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Ask Slashdot: Old Technology Coexisting With New?
New submitter thereitis writes "Looking over my home computing setup, I see equipment ranging from 20 years old to several months old. What sorts of old and new equipment have you seen coexisting, and in what type of environment?" I regularly use keyboards from the mid 1980s, sometimes with stacked adapters to go from ATX to PS/2, and PS/2 to USB, and I'm sure that's not too unusual.
but college girls' equipment stays the same age.
I have a few old devices I keep by my modern equipment for perspective. You know, a sundial, a vcr, and an iphone 4.
Today's telephone networks are a random mix of old and new technology. The modern phone backbone is fiberoptic digital, but when wired to your house, it's made to emulate good old Bell. You can plug in an 80 year old phone rotary phone, and when someone calls you, it'll ring, and you can answer it! You can have one of these ancient devices right next to your DSL modem on opposite ends of that filter the phone/internet company gives you. In some area, pulse dialing will still work! And touch-tone phones is also an old technology. When you call on your cellphone, the numbers you dial don't get sent as tones. But in a call, when you call up one of those annoying phone robots, your cell phone will send tones, emulating the old signaling technology of the 70's or 80's or whenever the tones were invented. Plus, add in VOIP and the IP phones I use at work, and it becomes apparent that the modern telephone network is a continuum of technological anachronisms.
Well my 26 year old IBM Model M keyboards I use everyday beg to differ.
Plus it can quickly be converted into a rather effective cudgel, all the better for bludgeoning AC's with no appreciation of history.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I have an Apple II+ that I program on at least once a week. It's a fun exercise to see what I can get the old machine to do. I don't have any disk drives, so I use the cassette interface. But I don't have a cassette deck either, so I use my brand new laptop as the storage by plugging the Apple into its audio ports. So I have 33 year old tech not just co-existing, but working in tandem with, brand new equipment.
Why is Slashdot showing this as an archived discussion already?
Because you are replying to a post about ancient hardware.
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