Author Topic: an ode to deprecated technology  (Read 4748 times)

ian

an ode to deprecated technology
« on: 31 January, 2018, 06:46:49 pm »
I just cleared out my office/man cave and O the ancient technology. I never throw any of this shit away. The exciting things I found:

2011 Mac Mini (you know I tried to sell this and forgot, sorry interested person, remind me and it's yours)

2008 Mac Mini (maybe 2007) - once upon a time a media server, wo uld a l mo s t  str ea m HD. I think I have myself a new fancy 'design icon' paperweight/house plant stand.

A random hard disk. Probably ASCII smut judging by the IDE interface.

Two Blackberry Curves from the mothership in the age before mobile policy enlightenment. I 'lost' one in the hope they'd give me something better as a replacement. They didn't.

One ancient Siemens A55 mobile phone. Orange Wednesdays at Valley Centertainment ftw.

A Motorola house brick phone (my first mobile!) with aerial that's probably big enough to qualify as a dildo (don't put that in your back pocket, not least because it wouldn't fit).

One Asus mini laptop thing. It was slow when it was new. Factory refurb, arrived smelling like a 50 year old Chinese chain smoker (I checked the box, he wasn't included). Possibly it used cigarette tar as storage medium. Used some weird Asus distro of Linux that they promptly disowned. I put some variant of Ubuntu on it and it didn't so much as slow down further as stop. It's probably still installing an update from 2012.

Ancient in-car sat-nav. About the size of a GPS satellite. Honestly, I've no idea how we saw out the windscreeen. I don't think we ever used it, it's not like we drive any further than the supermarket or the Crystal Palace pool and at this point the car probably knows its own way.

Three (!) Palm Pilots (sounds so wrong) - an m100, a Tungsten E2, and a T|X. O glory days before smartphones. Children, ask your parents.

Lots of cables. An entire straining carrier bag of electrical intestines. I don't think I ever had a SCSI device but it seems I was prepared for the eventuality.

European kettle plug adaptors. Why do I keep them? Fear of some EU masterplan to remove our big prongs? How would we hurt our feet stumbling to the bathroom in the dark?

One thousand (ish) USB sticks. I suffer from a compulsion and grab handfuls of them at every conference from our marketing grab bag. You can't have too many of them, eh? OK evidently you can and I'm proof.

A picture of a very young me with long curly hair and a jacket that looks like it was stolen from the set of Miami Vice. I laughed for seventeen minutes and thirty seven seconds. I'm going to show it my wife later, I reckon she'll burst something important. Then we'll burn it.

There's a PowerMac G4 but that's in the summer house at the top of the garden. I'd use this as a paperweight, but you try lifting one, it has a heatsink the size of a engine block.

Power adaptors that are either non-functional or for devices of which I know not.

A smashed Apple Mighty Mouse (dropped it and it bounced down the glass stairs of the mothership) – for some reason, unexplained as I had a replacement, I was going to fix it. I have never fixed anything ever and I'm not sure why I ever thought it would be a good idea that I start.

Headphones, so many headphones.

A BT router.

A TallkTalk router.

Some Philips portable speakers, evidently pre-dating Bluetooth judging by the wire spaghetti.

Authentic Windows 95/98/XP disks. Office 95. Photoshop 6, PageMaker 6.5, and Quark 4 (sans dongle). A whole pile of geriatric software.

Floppy disks (children, ask your grandparents). I have no idea why I'd want my email from 1995, but I have it.

It's like a really sad version of the Generation Game where the cuddly toy has run off. Why do I keep this stuff, why have I not thrown it away? Anyway, I put it all in the box, you know, just in case.

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #1 on: 31 January, 2018, 06:56:46 pm »
Errr, I think I was after the 2011 Mac Mini!

Ben T

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #2 on: 31 January, 2018, 07:09:58 pm »
I would pay good money for a working Sony CMD-Z10. Had one circa 2002, loved it.

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #3 on: 31 January, 2018, 07:33:33 pm »
You should never throw this stuff away.  It really might come in useful, no really, it might.

