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Is the Game Boy the Toughest Product Ever Made?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET is running an article about tough technology, which aptly includes the Nintendo Game Boy, a device so tough that mine still works after many years. 'There's no two ways about it: the original Game Boy is one of the hardest gadgets ever conceived. Rumor has it this beige behemoth isn't made of plastic, but from the skulls of fallen Gurkhas. If you ever saw one that was broken, it's because it lost a boxing match with a nuclear bomb — on points.' So do you agree that the Game Boy is the toughest consumer electronics device ever made?"
I still have my pet rock, 30+ years later...
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Back in the stone age when you didn't own your phone, but just leased it from the phone company, those things were darn near indestructible.
Subscribers can see articles in the future? So what? Everyone gets to see them in the future.
http://www.aqualion.com/blog/uploaded_images/football-777893.jpg
I've had this for over 25 years. Still works.
Will it blend?
I dunno. Every single Zippo I've ever owned has been pretty robust. Those Ironman watches popular back in the 80's were fairly hardy, too.
My wife's 2nd gen iPod has seen constant and rugged use since it was bought and it still works great.
While I'm here, I'd like to also give a shoutout to my ancient HP Vectra VE, which until recently was my file/dyndns/hotline server . They don't make PCs like they used to, that's for sure.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I remember my brother dropped his Gameboy in a lake accidentally when he was younger. It was under water for a week until friends of ours with scuba gear found it.
That damn thing worked after we dried it out for a couple days and popped fresh batteries in it. It was missing a couple lines on the display, but it worked.
Granted, it was fresh water, but still.
My gameboy was next to useless after a year or so of use. There were many verical columns on the LCD that stopped displaying. Cleaning the cartridge connection didn't seem to help either. Yeah, you could drop it and it would still function, but that display would give out eventually.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I remember reading a blurb in an issue of Nintendo Power (I want to say sometime in the early 90's) that featured a picture of a Game Boy that had supposedly been in a house fire. They were able to fit the Tetris cartridge back into the slot, turn the game on, and actually play it (albeit, with some loss in the pixels) even though the shell of the system was almost completely charred.
I think that's pretty hardcore.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
I went through three original Game Boys back in the day because the LCD screens kept on losing vertical lines. These were generally near the edges of the screen, but one got so bad that nearly half the screen didn't work. I'm sure they probably still power up just fine, but if you can't see what's on the screen it doesn't really matter.
This guy's the limit!
A bit lightly toasted. The page has a link to a YouTube video on it as well.
Engadget report here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/02/iphone-takes-on-semi-lives-to-tell-the-tale/
One iPhone, gets left out... and flattened by a Semi tractor trailer. Took a lickin', kept on tickin'.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Apparently, more weapon than controller it is capable of withstanding high speed impact with stationary objects, LCD/plasma TVs, dry wall, idiots, etc.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I got my first gameboy when I was about 8 years old when I was going on a flight by myself to see my mom in FL. That one lasted me probably about 8 months. I remember the first time I broke it, I dropped it down the front steps at my gramma's house. The device stayed intact, but the screen wouldn't display anything except for a couple of horizontal black lines.
I got a new unit a couple months later from my dad which lasted me close to a year before it finally wouldn't turn on one day. We tried replacing the batteries, but nothing would fix it. I remember seeing my dad with it open on his desk doing some kind of surgery to it. He wound up taking the screen out of that one and transplanting it into my first one, thereby fixing it (I had to do a similar thing with my PSP, but that's another story). That gameboy still works to this day, although I made the mistake of putting the majority of my gameboy and gamegear games into the same drawer as this 8" speaker magnet that I had and none of them work anymore.
I've got really bad luck with electronics... Not including the normal upgrade process, only replacements for faulty units, I've had about 6 ipods, more than 10 cell phones, 3 palm pilots, 2 PSPs, 3 xbox360s, 2 Wiis, about 6 Laptops, a dozen monitors (CRT), countless harddrives (well over 20), and several new headphones, keyboards, mice, digital cameras, drive enclosures and powerbricks. Many were replaced under warranty, but still.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
My Son has a GBA, GBA SP and GBA DS. They all still work despite being dropped, crushed in backpacks, and having been loaned to a two year old nephew. Pretty hard to beat that sort of treatment.
With the exception of the absolutely completely f9(^*(%'n useless screen on the GBA, I've been very impressed with Nintendo game machines.
Seriously, what idiot released the original GBA?
Brad
I was playing a frustrating game on my original Game Boy back in the day, got frustrated and hit it against my head--I broke the internal screen, and it couldn't display games correctly anymore. So it's not that tough...
I would have to nominate my flash drive. I left it in my pants one time, and it survived a trip through the washer and dryer. I should really have hand-washed it, though: it shrank from 1 gb to 512 mb.
Man, I wish 360's were that durable. Mine just about red rings every time I use my microwave, and dammit, i love my ramen noodles!
why? forty-two.
My brother's forehead Christmas Day 1990 1
Gameboy 0
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
Remember the Gamecube car test we posted a few years ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEvlWQ5ULCg
Same with original Nintendo DS, when closed mode it will withstand most drops.
I nominate the IBM Model M keyboard and its brethren as being among the most bulletproof gadgets ever made. They weigh 5 pounds, mostly because the keys are mounted on a solid steel plate. And not only are they indestructible, but they're delightful to type on.
I don't know about everyone else but my Ti-83 still works after 10 years of abuse. Those are some hard calculators to break.
What's the last Microsoft project that Bill Gates spent considerable time writing code for before his managerial duties took away his time for coding?
:)
The portable, handheld battery-operated TRS-80.
Solid as a rock. There are tales of people skipping them across concrete and they still work.
And as far as the code? Bill must have done something right, because as of a few years ago (I last heard this in 2005 or 2004) there are still some of these beasts in use. Not much computing power, but they have an RS-232 port. The O/S is flexible enough that there are corporations using the device still. Apparently, the thing is so tough that there are off-shore oil platforms running some ancient equipment that dumps data through an RS-232 port, and the crews that have to service them use the portable TRS-80's to grab the data and take it back to their offices where they upload it to their PC's. More modern equipment apparently chokes after constant exposure to salt air, constant shock, and, well, oil workers. They're tough guys, you know.
And anyone with the common sense to wash their hands after eating Cheetos never had this issue...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
The original Blackberries, the Mobitex 850s, were bricks. Back at RIM we used to drop-kick them across the office for testing.
It's not a real keyboard if you can't beat a man to death with it.
Um, hypothetically, I mean.
I'd vote for this as one of the toughest ever made. One time I got home late at night and somehow left the phone on the roof of the car. Overnight, it snowed about five inches. I didn't feel like shoveling the driveway, so I just got in, gunned the engine and after a few back-and-forth runs, made it out onto the road. Got to work, couldn't find the phone. Finally, after I got home again, I took my cordless house phone outside and dialed the Nokia. Underneath the packed snow, under the car, there was a green glow and a faint ring. I dug the Nokia out, wiped it off, and it still worked. Sure, the stubby antenna had broken (easily replaced) but the screen wasn't cracked and it could still make calls. I still have that phone in a drawer somewhere and in the battery on the back there are still deep grooves from the grit on the tires rubbing through the plastic.
What really got me was that I figured I had driven over the thing about eight times.
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
The original Game Boy has problems with the battery compartment. The battery connectors (springs) wear and it doesn't hold the batteries in securely to the point where you have to be careful you don't move it while playing and even more careful when you put it down that it does not loose power. I had my first Game Boy replaced under warranty because of this. The same problem happened to the replacement after the warranty expired. Nintendo have since addressed this and have been using better battery connectors in their more recent products (GBA, Wii remote).
I had another problem my second GB. I'm not sure how common this is but after many years of use, on the left-hand side of the screen a whole vertical bar of pixels disappeared. This later increased to a bar three pixels wide.
From my experience, every Nintendo product made after the GB has been far more reliable.