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."

Comments

Synths

[Monte]

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.

Re:Synths

[cei]

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...

100 Minute Cassetes

[gambit3]

ahh... being able to create my own mixes for the first time... making one HUGE cassette of the songs that I liked.

I didn't see how it could get any better than that...

Re:100 Minute Cassetes

[sporktoast]

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.

Simple Games!

[Goalie_Ca]

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.

Merlin, Turbo Grafx, oh my

[VermifugeRT]

Not really 80's But I DO remember playing Merlin when I was really young. An electronic Tic Tac Toe of sorts. But my fondest gaming memories are of the NEC Turbo Grafx 16 and it's portable counterpart The Turbo Express.

The system received a face lift in Japan called the Super Grafx but it was abandoned after just a few months. I got one off eBay a few years ago and it was worth every penny.

Osborne I luggable

[renehollan]

Subject says it all, a portabe computer with a 5" monochrome CRT (16x64, IIRC) and two 5-1/4" full height floppy disk drives running CP/M on a Z80.

Capsella

[alta]

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.

Re:Capsella

[The Cydonian]

It was also my first taste of the dreaded "S&H extra."

Heh, let's just say Capsela was one of the first things where I began to discover the limitations of the Indian Rupee. :-) M dad was so concerned about me breaking this expensive toy that he made sure he was around when I played with it. In fact, I had to ask for permission before I played around, and had to be accompanied while I remove the parts from the packaging.

This might sound like a class thing, but good to hear that even American kids found Capsela expensive back then. :-)

Re:Capsella

[littlerubberfeet]

I did one worse as a kid....old enough to be dangerous, but yound enough not to have any grasp of the conceptual difference between AC and DC current, and voltage for that matter.

In my kit, the batteries were in one 'bubble', and the motors in another. I noticed that the power cord from some old radio fit in the Capsella motor plug, so I plugged it in. Then I plugged it into the wall. My little 'car' made a nice pop and went the fastest three feet of it's (short) life. Oops.

Re:Capsella

[RomulusNR]

I noticed that the power cord from some old radio fit in the Capsella motor plug, so I plugged it in. Then I plugged it into the wall. My little 'car' made a nice pop and went the fastest three feet of it's (short) life.

I think you're my new hero.

Re:Capsella

[RomulusNR]

Especially those damned small connectors. "Get, *OOF!* off!" *THUCK-BANG!*

Which is why mine had so many little dents in them. From teeth.

Just like most of my old Legos did, come to think of it. Stubborn little f**kers.

(And also probably why I ended up with assorted little chips in my teeth. Bah, the price you pay for a productive childhood.)

this

[nocomment]

10 print "Derek likes Lisa!! ";
20 goto 10
run

ahh the joys of elementary school in the 80's. :-)

Re:this

[Monte]

Of course that's a semicolon, indicating the computer should not force a newline at the end of printed list.

Ah, BASIC. Is there nothing it cannot do? ;)

Re:this

[Deanasc]

10 print "Radio Shack Sucks! ";

20 goto 10

run

Re:tech/games I miss...

[Philip K Dickhead]

Unix. Dial-up kermit and UUCP. Bourne shell. 32Kb executable RAM. 1 Mb /home. mail with ! paths.

All accesed from an Apple ][+ with an 80-column card and 300 Bps modem.

Cameras made from glass and metal

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

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.

Analog Magtape Walkmans

[Julian Morrison]

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.

300 baud modem, CGA color

[DougInthezoo]

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.

Re:300 baud modem, CGA color

[daviddennis]

At that time I was a consultant and was driven nuts by the people who would choose totally illegible color combinations on their computers. Things like cyan on magenta with these only half-legible CGA monitors. And I would change the combinations to good ol' green on black, so I could read it, and everyone complained. The colours weren't pretty, you know.

The other thing I remember from that era was running a small multi-line BBS. It was lots of fun and I got to know a lot of cool people. Tragically, after my BBS went down due to a hardware disaster in 1987, my social life took a giant dive it has not recovered from since.

I love the Internet, but nobody seems to have created a really good way to bring local people together in a friendly way ...

D

Re:300 baud modem, CGA color

[Directrix1]

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.

One Word

[D.A. Zollinger]

PONG!

Re:One Word

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Tech and replacements

[cei]

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.

Re:Tech and replacements

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Pagers

[D.A. Zollinger]

Back in the early '90s our dept. all got pagers so we could all keep in touch with each other. We got a good deal with one of the dealers, and we got these monstrous things with multiple buttons being able to do many different things, from displaying messages that had been typed in through a messaging service, to setting and changing the time displayed, as well as cycling through the numbers left and when we were paged.

We all had those pagers for a short period of time as we got used to them, and the contract was smoothed out. When it was finalized, we all got new pagers with one button that did everything depending on how long you held the button down. Upon hearing how we were to interact with the new pagers, one of my colleagues quipped, "God save us from technology!"

Re:tech/games I miss...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Zmodem- the friend that made downloading possible on my rotten phone lines at 1200 baud (why? Because the downloads could be RESUMED! Now there's something they should add to firefox!)

1K of awesome power!

[Deanasc]

Sinclair ZX81

Re:1K of awesome power!

[The Cydonian]

Heh, I still have my Sinclair ZX Spectrum + somewhere at my parents' home, and often hook it up to a television for old time's sake.

Let's just say my 10 year old cousin didn't quite see the point of listening to screeching noises for half an hour only to play a text adventure game with shoddy fonts. :-)

Re:1K of awesome power!

[carndearg]

Too right!

I'm not just saying this from misty-eyed nostalgia, the Sinclair ZX81 was a computer that an enthusiast like me could understand at the lowest level because of its ingenious use of the simplest of hardware. Simple hardware meant not so many features but to this day with a electronic engineering degree under my belt that's the only desktop computer I've fully understood every part of how it works at every level. Sure I know how this PC works at a more than superficial technical level but I dont really know what goes on at gate level.

Thank you Sir Clive and your team, you gave me a career!

Free porn

[Ratbert42]

I am curious what the /. community remembers as their favorite technology from previous decades (be it 70's, 80's or 90's).

CompuServe GIF, 320x200 256 color VGA displays, uudecode, and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. 300 floppies of 100dpi 256 color porn.

HP-11C

[xTown]

I got my HP-11C in 1987. I still use it.

Commodore 64

[bursch-X]

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...

The internet has always been here, right?

[JavaRob]

Okay, I'm almost 30... but somehow my mind edits everything in retrospect, so unless I sit down and think about it, it feels to me like I've had an email address since I knew how to spell. Like my Mom must have ordered "Where the Wild Things Are" for us kids from Amazon.com, then googled up some info about the newest line of Transformers.

Weird... of course, that's all nonsense.

When I stop to think, I remember playing Jungle Hunt on my uncle's TI computer, which had cartridges, but could also save data to a cassette tape. Most schoolwork was hand-written, though I wrote a few papers the hi-tech way, on my Dad's (expensive!) computer with no hard drive, but TWO floppy drives, one for the Word Perfect diskette, and one for the save diskette. When I went off to college, I had to use actual, paper maps to figure out how to get there. And I brought along a Macintosh computer with an 80 MB hard drive. And Tetris!

I know why I take modern technology for granted, though. This IS my life. The internet has totally pervaded my existence. What would my life be like without these technologies?

I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer... at work and often at leisure as well. I have now moved hundreds of miles away from the company I still work for, communicating primarily over email, writing code in a language invented less than a decade ago, adding features to a system that runs over the internet. Checking changes into a source control system that is, likewise, hundreds of miles away. Or updating my other source of revenue, a website that I built entirely using free tools and which I host in a server also hundreds of miles away from my home. When people pay for something on my site, they are shunted to s different server on the other side of the country. When a customer lives in Zambia, or the Netherlands, or in North Pole, Alaska, it's interesting but no surprise. But when a customer actually lives somewhere in my area, I'm startled. I wonder with an curious shiver if I may have actually SEEN this person before -- that would be amazing!

I had some serious vision problems last year (long-term damage from an infection I had as a kid), and went through a series of operations to replace various parts of both eyes (and advances in medicine are off-topic here, but again, thank you modern technology). But as long as one eye could make out magnified text on a 21" monitor, I could still do my work and still earn a living... it didn't make a difference at all that I couldn't see well enough to leave the house.

So how would my life have been different if I'd been born 50 years earlier? Even 10 years earlier? I can't even imagine it.

Re:tech/games I miss...

[egarland]

Zmodem rules. I use it all the time. SecureCRT (an ssh client for Windows) has support for it and it's great for logging in somewhere and quickly sending files to/from your local machine, no filesharing necessary.

Many Linux distributions still have Zmodem installed. I think the package is "lrzsz".

Just to plug SecureCRT, so far it's the fastest, most convienent, best SSH client I've ever used on any platform, which is sad considering it's a Windows app.

VINYL!

[Phreakiture]

I still have a good-sized collection of 80's and 90's (and some 70's) vinyly records. Some of them are a little scratched, but most of them sound great.

Actually, my collection has been growing in recent years as people are ditching their collections at yard sales.

Let me head off the likely next comment, though. Vinyl doesn't sound better than CD's, neither does it sound worse, for the most part. It sounds different. I have a good turntable, though, and that makes a big difference. The highs seem a tad crisper on my sound system from vinyl than from CD, but the noise floor is higher, and there is more frequent distortion on the vinyl.

Pinball

[xsbellx]

Flippers, steel ball(s), tilt, blinking lights and ringing bells. Few things are more fun than being able to shake a machine just the right way to keep that ball bouncing between two or three bumpers or making that backhand shot (right flipper shooting the ball up the right side of the machine) for a free ball.

Ahh to have the days of three-games-for-a-quarter back!

Toys?

[modi123]

Here's some other items to muse on:

When the Tamagatchi craze hit I was working in Target's toy department. I was constantly being harassed by customers (parents more so than kids), and bounced anyone who thought they could wander in the back stock room. I had a fist full of complaints against me when people asked me (for the millionth time) "Where can I find a Tamagatchi?", I would point behind me and reply "Over there - the empty shelves in the shadow of the three foot by four foot sign that says TAMAGATCHI!" Morons ! :)

How about LOGO or just good ol' ClarisWorks? God knows how many times I had to use those in 4th grade!

Another missing item from years ago (rather low tech though) - card catalogs at libraries! How fun were those! I mastered it quickly, then the next year bam - computer indexing! Booo!

AOL 1.0: The digital porn foundation! Using a nice 1400 baud external Hayes modem and giggling with glee as my buddy and I started email lists from chat room names and watched the porn flood in. I swear we might have invented spam!

My most missed was Nike Pumps. The genius that added inflatable balloons inside shoes was a true man of genius!

*sigh* The good old days!