We had a clear out a few months back. Amongst stuff that went in bin was a number of cheap old Binatone corded phones. I mean, what possible use could they be?

Then we decided to change broadband from copper to beardy's optical fibre as it's already down our street, and it made sense to get the phone bundle with new provider.
All went swimmingly except for moving the phone number over so it was left with the old socket still working, and the promise it would switch over 'sometime in the next 7-10 days' 
But how would we know when?   We'd risk missing calls wouldn't we?
Nice Virgin engineeer chappie had a solution......."Have you got an old phone that you can plug in to the Virgin box?"

 :facepalm:

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #4 on: 31 January, 2018, 07:34:42 pm »
You should always keep a basic wired phone as a diagnostic tool anyway.

TheLurker

  • Goes well with magnolia.
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #5 on: 31 January, 2018, 07:42:49 pm »
You should always keep a basic wired phone as a diagnostic tool anyway.
And they can't track you like they can with these GPS location monitors that they've cunningly diguised as portable telephones.... ummm hang on errrmmm..... ummm.  I need to think about this for a mo.   I've got this nagging doubt that I may have overlooked summat important. :)
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

ian

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #6 on: 31 January, 2018, 07:44:15 pm »
My technological journey on unappreciation and depreciation starts in my office and works its way to the attic, summer house, or garage.

I think I've mentioned that I have entire boxes of Walkmen (good god, the sexism) – cassette and CD, old phones, enough extension cable to put a phone on the moon, a Canon P133 laptop (28.8k PCMCIA modem). Today's missive was just my office and remote mothership command centre. I can't tell my wife about this stuff, she just shakes her head and does the bored face. In fact, you people are probably doing just that, but ha, if you've put sticky tape over your webcams, I can't see you.

(Rusky, I'll drop you a line if you're still interested.)

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #7 on: 31 January, 2018, 08:20:01 pm »
2007 Mac Mini G4, 2009 PowerMac Quad G5, random old PCs (mostly Athlon 1.7GHz processors and 1-4GB of memory).

About 9 HDDs either with possibly useful data on or broken, the ones that contain data probably contain one or more images of broken HDDs. (It all gets a bit self referential.)

A Palm Pilot Vx, cradle and book about programming it.

Equivalent bag of snakes cables.

4 or 5 old Nokia mobiles (I only recently retired my 6230i which was my work mobile).

A Canon BJ10ex inkjet printer (1995 I had this!)

Diamond Rio PMP300 mp3 player bought in 1998 when I lived in San Francisco. A whopping 16MB of internal storage with a separate 16MB SD card. For ages I transcoded everything down to 64kbps mono so I could fit an entire album or two onto it for a 2 hour cycle ride. Still have the parallel port interface for it.

Speaking of parallel port interfaces, still have my Zip drive (I avoided the 'Click of Death').

A 3" disk from an Amstrad CPC8256 containing a choose your own adventure book I wrote with a friend.

A big TODO list to sort all of this stuff out. Haven't ticked anything off yet.

Raspberry Pi's are the new kettle leads though. I keep finding them everywhere. (Luckily not deprecated yet...)
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #8 on: 31 January, 2018, 08:31:18 pm »
Still interested. PM me :)

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #9 on: 31 January, 2018, 09:41:49 pm »
I've still got my Psions. I loved them too much to throw them away.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #10 on: 31 January, 2018, 11:56:35 pm »
A Z88 and lots of accessories.
A Sunkclair Spectrum
An Patterson enlarger and dishes and stuf.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #11 on: 01 February, 2018, 01:09:51 am »
At least one external Zip drive, and possibly an internal one.
At least one Iomega Jaz drive, and a couple of 2Gb disks.
An Iomega Clik! drive (PC Card format), and a couple of disks. (I might even have an MP3 player that uses them too.)
An internal SCSI CD-R drive.
A Psion 5.
Some - I think 3 - Handspring PalmOS handhelds, but no actual Palms.
A Nokia Communicator.
A several of old phones.
A Canon portable inkjet (BJC-80?)
A Canon very non-portable inkjet, together with some unopened cartridges.
A tower PC that I started building in 2001 and never finished.

