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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."
Analog synthesizers. REAL analog, not some pseudo-kindalikeafilter-emulated plastic thing made of CPUs and DSPs, but beasts with discrete component muscles and op-amp souls, machines that could rip speaker cones apart at the twist of a knob.
Back in the day, you could build your own. Now... can you even get the Curtis chips anymore? *nostalgic sigh*
Rest In Peace, Dr. Robert Moog. You will be missed, but your legacy lives on forever.
Games by a long Shot! Grew up with nintendo, C64, arcades, and the super nintendo. Games were immersive, cheap, and very entertaining. I could play them for a couple of minutes or for hours. Graphics stunk compared to today's standards but they were extremely well polished which is all that really counts.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I remember this fun toy... a geek's dream
http://www.discoverthis.com/capsela.html
They were a lot of fun, came with motors, gears, wheels, fan blades, all sorts of cool stuff. They weren't cheap though, but I sure enjoyed them. Looking at this site, either the price has come down, or I was really poor as a child.
I'd say I had this in the mid to late 80's.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
That shot real film. Ok, I love my Nikon D70, but I also love the feel of a vintage Nikon F1 or a Hasselblad 500cm.
Computers that you could understand. I mean understand the whole thing. I worked on PDP 8's and I could keep the entire thing in my mind. I could see the gates that changed state when an instruction executed. Now I'm lucky if I can figure out how the SDRAM refreshes.
Cinemascope and Technicolor. I loved the widescreen of Cinemascope and the soft vibrant colors of Technicolor.
Tube amps. Rich, warm sound, pretty orange glow.
Analog oscilloscopes. Tek 485, the finest portable scope ever made, Tek 7844, 2 completely independent excellent scopes in one box.
Hammond B3 organs and Leslie speakers. If you don't know why, find them and listen.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Unlike a CD, you can bounce around as much as you like wearing a walkman, and the thing won't skip. Unil solid state MP3 players, they were the only mobile way to listen to music - and I could argue they're still simpler. No need to preload them from a PC, just pop the cover and snap in a tape. Oh, and tapes remember where you stopped listening, and resume where you left off - even if it was years ago and you've listen to a thousand tapes since.
I spent WAY too many nights logged into the local BBS with my 300 baud modem. Loved chatting in those places.
And, I had a CGA monitor, with EGA envy. I dreamed of EGA color for (what seemed like) years, and then VGA came out and my world was never the same.
Which colors to choose, Magenta, Cyan, White, Black, or the ever popular Red, Green, Yellow, Black? I just couldn't ever pick.
10 or 15 years ago I wouldn't have pictured the cell phone almost completely replacing the pager. On the other hand, I would have expected fax to go the way of telex, to be replaced entirely by email by now. Yet fax still persists.
This sig intentionally left justified.
I got my HP-11C in 1987. I still use it.