an ode to deprecated technology

[Kim]

After carting it all to California and back, I'm having a cable purge.

We had one of those last year...

I've decided anything with scart connectors can go out no questions asked.

This was by far the most satisfying bit.  Chucked nearly all the RS232^[1] stuff and any parallel printer cables that had spawned since the last cull, too.

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.

We ditched all the analogue telephony kit apart from  a) a basic wired phone for line-test purposes  b) barakta's Screenphone  c) a several of Minicoms, which barakta has slowly been distributing to deafies of a luddite (or having to receive incoming calls) persuasion

In a stroke of genius, barakta disposed of the collection of thermal fax paper by sneaking it into her work stationery cupboard.

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.

They breed.  I've chucked the lot.  I still have most-of-a-reel of PF100 and an assortment of unused Belling-Lee and F-connectors, which I expect will hang around until 5 minutes before I actually need them for something.

This has left us in the occasionally awkward position of not having anything that'll display a PAL video signal.

 

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.

I passed on my Amiga stuff to a more committed Amiga enthusiast when we moved to That London in 2007.  Barakta's CDTV (which had a PSU fault I never got round to fixing) hung around for ages - we had vague plans to build a media PC into the case - but we accepted defeat when media PCs started to seem a bit old-fashioned.


^{[1] The problem with RS232 is that it never quite dies out.  But also that every task needs a different cable.  I've kept some TTL level USB stuff for microcontroller jibble, and if necessary can molish cables with the lifetime's supply of NOS D connectors liberated by barakta's dad.  There's no point in keeping a collection of wrong cables, though.}

[pcolbeck]

^{[1] The problem with RS232 is that it never quite dies out.  But also that every task needs a different cable.  I've kept some TTL level USB stuff for microcontroller jibble, and if necessary can molish cables with the lifetime's supply of NOS D connectors liberated by barakta's dad.  There's no point in keeping a collection of wrong cables, though.}

That is why I still have me RS232 break out box in the attic - just in case.

[Kim]

^{[1] The problem with RS232 is that it never quite dies out.  But also that every task needs a different cable.  I've kept some TTL level USB stuff for microcontroller jibble, and if necessary can molish cables with the lifetime's supply of NOS D connectors liberated by barakta's dad.  There's no point in keeping a collection of wrong cables, though.}

That is why I still have me RS232 break out box in the attic - just in case.

I had one of those, but it broke.  Suspect too much tqt got piled on top of it.

[Beardy]

I had one of those, but it broke.  Suspect too much tqt got piled on top of it.

tqt? Are you allowed to mention tqt without an associated mention of pork pies and brown ale? Oh, and cheese (or is that a work think, I forget?)

[thing1]

Choosing cable obsolescence by connector makes it much easier. My parallel and SCSI went years ago.
SCART was truly cathartic to cart off.
I keep thinking I see some S-video lurking in the dark corners but they scurry away before I can nab em.
Yesterday I found an entire family of nesting MIDI cables in the attic. 5pin DINs that deceive with only 3 pins connected. What sort of sick and twisted mind would come up with that as a standard? And bizarre voltages and baud rates to boot iirc. I should have excommunicated them on sight.

RS 232 (or various TTL UART variations there of) has been with me all my career. Every time I try and eradicate them a new crop grows in its place like the worst kind of bramble weed. I've resigned myself to the fact they'll out live me.

[ian]

Cables. Malign spaghetti and diabolical intestines. After The Great Simplification* a year or so back, I'm glad everything I need has condensed down to lightning and USB. I hate USB though, owing to the plethora of end connectors (attempting a nostalgic charge of a Palm Tungsten E required the USB end that wasn't micro but wasn't large but was very hard to find) and the statistical infeasibility of attempting to insert them the correct way around. So, so many monitor cables, of course, but I use the screens god gave me, and piled the rest in the corner. I have cables for devices that I'm not sure ever existed.

When I moved back from the US, I left everything behind other than my laptop and clothes. Too much hassle, I had a yard sale and what I could sell I gave away. It was quite liberating. Of course, a couple decades and houses later...

*bought an iMac, piled everything else in the corner or stuffed in the cupboard.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I've always half regretted binning my pre-windows laptop.

One day people won't believe you could do stuff on such machines with 360KB floppies and that I upgraded it by adding a hard drive. 20MB IIRC.

The first computer I met was called SUSAN.  I can't remember exactly what SUSAN stood for except she was remarkably good at arithmetic and about the size of a fridge freezer.  Professor Peacocke was her dad.  Both long gone now.

[Beardy]

My first computer interaction was via a teletype terminal, with a punch tape machine for saving your work. For the adventurous programming there was a machine for punching cards which you then put in a box which you than gave to a man over a stable door who’d then put it on the list to be run by a sys op during a night shift.

[Beardy]

someone has thrown a load of scsi cards into the IT rubbish bin in the 'tea point'. It's so annoying to see all this tech just piled high and knowing that I've no use for any of it at all. (the bin currently contains various keyboards and a very large nest of mostly Tbase10 cables)

[ian]

When they closed my office back in the early 2000s and I started hardly working at home I really wanted to take the skip of technological crap home. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for my wife I couldn't fit it in a taxi (I did lug the G4, a PC, and couple of giant monitors home though). A couple of weeks later I got an email about the G4 as it was still vaguely current tech. I think it went in the skip, replied I with a smile that would have shamed an angel.

[Beardy]

That reminds me of when they closed the old telephone exchange I'd worked in. The tech in there dated back to the 1930, though it had been added to and extended over the years. the thing is that this old tech had been very manually intensive to keep going and as a 'youth in training' I'd spent many an hour cleaning and adjusting bits of it.

Once turned off though, it was worthless except for the scrap value. this didn't make it any less heart breaking to watch the recover teams throw the 'switches' out of a first floor window into skips below nor watch them delicately dismantling the shelves with sledgehammers and crowbars   

[pcolbeck]

When they closed my office back in the early 2000s and I started hardly working at home I really wanted to take the skip of technological crap home. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for my wife I couldn't fit it in a taxi (I did lug the G4, a PC, and couple of giant monitors home though). A couple of weeks later I got an email about the G4 as it was still vaguely current tech. I think it went in the skip, replied I with a smile that would have shamed an angel.

I did manage to rescue a DEC VT320 terminal and monitor in lovely condition from one place of work when they closed the department and were junking stuff. It lived in the loft gathering dust for about ten years before Mrs Pcolbeck gently persuaded me that I would never need it and I took it the dump.

[Greenbank]

SCART was truly cathartic to cart off.

Sadly/scarily SCART is still in use in our house.

(Once I get the TV aerial(s) on the roof sorted out I can get rid of the ancient Sky [no subscription] box that allows us to watch the freeview channels that the BT TV box can't get because of insufficient aerial. Then I can be rid of SCART.)

Oh to just have to worry about HDMI (and TV aerials).

...statistical infeasibility of attempting to insert them the correct way around....

The other day I watched my daughter take the requisite 3 attempts at plugging in the micro-USB cable to power her RaspberryPi, catching a glimpse of the frown that developed after the second attempt was the highlight of my day.

[pcolbeck]

USB C finally brings sanity to USB connectors in that its symmetrical and works either way around.

[Jaded]

My first CD burner was SCSI.

Crikey that was expensive.
And slow.
And big.

[Kim]

I did manage to rescue a DEC VT320 terminal and monitor in lovely condition from one place of work when they closed the department and were junking stuff. It lived in the loft gathering dust for about ten years before Mrs Pcolbeck gently persuaded me that I would never need it and I took it the dump.

We kept a Wyse serial terminal alive for about a decade, for IRC on top of the fridge (for the sort of conversations hearing people shout at each other from different rooms).  It was ideal for the purpose: switch it on, press <Ctrl><L> and it's ready for action.  When you've finished, just switch it off, power consumption zero.

(Retired two years ago in favour of a Raspberry Pi with a motion sensor to bring the display out of power-saving.)

[tonycollinet]

............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.

You are me and ICMFP

[Gattopardo]

Have had the odd clear out.  I Seem to grow old kit  as I either collect broken stuff or older stuff that is fine for internetting.

Need to have a clear out, or at least a swapping/selling as I would like a couple of laptop screens, vain attempt to sell the older stuff so I can fund the the lcds.  Wonder what I should do.

[Morat]

USB C finally brings sanity to USB connectors in that its symmetrical and works either way around.

Yes, and hurrah for that!
Although my Samsung S7 came with a micro USB with three distinct ridges on the side of the plug you need to be on the same side as the screen when you plug it in. So simple, even in the dark.