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #12 on: 01 February, 2018, 08:39:19 am »
I've two (two) 'mini tower' PCs under the desk in the bedroom,
a several of laptops,
two psions somewhere,
two or else three Palm V ( think on is Vx)
A couple of Compaq iPaqs,
cables to connect the above to a Nokia phone.
A 3330, and 5110 and I think a 5310 (though the latter was passed down to the boy so is in a sorry state)
various other mobile phones including more nokias,
two blackberries
a box of disk drive magnets and an other of disk drive motors (I had to dissemble them to destroy the platters)
a finger bowl of screws and risers from the disassembly of the above with a few PC case and others assorted screws mixed in for good measure
a few 3 anabit floppies (I there hundreds out in a previous bout of decluttering) and a less of 5 anabit floppies (no, I don't know how I'm going to read them either)
the usual collection of USB memory sticks
2001 km of cables festooniong about the garage in a recent bout of 'sorting them out' when I wanted the two headed kettle lead I knew I had 'somewhere'
One of each iteration of Game Boys from the original through to a DS and a Sony playstation
Two dead X boxes
Three or else four LCD monitors (I actually managed to take the CRT monitors to the tip, they were just taking up too much room)
various cycle computers and GPSs
An assortment of other tech that I've forgotten about either though blak majic memory purging rituals, or just plain advancing years
   
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

ian

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #13 on: 01 February, 2018, 08:49:22 am »
Heaven's to Betsy, there's more. I thought I'd clear a couple of desk drawers as I woke up early.

More Palm stuff. I must have loved my Palms. An IR keyboard. It's pretty cool origami-wise though if I recall you'd sometimes be typing in the future and the letters would then travel back in time to appear on your screen. I'm charging them up for laughs. The T|X isn't that old, I have a distinct memory of battling the hotel wifi in Florida, mid-2000s (default date seems to be 2005). I think they were moving into phones by then with the Treos. First iPhone debuted in 2007. It was a pretty good device – email, browser, mp3, documents. To be honest, everything a smartphone does without the mobile bit (oh and a camera), it's the ubiquity of mobile data that was the game changer.

I have Zip disks somewhere, discovered I think in a previous trawl that I am sure I have documented. I suspect they contain stuff from my PhD. A tale of one enzyme's quest to be isolated and characterised. I did move along the ancient Seagate magneto-optical drive (connected by RS232, you'd tell the drive you wanted some data and come back a week later to collect it) some time back.

Packs of old photo printing paper (various sizes). I think I had a Canon BJ10 once. My first printer. No idea what happened to that, it might be a rare case of me getting rid of something. I have an Epson photo printer in the loft (hence the paper) from that brief period that most of us went through when we thought printing our own photos was a good idea. It wasn't.

A USB floppy disk drive (yes, yes, finally I can read my 90s-era email, that's my afternoon sorted).

A laptop that I'd forgotten about. A late 90s Higrade 'ultra' book, given its low profile it probably cost a bomb back then. My secondest ever computer.

I have umpteen LCD monitors lying around with no particular purpose, keep meaning to palm them off on my FiL or move them to the loft.

More and more old software disks.

I have a big office, this could take some time.

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #14 on: 01 February, 2018, 09:09:12 am »
I kept an old Handspring Visor (Palmpilot clone) around until about three years ago. Powered it up once a year as it had all my addresses on it for Christmas cards.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #15 on: 01 February, 2018, 09:09:55 am »
Ah, cables. I’m sorry that someone mentioned cables  >:( >:(
It is simpler than it looks.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #16 on: 01 February, 2018, 09:12:47 am »
Most of my obsolescent stuff gets passed to Lt. Xol. Larrington (retd.) until it breaks.  Then it sits in his garage for a year or two before we get our act together enough to do a trip to the tip.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

thing1

  • aka Joth
    • TandemThings
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #17 on: 01 February, 2018, 09:19:52 am »
After carting it all to California and back, I'm having a cable purge.
I've decided anything with scart connectors can go out no questions asked.
We've not had a landline for 6 years so the plethora of phone extensions can go. I'm slowly ripping out the badly installed extensions in every room too. Still not sure what to do with the OpenReach master socket: the main cable goes right through a window frame we're about to replace.

