What is your favorite bit of outdated technology?
Are you a retro-geek?
Do you embrace or at least fondly remember obsolete technology?
Which vintage tech products hold that special place in your hearts and minds?
Phonographs?
Pong?
Filmstrips?
Dot-Matrix Printers?
8-Track Tapes?
Microfiche?
Commodore?
Betamax?
Slide Projectors?
Windows XP?
by
cloudscout
asked 5 months ago
33RPM records
And the old mimeograph smell !!
And Atari games
I miss having cell phones that only made calls and, at their most technologically advanced, played snake. It was so much better because I could actually talk to someone and they could maintain eye contact the entire time!!!! Can you believe that?!?!?!?!?! No looking down to check their texts, or update Facebook, or Tweet, or anything like that!!!!! Wow, those were the days.
ATARI
I love my whistling teapot.
I love the old and the new. One of my favorite things is a cast-iron teapot with an antique cast-iron trivet. They keep the tea hot and delicious for ages.
There is nothing like a hot cup of tea in a bone china cup. Beats the heck out of a cup from a Keurig.
Oh yeah, and I won't touch a microwave. Any food that I need to reheat comes out perfectly in my cast iron cookware, and usually just as quickly.
Typewriters. I LOVE the tactile feedback it provides and the noise of each key click. Sliding the carriage back to its starting position is just such an amazing feeling. Like that perfect cut through construction paper, the bell telling you every time you need to return the carriage is just the perfect icing on the cake.
Robby the robot, that helped you play Nes games.
It was my Slacker G1 radio, purchased on Woot a couple years ago. It exposed me to new free music while sparing my phone battery. I was crushed when it gave out.
What???? Windows XP is outdated? ::embarrassed look:: Still works for me. I do have fond (outdated word) memories of playing Adventure on a TTY that connected to a dial-up 3B computer. xyzzy. No screen/monitor; the entire game was printed on.... paper. That was my 1st use of a 'computer'. Now that's antiquated!!
The Sega Genesis...so many great games on that system. So many bad ones too. I miss the Nintendo vs Genesis battles...whichever one you owned was the better system of course.
That and I miss Kungfu Chaos on the Xbox...so upset it didn't transfer to the 360. It was surely the best party game ever!!!
@bnbsouthworth: 33RPM LP's and 12 inch singles can actually have a higher bitrate than a standard music CD. They're really not outdated, and are still released. Just because they are old technology that isn't as WIDELY used today doesn't mean they're outdated at all.
watches
super 8 movies. I still have my family's films from the 60's and 70's, all silent. Picked up a projector at a thrift store in like new condition for $8 a few years back, and the my kids love watching them on the wall.
I miss analog cel phones... barely ever had a dropped cal with them. Sure the signal would occasionally lose quality, but they were more reliable.
I also miss the nokia 5110 I got around 2000, that was one great phone.
@kamikazeken: Actually I meant to say 45's. My sister still has her whole collection, and has a player! I still like to listen to them once in a blue moon. My sister-in-law has thousands of LPs. Sells them on ebay. She got a juke box for Christmas.
Personally, I like the pops and clicks on our old Lennon Sisters Christmas album. Not Christmas without it.
@bnbsouthworth: I'm hopeful I'll get an old jukebox some day, I'd even be happy with a 70's or 80's model, doesn't have to be the classic "50's" style.
I'm only 40, but I still have a few dozen 45's left, and frankly the titles are embarrassing! (the ones from the 80's)
@curtisuxor: So true! I remember taking keyboarding in high school... you know ... on typewriters. My older sister wouldn't take it when my parents recommended it. Since I did, they let me charge her for typing her papers. An expensive lesson :)
The tactile feedback of a real typewriter was quite amazing.
Dot matrix printers. I still remember neatly pulling those pages apart... pretty sure I still have a carton lying around somewhere.
@teevoo: Um, I can use the paper if you find it. I've got a case of yellow @ work, went on our teletype machine- before we bought our Wang.
Anyhoo, I miss Micro Machines and Super Mario on SNES.
I miss pinball and arcade games.
Iomega pocket zip disks, later called Click! disks. 40MB the size of a half dollar in the age of floppy disks! I got an MP3 player that used them free when I bought Windows XP on first-day release day.
Watches with automatic movements. There is just something about the tick-tick-tick of a refined wristwatch.
@phizzo: Yes! Pinball games!
Also, audio cassettes.
My old black and white...well, black and greenish...Palm IIIx.
SCSI. Pretty much a dead standard now, but I have owned many, many, SCSI drives over the years. I used a lot of them at various jobs as well; I had a then-cutting-edge DPT RAID controller at one point that was the envy of other admins of the time.
In some ways, I miss the 300-disc changer that I had full of compact discs for music. Yeah, I love my iPod Touch, but I miss the whir of the carousel and the arm selecting the discs at random in the real old-school shuffle.
I have a problem with some out-dated technology.
I'm currently trying to convert some home movies from VHS tapes to DVD and that's working just fine.
There are a couple audio tapes and reel-to-reel that I cannot convert. I don't have a tape player or a reel-to-reel player any longer. Oh, what to do. These tapes are very important because they have the voices of several dead family members but there's no way to listen to them.
One piece of outdated technology that keeps coming is the phone book and yellow pages.
I get so many of them every year. First, I get two from my regular telephone company. Then, I get some from companies trying to compete with the telephone companies yellow pages. I never use them so they end up in the recycle bin the same day I get them. What a waste.
Same thing goes for the printed newspaper. I get the news from the internet or the TV.
Regarding Faxes, I still use my fax machine (believe it or not). There are companies that will not accept an attachment on an email and you can only fax a form to them.
When was the last time you used a paper map? GPS is the way to go!
Connecting to 'bulletin boards' (early version of the Internet) with my modem.. BEE OMM...BEE OMM...ZZZZ...PTTH...ZZZZ...PTHH....ZMMMMMMMM
Tube tv's, i.e., non flatscreen tv. I was in best buy and you can't buy a non lcd/hd type flat tv anymore, at least not in my area. In the bedroom, I have no need for a flatcreen, and my "obsolete" tube tv does just the trick, even if its from the 90's!
Sega Dreamcast!
and vinyls, although they are making quite the comeback. In fact I only buy albums on vinyl these days. I never sit down to listen to cds, and mp3s are just a little too "non-existant" for me, I need something tangible with sleeve art.
oh, and Sega Dreamcast!!
@cengland0: We still get the huge phone books and yellow pages.
I use the pages to light fires in the fireplace, get my smoker going, light fires in the firepit outside, take them camping to get fires going, use them as packing material.
I have actually asked my neighbors if I can have some of theirs as I really do get that much use out of the paper.
@cengland0: you can still buy a Walkman or other cassette player at Best Buy. For work I use one to digitize recordings. Grab a male to male 3.5mm cord (http://www.amazon.com/Retractable-Auxiliary-Players-standard-headphone/dp/B0033ZP5YA/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_4) then plug one end into the player's headphone jack, and the other end into your computer's microphone input and record through whatever program you use.
I also like candles and oil lanterns.
@pute: Oh, I'm so glad zip disks are dead (though I've still seen some people using them). I helped so many broken-hearted grad students whose zip disks died the day before they were supposed to make their final presentations. The failure rate on those was astronomical.
I still use my original xbox frequently. I find I like the games better than the new ones.
I miss film. I always liked the idea of having a dark room and developing my own prints. By the time I was old enough to start the film developing hobby, digital took over.
@musicalman: Thank you for the suggestion. I was hoping to avoid having to buy something to copy 3 cassettes over. Also, what would I do for the reel-to-reel tapes?
Of course I could pay someone to convert these but they would probably charge more than it would cost to buy my own cassette player.
Slide Projectors. It was always a special time in my family growing up when we would turn off the lights and sit around viewing slides.
Typewriters, I recently bought a Brother to replace my old one. The kid at OfficeMax that sold it to me had NEVER used one...
I use mine to type one some preprinted legal forms provided by the local government. They do not want them OCR'd - so you have to use a typewriter to make them look somewhat professional and not hand written.
My reason for posting this question was, well, for a bit of self-justification.
I collect old technology.
I have a large collection of old 8-bit computers and game consoles, arcade games, a pinball machine... I also have an assortment of obsolete media players and their accompanying media (8-Track, Laserdisc, Betamax, MiniDisc, Victrola, etc.).
My most recent acquisition is a Dukane Micromatic II filmstrip projector. I brought it to the family Christmas celebration along with a 1976 filmstrip titled "How We Got Our Christmas Traditions." I realized that for the younger children in the family, it may be the only time in their entire lives that they actually get to WATCH a filmstrip.
I liked it when you googled a name and town google would give you names, addresses and phone numbers as part of the search result, nice and formatted.
Example search: john smith town ia.
Results:
John Smith
123 Street
Town Ia 11222
555-555-5555
John Smith
123 Main
Town Ia 11222
555-555-5553
We still have some XP boxes in the house in use.
I have an overabundance of ancient technology in the house, and love it.
Lets see how about reverse order of age?
powermac dual G5
Sega Dreamcast
PowerMac 7300 with G3 upgrade card
Sega Saturn
SNES
Mac LC
Sega CD
Sega Genesis
NES
Commodore 128
Apple IIe
Intellivision
Atari 2600
LaserDisc
Capacitance Electronic Discs (CED's... competing technology with VHS and laserdiscs... it was a record player that played movies)
TopCon 35MM camera setup
I have plenty of other stuff around here, like old mechanical clock movements, other mechanical cameras, pre-harmonic distortion noise reduction amplifiers, etc.
@phizzo: Go buy one!
@chronosquall14: I have a pair of Sony 400 disc changers... one of them reads MP3 CD's as well, making it the ultimate long term storage and retrieval facility for music. I also have an interface setup that works with the disc changers and links them to a computer that goes online to CDDB to get CD information.
@cengland0: Check Ebay or Craigslist. my parents picked up a reel to reel setup about 10 years back to convert several old family recordings to CD.
@waltertangofoxtrot I have a couple of CEDs but I don't have a player. One of these days I'll get around to buying one.
I still want to add a DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) player to my collection, too.
@cloudscout: I'd offer to sell you one of my spare CED players, but I don't know the condition of the stylus on the one I'm willing to sell, and due to the extreme weight, shipping cost would likely kill the deal. (its a semi rare Magnevox version, and uses a completely different set of parts than the standard RCA SelectaVision's)
Craigslist or Ebay is probably the only chance you'll have at finding one, other than an old VCR repair store. (unless you're in the Chicago/Milwaukee area, in which case we could meet up, and I could sling the player at you)
Windows XP, my tape cassette player, my 7 year old cell phone, my VCR, my old fashioned TV (and I should pull my walkman back out). Oh, I still use phone books (more efficient to get the RIGHT answer than the internet still, whenever I've tried to compare the two), still use notebook paper, still use paper maps at times (again, big picture on paper sometimes trumps the limits of the screen--my gift GPS helps more than hurts me so far), and I still have my USB floppy drive (and still have floppies) and the old Zip drive somewhere (and still burn CD's occasionally for data, copying CD's for others). I still have my film camera, too.
@vfrdirk: I have a Rush N' Attack machine. It was fun to work on but I never play it and I guess even with all the stuff I did to it like a new monitor, decals, lights and marquee it's still worth about $300. It's a money pit. I wish someone did all the maintenance and I paid a nominal fee to play the games at a central location with my friends while out. Great concept maybe someone will get it to work one day. :)
@kamikazeken: Actually, phonograph records do not have any bitrate whatsoever! They are analog. Only digital media have bitrates.
But yes, phonograph records can have better frequency response than CDs, and better phase response than the D->A converters in a lot of cheaper CD players.
@cengland0: Just ask around. Lots of people have R-R tape machines. (I have several.) You can surely find someone to help you with the conversion... I do it all the time.
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