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A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


WebDog posted:

Remind me of the old Athalon 1800's which were a popular choice to crank up to 2.33ghz.

Oh man, I remember raging about this so hard on forums back in 1999-2000. This specific misspelling was probably more common than the correct spelling.

I always wondered, do people who misspell Athlon pronounce it the way they spell it? Like how some people can't say "athlete" so they say "ath-a-lete" instead?

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A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I'm only 24 and can remember Viewmasters... because they still make them. My local Walmart has a selection of Disney-themed reels for them, lots of Pixar stuff.

I never understood what was so great about them as a kid because the 3D effect doesn't work for me at all. When I look through a Viewmaster or binoculars I just see two separate side-by-side images. :sigh:

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Baron von Eevl posted:

My dad just put a couple of shelves where the TV used to go and popped the new flatscreen on top.

Who else remembers the immense confusion caused by this term when flat screens were still being made, but flat panels were available?

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


mrkillboy posted:

They disappeared not long after.

Or did they?

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I don't remember the exact details, but the first PC I ever built for myself had an early ATI Radeon that could get a 40%+ performance increase from additional pipelines by simply modifying some registry values after you installed the drivers.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I can definitely see removable media going away for the average home user eventually. I built my current PC in 2008, and since then it's only ever had external hard drives connected to it for backups and a flash drive once for OS installation. It's never had an optical drive and I've never run into a situation where I've needed one.

The average user doesn't have much that can't be stored on something like Google Drive and it shouldn't be long until connection speeds improve, making off-site backups ubiquitous and maybe even a nifty automatic feature built into Windows.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Jedit posted:

Also, a lot of people still burn their own CDs and DVDs.

For what? I'm genuinely curious. I used to use DVDs for when I wanted to give something to a friend, but these days flash drives of greater capacity than DVDs are only a few dollars and easy to pass back and forth without being too concerned about it getting lost somewhere along they way. Even that's a pretty rare case, since most of my friends have Internet access.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I still don't understand those desks. You get to choose between a keyboard that's too low to type on comfortably or a monitor that's jacked clear up in the air. I've never had a problem with using a desk that's just a single, flat surface. Isn't the rule that the top of your monitor's viewable area should be level with your eyes?

I remember that a lot of those 90s desks also had a little door you could close in front of the computer when not in use. I guess in case you were ashamed of owning a computer.

A FUCKIN CANARY!! has a new favorite as of 13:36 on Sep 24, 2012

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Argyle posted:

I just impulse bought 2012 and 2013 sets from Jackson Office Supply, one of the few companies that still makes them. They are absolutely silly and completely unnecessary in this day and age, but suddenly I feel like I MUST have them.

I'm a big enough dork to wear a mechanical wristwatch and can't carry electronic devices at work due to security and poo poo blowin' up concerns, so this seems like a downright awesome product to me.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Kalos posted:

There was a certain finesse with the ball mouse that you had to re-learn for more modern ones, since the ball would keep spinning and move your cursor after you picked up the mouse to reposition it, which didn't happen with the optical ones. Naturally, gamers blamed optical mice for being bad technology rather than retraining their muscle memory.

I remember that a lot of optical mice would spazz out and move in random directions if you moved them too quickly. My old Razer Diamondback was the first optical mouse I tried that I could fully trust to not gently caress up during a 180 degree snap turn in Doom II.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


AlternateAccount posted:

As an owner of these, they are not at all bright. Pretty much can't even see the glow in anything less than near-total darkness. Also I think they emit alpha particles as most of their decay? I can't remember.

Tritium vials are used on pistol sights too, and those are definitely a lot brighter than what you describe. There's a noticeable glow even in light. In complete darkness, I'd say that they are about 1/2 as bright as a typical HDD activity light.

Given that they are being sold with the expectation of the buyer putting them on something that they keep stuck in their pants for hours every day, I doubt that they'd get away with selling them if they emitted even a tiny amount of harmful radiation.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


You Are A Elf posted:

Other older goons probably had Butterfly Gold or Old Town Blue dishes when they were kids.

Holy poo poo. I'm eating soup out of an Old Town Blue bowl right now and also had no idea that they were a ~thing.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


leidend posted:



I always thought it was a better/more comfortable design than the NES gamepad. Even had a trigger button under your index finger, which wasn't seen again for decades.

It's worth pointing out that a lot of these Commodore/Atari 8-bit era joysticks are set up so that you use the stick with your right hand and the buttons with your left. Crazy poo poo.

It's never made sense to me and everyone in my family uses Atari joysticks with a hands crossed grip.

Edit: Anyone else have these wireless joysticks?

A FUCKIN CANARY!! has a new favorite as of 05:30 on Nov 16, 2012

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


leidend posted:

I don't even know what a hands crossed grip is. That epyx set up was very natural to me.

But I also liked the original xbox controller and am one of those weirdos who uses both my middle and index fingers on modern controller triggers.

Where you run the joystick with your left hand and press the button by snaking your right index finger under your left palm.

I didn't realize there were people who didn't use their middle fingers for triggers. It's not like there's anything else it could be doing (except for in fighting games).

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Dick Trauma posted:

The only name I remember for portrait monitors is Radius. They were nice for page layout, but when widescreen arrived seeing two pages side by side (albeit smaller) outweighed it.

Isn't taking one of these and doubling the relative width the origin of those terrible 5:4 LCDs that used to be everywhere?

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


movax posted:

:smith::hf::smith: broken stick buddy

It used pretty standard threads, so you could find a bolt or something that won't break to thread into it.

And then subsequently realize that the stick is just a pointless extra step between your fingers and pushing buttons.

DrBouvenstein posted:

That looks really uncomfortable to hold. Why does it curve up on the left? Just so Nintendo didn't sue them?

That little black switch changes the directions of the d-pad so that the controller can be used upside-down. Some sort of misguided attempt at a "lefty flip" option.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Don't forget to hook up your video signal stabilizer. Wouldn't want an unstable signal, right? *wink* *wink*

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


It generates a clean sync signal, allowing you to duplicate copy protected tapes. Everyone I knew who was into movies had a pair of VCRs with one of those little black boxes hooked up between them. The ritual of pressing record on one VCR, play on another, stopping and rewinding both when you realize one of the two tapes wasn't rewound, etc. mentioned above defines the 90s movie watching experience for me.

Yup, there was a time where you had to had actually go outside and rent physical copies of the movies you wanted to pirate instead of having them magically beamed into your computer.

A FUCKIN CANARY!! has a new favorite as of 15:49 on Dec 17, 2014

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I use a RAM disk in combination with Fraps, which is still too retarded to just keep a 60 second loop buffer in memory on its own instead of writing to disk nonstop.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


PalmOS was great in general. Everything was fast and responsive, and to this day I have yet to see another implementation of handwriting recognition that actually works.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I remember having some MS-DOS game where at the end of the installer it prompted you to insert a blank floppy to make a backup copy.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I could see a central vacuum system being pretty handy if it was considerably stronger than a normal vacuum cleaner. Is there enough suction to handle beer cans, cum rags, and food scraps being fed directly into the wall socket?

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Some razor disposal slots do one better than just dropping the blade down into the walls; I've seen some that drop all the way down into the dirt under the house. Makes crawling under the house to work on the plumbing interesting.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


The era where CD burners had become widespread but Steam hadn't completely caught on yet was a hell of a thing. I bought Hitman Contracts on launch day and the CD check wouldn't pass on my PC. To get it working I had to image the CD, mount it in a virtual drive, and install some special software for tricking SecuROM. Each time I wanted to play, I had to shut down and physically disconnect my optical drives or else the copy protection would still freak out. I put up with this for about a week until I just downloaded a warez release off Usenet that worked without hassle and thought "Well, at least the box looks nice."

There was basically a span of several years where you were punished for buying a game instead of pirating it, with the publishers whining about piracy killing them all the while.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I have a Model M and it's as great as everybody says they are. The sound of the buckling spring switches is even more satisfying than the Cherry switches used in most mechanical keyboards.

If you can't find a good deal on a used one and don't really care about having a ~vintage keyboard~, Unicomp still produces them, along with an "Ultra" variant that has a much more compact casing.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Imagined posted:

Here's a picture I took of one of the ones at the Oklahoma City Zoo just before they removed them all. :(



Oh, wow. My family visited the Oklahoma City Zoo on a vacation we took when I was 4-5 years old, and getting the orange plastic giraffe from that particular machine in the photo is my only clear memory of the trip.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


The DVD is a fairly crappy transfer of the LaserDisc that is letterboxed instead of being actual widescreen and has lots of weird motion blurring and stuff going on. The highest quality way to see the original version is the fan made Despecialized Edition.

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

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Non-motorized reel mowers are even better than electric. There's no maintenance beyond adjusting the blade once every couple of years and they're no harder to push than a powered mower after the initial push to get it moving, yet it's the type of mower that's considered obsolete.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Cephalectomy posted:

Having used the most basic of phones since the 80's I can. Honestly say smart phones suck at being phones but are okay as handheld media devices

As someone who held off on getting any cell phone at all until two months ago because having a phone with you all the time seemed pointless, having Internet access anywhere is even more useful than I expected and I still have yet to make or receive a single phone call on it.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


My S3 Mini, with no case, is at the very upper limit of what I can carry in a pocket. Something larger could physically fit, but it's still bulky and hits against my leg every time I take a step. I have no idea how people deal with iPhones or those giant 5" motherfuckers, especially with a case added to make it even more huge. My Game Boy Color never bothered me back when I carried it around, so maybe I just went too long without carrying tons of poo poo and lost the ability to do so.

As for back pockets, I've never understood how people can carry anything in them and still be able to sit down.

A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


Man, I hated the days before we had LEDs all over our electronics and it was impossible to tell whether or not your TV was on.

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A FUCKIN CANARY!!
Nov 9, 2005


I can't tell the difference between 5.1 and stereo.

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