Antenna leads would be next - I seem to have enough to wrap around the outside of the house 3 times. But alas they've multiplied in the last year and I now have every possible length a second time now with F style satellite/cable connector. Amazing since I've never bought a single one: gifts from our tenants and our cable provider in USA. 

I still have my Amiga in the loft. It had a hard drive that coughed like a 20 a day smoker when it was new. Doubt it even spin up now.

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #18 on: 01 February, 2018, 10:25:10 am »
I can't bring myself to dispose of my palm pilot (IIIxc I think). Or the belkin keyboard. Ah, happy days. I used that combination when contracting with some funky software to write manuals with markup - made thousands, typing away on the train.

<i>Marmite slave</i>

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #19 on: 01 February, 2018, 10:47:55 am »
When I worked for HMCE in the 1990s we used to fly to Scotland occasionally, Scots enforcement law being different and all that. This clearly required us to spend lovely summer days driving round the Cairngorms.

There was a niche company called AirUK that was eventually subsumed by KLM. The fare to Aberdeen was something like £160 each (took about an hour from Stansted) but they gave away pressies. All of us on our team had some sort of electronic diary which was OK within itself but totally incompatible with any other computer hardware. May have been manufactured bu Casio, but I can't really remember...



Could have been one of those. Wikipedia reckons that's from about 1993 but I thought it was a bit earlier than that.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

ian

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #20 on: 01 February, 2018, 10:56:31 am »
Hmm, I'm pretty sure I had one of those Casio diary things, so it can't have been before the 1990s. No idea what happened to that. I used to own a Olympia digital typewriter what was awesome. You got one line of LCD text to play with and when you got to the end, it typed the line in a splendidly nostalgic hail of rat-a-tat-tats that ensure none of my flatmates got a wink of sleep. It wrote .txt files to a 3.5 disk too. It's different style of writing when you know that making a change will involve prodigious quantities of Typex. With computers we can dither forever and it seems that many of us have made a career out it.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #21 on: 01 February, 2018, 11:21:23 am »
Occasionally used a Palm Pilot to access the online MUG Shades  ;D
It is simpler than it looks.

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #22 on: 01 February, 2018, 11:49:04 am »
Hmm, I'm pretty sure I had one of those Casio diary things, so it can't have been before the 1990s. No idea what happened to that. I used to own a Olympia digital typewriter what was awesome. You got one line of LCD text to play with and when you got to the end, it typed the line in a splendidly nostalgic hail of rat-a-tat-tats that ensure none of my flatmates got a wink of sleep. It wrote .txt files to a 3.5 disk too. It's different style of writing when you know that making a change will involve prodigious quantities of Typex. With computers we can dither forever and it seems that many of us have made a career out it.

I'm not sure of the date. Those flights predated "cheap flights". Definitely not before 1990. I left in late June 1995.

I have a recollection on one of those trips (but not the first) of my boss's boss (they had both come for a "management check"...) opening his paper one morning whilst staying in Dufftown and being bowled over (ha!) by Brian Lara's 501 not out. I checked that and it was June 1994. I am pretty sure that our first trip was in winter. We left Stansted when the temperature was -3°C and got to Aberdeen where it was +8°C.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

ian

Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #23 on: 01 February, 2018, 12:05:28 pm »
Disappointingly my T|X won't connect to modern wifi (not sure why, I though N was back compatible). I was briefly amused to see someone nearby has 'Pretty Fly for a WiFi' as their SSID. Anyway, the last email on it was Dec 2008, so only a decade ago (that was probably when I moved to sales and got the dubious benefit of an actual mothership mobile device). It feels like it should be older.

I remember the sync process with a PC was even more painful than iTunes. By an order of magnitude.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: an ode to deprecated technology
« Reply #24 on: 01 February, 2018, 12:50:38 pm »
Meanwhile, my sock drawer has yielded this modern marvel:


Garmin GPS III, 1997.

It drank 4 AA batteries at a time, and failed under light foliage.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight