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Technology That You Loved from the 70/80/90's?
modi123 asks: "I was spending a large chunk last weekend watching VH1's I love the 80's: Strikes Back with a couple of friends. We would comment and laugh at all the dreadful things we were into, and then the topic shifted towards old tech and gadgets from then. I brought up my old 486 Packard Bell (DOS 6.0, Windows 3.1, Doom, all for $3700.00), and it spiraled out from there. The usual things cropped up: Nintendos, Sega Master Systems, Apple II Gs, and so forth. Then it delved into more weird items: Rob The Nintendo Playing Robot, HyperCard, cell phones with 50 lb batteries, and the pager craze. I am curious what the /. community remembers as their favorite technology from previous decades (be it 70's, 80's or 90's). Perhaps we can even chart a timeline if people toss in when they first remember it."
Don't know about the Curtis chips, but PAiA still has kit analog beasties.
Yeah, I sometimes regret selling my Moog Liberation and my Oberheim OB-8, but really, they were a pain to keep in tune...
This sig intentionally left justified.
No, Ping isn't a game, it's a network test. Pong is the game, aka "Video Ping Pong", originally programed on an oscilloscope and quite likely the first home video game system many people had (even though it only played the one game). It was also the very first arcade machine with a screen instead of cardboard cutouts and metal ball channels.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Don't forget the super sharp 640x200 black and white mode. Sweeeeet. I remember booting into basica and playing with all the circles, lines, and pixels I wanted.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Only to have the tape break (or get sucked into the capstans) because they had to manufacture it a little too thin for tolerances in order to get 100 minutes into that little space. One or two additional songs per side was not worth the risk.
C-90 was the way to go. An album per side, plus amybe selected songs or an EP to fill the side out. Plenty of room for a mix. Just enough for a walk to/from school and class breaks without having to change cassettes too frequently.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
Boots in 1 second, never breaks, looks like a piece of shit and makes sure you'll have hours of fun waiting for the games to load from the datasette (tape), while adjusting the tape head with a screwdriver.
Ah, yes there was the 1541 Foppy drive, but it cost about as much as the whole computer and it might be not vintage enough for C64 purists...
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
In both cases, it's the usability.
...
I still have to carry a pager because there's a significant difference in the coverage areas of cell towers and pagers. There are some areas that are exclusively one or the other and still a couple spots with neither.
Fax - I have a piece of paper to send to you. Do I:
sit down at the computer
open the scanning app
scan the image
hit save
desktop...filename....save
open the e-mail client
new message
To: Mabel
Subject: the letter
File..Attach...Desktop...which file was it again? Oh, yeah.
Send....
"How do I open this?"
-or-
insert paper
2024562461
send
Many years ago I had an HP Digital Sender. Insert page, type in e-mail address, hit send.
Beautiful device. Did PDF, did greyscale, could do LDAP lookups. $4000. Looking now, they're still over $2000.
This is really a $300 ADF scanner with a WRT54G and a cheap keyboard. OK, maybe it's higher quality but that's not what the mass market is after. It would sell quite well for $500.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)