Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

techknight posted:

It took photos at only 120x120 resolution (and not even in colour), but it was fun for little portraits and animated gifs.

It's like an automatic avatar camera.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 20:56

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 10:57

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Computer viking posted:

DAB/DAB+ is doing okish here in Norway. Most of the cities have good coverage now, which means I get almost as many channels as FM with fewer reception issues.

We're never going to get DAB+ in the UK.

quote:

The Government stated that a decision on whether to set a date for digital radio switchover would be considered when the following criteria are met:

* when 50% of all radio listening is via digital platforms; and

* when national DAB coverage is comparable to FM, and local DAB reaches 90% of the population and all major roads.

The digital switch over was meant to be 2015, but that's been postponed as while 48% of UK households have a DAB radio, it only amounts to 36% of listening time (and 55% of that is BBC's stations). Also the music broadcast quality is piss poor.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 21:46

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Humphreys posted:

On Military tech failures I feel cheated that the RAH-66 never made it into production.

Now I have this in my tune head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDsv-sZbulw

# ¿ Sep 18, 2015 15:02

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Humphreys posted:

If I were ever in the position of being put on a lie detector I'm sure my stress levels would be through the roof. Mostly in fear of being falsely found guilty. It would be a vicious cycle.

Or you're actually guilty of everything.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 11:41

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

nullfunction posted:

LaserJet 4+ is my favorite printer ever. all printers are evil and bad, this is just the least evil and bad

Built like a tank. Replace the rollers every 250,000 pages or so and it'll probably outlast you.

Fun With C# and HP Laserjets

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 22:30

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

gently caress E-books, and gently caress streaming services. I can't resell, I can't even let my kids inherit the stuff.

Bruce Willis had this very problem:

Bruce Willis to fight Apple over right to leave iTunes library in will, wants extensive music collection to be inherited by daughters instead of reverting to Apple ownership

oh, hold on:

quote:

This article was amended on 4 September 2012 to add a link to a subsequent story which reports that Willis's wife has denied on Twitter that he is considering any such legal moves.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2018 22:31

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

ladron posted:

what if they make some proprietary charging pad?

That would do away with the need for any ports on the Macbook.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 14:06

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Shut up Meg posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG8RAbWs1yo

The office I worked in, back in 1985 had a dot matrix printer in the room, encased in a much larger sound proofed box. The (A3 sized?) continuous paper came in large boxes and was fed in the back through a slot and back out through another slot, so it was still loud (but not as stupidly loud as when you lifted the lid). Of course the paper would get jammed or the perforations would tear off, but then we still had a typing pool and, I think, a mimeograph.

# ¿ May 16, 2019 12:20

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Today I learned about the Elcaset

and of course Technomoan did a piece on it:

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

# ¿ May 28, 2019 14:32

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

boo_radley posted:

My personal account in obsolete tech was the nextcube! It was a tremendously dense cube, and the monitor used a weird rear end cable and was exceptionally fuzzy for being a grayscale monitor. I lucked into after reading a newsgroup posting- the seller made me promise if I got bored with it that I'd resell it or donate it and not burn it, since it was made out of magnesium for some insane reason and would burn like nobody's business

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkvQ-BJD2rU

Need thermite to kick it off.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 11:06

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/1162197839318900736

# ¿ Aug 16, 2019 12:28

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Back in 2004 did a trip to New York and my other half bought this mp3 player:

128mb of memory goodness.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2019 21:32

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Shrieking Muppet posted:

I've been told that for some subjects like chemistry or math they had special typewriters just could make up math equations or even chemical structures haven't really looked into though.

This is what they used for music notation:

# ¿ Oct 6, 2019 20:47

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

BogDew posted:

Nowadays it's massive panels that project proper lighting into the set. Oblivion is one example of that, the apartment set was all display panels.

Wow.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2019 20:09

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Trabant posted:

It's freaking glorious.

