idea was that you could use a single knobs to control everything and the force feedback would provide you with enough information to do it without taking your eyes off the road. Our prototype rocked, their implementation sucked, the press hated it.

On the plus side, I did get to drive one of the first 7 series with it installed for a little while.

We also made a similar rotary force feedback implementation on the first Gen ipod:

Which I thought totally rocked, but apple turned us down on the basis of power consumption.

That haptic feedback worked incredibly well if you could train your brain to think like a German. Which I did. I could navigate to anything without taking my eyes off the road. The new system has a bunch of buttons and the touchpad on top, and it is actually harder to use.

The worst thing is now so many cars have capacitive touch buttons and strange non capacitive touch screens with either no or terrible feedback and you basically can't use any of it without taking your eyes off the road. Hopefully voice command matures and replaces any other driver interfaces. The new poo poo BMW is rumored to have with in car motion detection just seems ten steps in the wrong direction.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 05:07

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Sappo569 posted:

All this car chat reminds me when I read something about the 'cool new' technology Cadillac was going to put into their car.

A seat shaker/vibration for when the car senses something (usually from behind/side) to warn you.

I thought to myself EXCELLENT idea, a car usually driven by geriatrics will now vibrate if they're about to hit something, causing them to poo poo their pants and have a stroke.

The GM smart seat is pretty rad. I think it works better for some things than audio cues.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 05:33

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Elliotw2 posted:

The good news is that if you have about an hour, you can flash the firmware to a CF card and slot that in with zero modification since they shipped with either Microdrives or CF cards.

Microdrives totally go here I guess.

They're literally tiny hard drives that used an expanded CF bus for data and power transfer. They've been completely out performed in stability, speed, power draw, and capacity by the regular flash memory CF cards these days.

I remember buying the first Garmin portable gps system (the size and weight of a brick mind you) that had the entire U.S. Street map on it using an IBM micro drive. Worked great for business travel, if slow as poo poo to do anything.

Stand alone GPS units will go here soon. Between in car systems and phone apps there isn't much need (they will still exit for marine and aeronautics and such of course, but the portable unitaskers need to due).

# ¿ May 13, 2015 02:55

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

tribbledirigible posted:

Something that looks like it should have bee obseleted and I just found out is still actually current is the handset lifter:

It works in conjuction with some wireless headsets for phones and gives a very distinctive whirr noise when you're hanging up with a person using it. It had me thinking one of my vendors had a robot arm, but the reality was much less cool.

I have one in my home office. It rocks.

The real challenge will be replacing my two line phone with corded handset and true full duplex speakerphone.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2015 06:13

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

CroatianAlzheimers posted:

Christ almighty, really? I thought we'd moved past that as a society.

I bet it works great when one of the people on the party line use their modem to connect to AOL.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 02:13

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Star Man posted:

I bought a CD for the first time in two years. Fight me, nerds.

Depends on the CD. What was it?

There are still reasons to buy those.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2015 04:23

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Star Man posted:

Something that I could have settled with buying a digital copy from CDBaby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/dougwood2

That looks totally awesome! CDs will have some use for some time I think.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2015 05:14

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

My dad was a professor at Johns Hopkins in the early 70s. I was 7 or 8 down and my mom took me down to the campus to see him. He showed me the terminal he had just gotten in his office and the first thing I played was this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(PLATO)

My first computer experience was qan arena shooter. Explains a lot actually.

This reminded me of a time from my youth. My grandfather had a small business and it ran I think on a VAC or UNIVAC system with maybe ten dumb terminals. It used several modems to phone up the credit bureaus to get information which was then translated by people to interpret credit score (before there was a simple credit score number). That computer had 'Hunt the Wumpus' on it. You could move one of the cardinal directions or shoot an arrow in one of the directions. You would smell the Wumpus one or two rooms away I think. If you went to where the Wumpus was it ate you. If you shot and didn't move, it could move and eat you instead. So you had to sheet in the direction it was before it got you.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 17:27

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Lazlo Nibble posted:

Beats the hell out of the Pong machine at Eu-Can Bowl in...1973? 1974? Something like that. It was next to a Bally Road Runner machine that was a lot more interesting:

There's an "obsolete" category that hasn't been dug into much on this thread. Electromechanical games were getting really drat fancy right up until the entire category got curbstomped by videogames.

That looks pretty freaking cool. Its basically a '70s version of augmented reality.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2015 18:06

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

drgnwr1 posted:

Part of me was wondering if the highway to high end console gaming was paved again for Sony when Blu-ray over took HD DVD. As the PS3 had internal Blu-ray support and the Xbox 360 needed an adapter to play HD DVD.

Also heard a rumor when HD DVD went down that HD DVD and Blu-ray were close in competition but the porn industry decided to support Blu-ray which destroyed HD DVD.

I bought one of these and about two dozen movies. A month before the Disney announcement and the death of HDDVD.

I then purchased a PS3.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 00:21

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Wasabi the J posted:

Just don't browse SA on it or they'll ban you.

Oh that was WEB TV.

Man that belongs in a PYF Ban thread.

I wonder with 4k TVs coming out if we will see more web browsing on the TV instead of a phone, tablet, or traditional computer.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2015 08:52

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Humphreys posted:

Cloud to butt is the best thing.

SA was way ahead of the times in the effort to produce a butt to butt ~~video~~ protocol

# ¿ Jan 26, 2016 05:14

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Humphreys posted:

Is there a way to enable the autocorrect that non-members see when browsing threads? Rear End in a Top hat is a personal favourite.

There is autocorrect for non-SA members?

:aaaaa:

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 00:47

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Horace posted:

And they deserved it. Those earbuds were terrible.

I saw one of these yesterday:

It's a car stereo where you place your iPod on a little slide out tray and the radio ingests it.

drat 2001-2012 Mango would have love love loved that. My current car can't play CDs and has a single USB port that works occasionally. And no replaceable head unit.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 02:31

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Horace posted:

especially:

So you have AT&T Maps, a TeleNav-based replacement for Google Maps which does the same thing, but much more slowly and with a rougher interface. (Fortunately, you still get Google Maps.) AT&T Music is a pointless collection of links to other things on the phone. AT&T Radio is a tease for a $6.99/month streaming radio service. MobiTV is a streaming TV service that I could not make work. AT&T Wi-Fi Hotspots is a link to a Web-based hotspot finder. And the Where app is actually evil; just by entering the program, it opts you in to a pay service that you have to voluntarily opt out of. Never mind what it does.

Remember the good old days of buying a new carrier subsidised phone and discovering which cool features they'd inexplicably removed or hobbled? Like my lovely Siemens S35i which had a programmable shortcut button. Except Virgin Mobile had permanently locked it as a shortcut for their WAP service, most of which didn't actually work.

That text above might have well come from the current ATT website and their crazy add on services that people must be buying?

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 23:13

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

John Big Booty posted:

Nope. They're still thing, at least here in L.A. And if you're so inclined, some of them have glory holes.

Don't actually . In the early aughts I worked at one of them and they are the grossest places on earth

Any chance you would make an Ask/Tell thread about your experiences? Sounds legitimately fascinating.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2017 05:04

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

I want to say I'm an "audiophile," but not in the sense that I care about Monster cables and such. I just have a poo poo-ton of headphones and amps and PSB speakers I've recovered from the trash or goodwill etc etc, but I don't care if I also have to listen using a tablet's built-in speakers, and I don't "set up a room" for audio. More of just a speaker gadget junkie, if that makes sense. Anyway, I have a set of STAX SR-307 earspeakers. They look like this:

When my ex's kids would play on their Amazon Fire tablets, whenever there was a screen draw/refresh using touch input, I could hear a high-pitched whine from the earspeakers. Playing Youtube? Fine. Watching Plex? Fine. Touch input with no visual cue (like touching the background of the homepage with no icons)? Fine. But when there was a touch combined with a visual refresh, like a pointer or something moving on the screen, I could hear a "bweeeeeEEEEEeeeeee~" as their finger moved around. I could hear the touch motions

This is amazing in every way.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2017 03:34

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

We used to have to leave Kid Chameleon on for days at a time. poo poo was tough and all the portals and levels blew my ten year old mind.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2018 03:42

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 17:16

Ultimate Mango: Jan 18, 2005

I wonder if I can find my Newton MessagePad 120 or 2000. They belong here. I had a dial up modem for one of them even, and an ADB-ish keyboard.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2018 05:49

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