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Ask Slashdot: What Old Technology Can't You Give Up?
An anonymous reader writes: It's the year 2014, and I still have a floppy drive installed on my computer. I don't know why; I don't own any floppy disks, and I haven't used one in probably a decade. But every time I put together a PC, it feels incomplete if I don't have one. I also have a Laserdisc player collecting dust at the bottom of my entertainment center, and I still use IRC to talk to a few friends. Software, hardware, or otherwise, what technology have you had a hard time letting go? (I don't want to put a hard limit on age, so you folks using flip-phones or playing on Dreamcasts or still inexplicably coding in Perl 4, feel free to contribute.)
I'm still using pens and Post-It to take notes, not my phone.
(Well... alpine.)
- Model M keyboard (I bought several when they were $5 at the Goodwill, including some with US Government stickers or NASA badges; if I knew then what I know now, I'd have loaded up a storage unit with them ...)
- Nano (sure, it's not as old or as rabidly backed as Certain Other Text Editors, but it's so very nice to use ...)
- Logitech Trackball. Unfortunately, the new ones are junk -- they seem to die in a few months. The old ones lasted me several years apiece.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
here goes:
My good old trusty Data I/O 29A with UniPak (it's an Eprom programming station from the 80's) that I just love too much as I can edit Eproms-on-the-fly and enter manual data on it, copy eproms, and it's compatible with the weirdest stuff on the planet.
Commodore SX-64, it's sort of a portable commodore 64 with built in 5.5 inch color screen & floppy disk...all in one practical unit, I have an assembler cartridge for it, and it's actually quite practical for coding 65xx series code on, and quick & dirty electronics projects I just connect to the I/O port (User Port), even in Basic.
My extreme stash of millions and millions of NOS Discrete components from the 50s to the 90s, I can literally built a spaceship with those things, doc Emmet Browns time machine is next. Transistors, Linear Circuits, Cmos, Timers, PCBs, MCUs, Static ram, roms, pal & gals (pain in the *** to program), resistors, solar panels, mics, crystals, coil formers, oscillators, capacitors, reed relays, diode galore, tubes tubes and even more tubes.
All my PCs I've built over some time, gets hard to part with them because 1) I can't get any money form them. 2) I always bought the best stuff. 3) It's not worth the agony of erasing all the pr0n...err...strike that last thing. And they're terribly practical for running old test gear, burners, peripherals etc. that doesn't work with todays computers.
My lovely old test instrument park, oscilloscopes (got at least 5 of them), spectrum analyzer, multimeters galore, function generators, frequency counters, PSUs and whatnots.
I don't even do this stuff enough justice, but you know what a MAN CAVE is? I just love to go into my MAN CAVE and sit there for serenity for hours and hours, even if it's just to write some pointless post here on Slashdot, and surrounded by all this cool stuff make me feel so 1337 H4xx0r and all that (no seriously...) it's like I'm a prop taken out of the old wargames movie (acoustic modems anyone?)
It feels so lovely sitting there with those things, knowing that any second I could build any project I'd ever want. (And I do from time to time), but just because they're THERE...I don't know if anyone of you know this feeling, but it's very energizing. Whenever I feel completely depleted (either me or my batteries) I go there and start at endless wastelands of components. Luuuuuv it!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
vi. Because emacs is for the devil.
This year I delved into a Debian system, the first time I had really used a linux system in decades. What scared me was that when I needed to edit something my muscle memory took over and before I knew it I was happily editing away in vi.
I haven't used vi since well before the turn of the century.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Emacs user here. The only one in an office full of vi users. They and I have our config files set up so that indentation, etc all match, so when we open each other's code it's not all goofy looking.
I *can* use vi, I just prefer emacs, and I always have.
I love cable lacing with waxed linen string. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... I've never seen a more elegant way to bundle cables. Velcro is close, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
All I ever catch on my LW radio is power grid hum, no stations. Shortwave does pick up some Jesus freaks though that are nice to listen to, or some Hispanic stations like Florida or Cuba halfway across the continent, which of course I don't understand, but I catch the gist of it, when they talk about Putin or Syria or Gaza, I know what they talk about, just don't know what exactly they are saying about it.
I do miss the days of BBC world news. They stopped service to the Americas on SW.
SW and BBC used to be synonyms even 10 years ago.
Also my SW radio is an LCD digital one, and sometimes I wonder if it's not hacked and it's really some bogus transmission getting fed through it, pretending to be shortwave. You cannot trust chips. A SW radio based on vacuum tubes is a lot more trustable that it's actually picking up the airwaves as directed, and then the issue comes down to actual bogus programming on those frequencies by nearby stations - they can even fake ionosphere reflection noises and fading, broadcast from nextdoor to you.
As Rene Descartes said, I think there I am, but beyond that, every fact in my mind is on shaky ground, and it takes the power of faith to believe a scientific experimental measurement as true, but I believe those a lot more than what someone picks out of thin air, without scientifically possible repetition and verification of measurements