It's like one of those old, fantastically huge, Moog / Buchla modular synths (that I also would have no idea how to program).

# ¿ Feb 7, 2020 09:11

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Shibawanko posted:

Teletext is how i got my daily news up to the mid 2000s, it was pretty convenient and usually had good summaries

Same here, was my morning ritual. Cup of tea and a bowl of cereal as the pages slowly turned.

# ¿ May 8, 2020 17:58

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Code Jockey posted:

Links 386 was always this weird aspirational game for me. The only machines I had at the time were a green-screen 8086 (a Televideo all-in-one, monitor built into the case, faaancy) and my C64, and I remember seeing ads for Links 386 and thinking gently caress that looks cool

Even thinking about it now makes me all nostalgic

Look at those fuckin' graphics

What was the golf game with the player said, "Be the ball." though can't recall if it was for driving or putting.
Think I played it on a 286 or 386 PC last century.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2020 21:51

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Moo the cow posted:

To the uninitiated, it may look like a broken iPod.

To those in the know, it is a repaired iPod - using a CF card adaptor. Unfortunately, because iTunes is such a dumpster fire, I can't get it to restore it. But at least I have a different error message on it.

Have you tried Rockbox on it?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2020 16:23

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Horace posted:

But then I remembered something, I own one of these briefcase music centres:

My Dad had (as near as I can remember) that very same model when I was growing up.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2020 21:28

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 22:37

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

First family VCR, rented (as was the TV) and dig that wired remote control!

# ¿ Aug 14, 2020 13:39

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Johnny Aztec posted:

I'm not really a hoarder, I just buy up alot of vintage items at estate auctions.

I have a Beta player....SOMEWHERE and a bunch of tapes scattered around. One day, I'll be able to combine the two.

Pioneer CLD-M403 Laserdisk player. Picked this up several years ago from an older man purging his old A/V stuff
He had it hooked up and playing, but this has sat in the closet, or in storage for a long time.

I *think* I have a laserdisc.....somewhere that I can use to test this but....one day. One day. I know the belts tend to deteriorate in these sorts of things.

I even have the remote. It's got a cool round springy knob like you see on the far right .

You should be able to play CDs on that, the tray that slides out should have a small circular depression for CDs. I have Pioneer CLD-D925 thats sounds good as a CD spinner.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2020 14:57

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

I bought my Laserdisc player simply for this box set:

Though I did end up getting the box set of Natural Born Killers as it had a Nine Inch Nails video on it (Perfect Drug, I think).

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 16:35

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Dick Trauma posted:

Gary Brooker died yesterday.

My favorite version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St6jyEFe5WM

Oh drat. Suddenly got dusty over here.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2022 20:45

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Peanut Butler posted:

Yeah old electric organs have been a staple of the "I found all of my furniture curbside" life around here for a while

I have a weird one tho, and I love it- it's a dark wood organ from 1897 that was built to operate using foot bellows, pushing air through leather tubes into reeds and other devices that can be activated with pull-pegs- one is a vibrato setting that pushes the air through a wide spinning 'blade' made of a dense oiled cardboard-

at some point in the 1960s, the church that owned it retrofitted it with an air pump and an electrical socket in the back (for a lamp, probably)

I'm between homes so the organ's in a friend's garage, but when I can get it back, I really want to give it another 60-year update, and at the very least put a quieter pump inside

Sounds like a Harmonium.

My dad bought an old one like ^^ that ^^ 30-odd years ago and it was a good leg exerciser to play anything over a few minutes. Ended up giving it to the music dept of a local school.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2022 19:00

spookygonk: Apr 3, 2005; Does not give a damn

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

The first PC I owned with a hard drive had 80MB. I did not get a 1GB+ drive until 1997

First home PC was a 286 with a 20mb hard drive in the early 1990s. Managed to design and produce an A5 music fanzine with whatever cheap DTP package was available and scanned art & photos with one of these: