I love old tech! I find it fascinating and it's also great for nostalgia. I've still got some of it. I still have my old Windows XP desktop from 2003 (if that counts as retro) and even an old DOS laptop from 1987! The DOS laptop doesn't work any more but I can't bear to get rid of it My first Windows was 98 and I've always got fond memories of it even though I'm nearly all Mac (with a hint of Windows 7 for games ).
I've also got an old VCR, my old Game Boy Color (which I still play sometimes) and an old Walkman lying around. I have a 14" portable CRT TV with built in video in a box somewhere. It was only used a couple of times when our main TV set had to go in for repairs. I just can't bear to get rid of old technology! It's amazing how times have changed though. I remember the hype surrounding Windows XP when it first came out.
My parent still have my Amiga stuff up in the loft, i've told them they aren't allowed to bin it .
Luckily i've got all data backed up from it and readable still, on my modern day NAS accessible anywhere in the world! When i finished uni i went through all floppies and got a reader for PC to read all my amiga media, along with all my Uni stuff which was on ZipDisc at the time Now that obviously takes up a tiny portion of my backup compared to photos and videos!.
Sorry to dig this up but I thought it was kind of interesting....
I got my HP TC1100 a while back, from a seller in the USA.
Been sniffing around eBay, looking for a cheap memory upgrade for it and, having finally found one, I had to pull the TC1100 to bits to fit it.
While doing so, I found that there's one of those square, plastic, anti-theft tags stuck to the inside of the case and there's a little glass capsule (like the trackers that you can inject into a dog's neck) epoxied in there as well.
It's also got a bunch of "Department of Defense (with an "s") Certified" stickers on various components inside it too.
There's also DoD and USAF stickers on the HDD saying that it's been certified that all sensitive data has been wiped from the HDD so I'm guessing it was sold-off at some point rather than being nicked.
Seems like, at some point, my cutesy little toy was used for something quite important though.
It has a low-res display connected to what seemed like minus 3G and was overtaken by advances in technology almost as soon as it came out. the thing is it was beautifully made, nice to hold and I wish I could find a practical use for it.
Sorry to dig this up but I thought it was kind of interesting....
I got my HP TC1100 a while back, from a seller in the USA.
Been sniffing around eBay, looking for a cheap memory upgrade for it and, having finally found one, I had to pull the TC1100 to bits to fit it.
While doing so, I found that there's one of those square, plastic, anti-theft tags stuck to the inside of the case andthere's a little glass capsule (like the trackers that you can inject into a dog's neck) epoxied in there as well.
It's also got a bunch of "Department of Defense (with an "s") Certified" stickers on various components inside it too.
There's also DoD and USAF stickers on the HDD saying that it's been certified that all sensitive data has been wiped from the HDD so I'm guessing it was sold-off at some point rather than being nicked.
Seems like, at some point, my cutesy little toy was used for something quite important though.
Sounds like a shockwatch indicator, it turns red if the unit is subjected to shock above a certain level of G. We used to put them on repaired HDDs before dispatch back in the 80's.
Sounds like a shockwatch indicator, it turns red if the unit is subjected to shock above a certain level of G. We used to put them on repaired HDDs before dispatch back in the 80's.
Nah, it's one of those electromagnetic transducer doodads, as I said.
Seems like it'd be pretty daft to glue a shockwatch inside a laptop, where it'd be difficult to check it or replace it.
An ancient Kenwood auto reverse cassette recorder. Used with a timer I use it for radio programmes. Just eject the tape and its ready to play on an old cassette player. Quality is good enough for that purpose.
I have an ancient Dell Latitude C610 laptop that's nearly 13 years old, and it still works. It currently dual boots
with Windows XP Professional and Linux Mint 17. Despite XP no longer being supported, it's still quite snappy
on that old lappy! The OS that gets the most use on there is Linux, even though it's slower than XP.
The laptop's battery is totally depleted, so it has to be plugged in to the mains to get any use, and there's no
wireless network card, so it has to be wired up to my network to get on the internet. The installation of XP
is kept offline for obvious reasons! At least Linux Mint 17 has long term support until April 2019, so I can
still get a few more years of use out of it with a comparatively modern OS installed.
I still have a British Thornton slide rule. Only use it as a teaching aid now to show maths principles e.g adding logarithmic numbers to do multiplication.
Because they only had limited accuracy, we never quoted something e.g weight to 6 decimal places.g 1.999 or 2.001 counted as 2.00
Nothing to do with computers but I would love to see the old reel to reel tape recorders back and the ability to plug it in to a radiogram and record uninterrupted music from radio two family favourites no longer available either. Now that's showing my age..Dr who I think is a little older then me.:D
Something almost romantic about open reel tape rolling away merrily. But terribly space-intensuve as a medium especially for those of us who record a lot of opera. I have a Sony open reel machine in the loft in case I should acquire tapes which merit transcription, which happens occasionally. Ditto minidisc DAT and laserdisc machines. No 8 track though - there are limits!
Still a big following for open reel amongst enthusiasts. Availability of tape was a problem for awhile, its not a cheap media these days.The cost of 0.25" 2500' RMG SM900 on a metal NAB reel is around £41 inc VAT
Finally got the new memory installed and, I gotta say, what on Earth were HP thinking?!
It's got 2 memory slots. One of them is accessible via a panel on the back and the other is internal.
Trouble is, the "accessible" one is positioned right next to the connector for the wifi card and next to part of the chassis and, as a result, you can't actually get the DIMM seated until you take the whole damned thing to bits and loosen all the screws for the motherboard so you can ease the connector away from the chassis.
Anyway, having got 2gb of RAM into it, I'm quite impressed with how it's running under W7.
People often seem shocked that I can run what is, basically, a P3 laptop with W7 and if you're using it with, say, 512mb of RAM it will be unusable but if you bung in a decent amount of RAM it'll work fine.
As it is now, it'll make for a decent little machine for using to do diagnostics, check whether wifi and network connections are working properly and downloading drivers etc.
Machine cost £28, PSU cost £7 and the memory DIMMs cost £22 so £57 altogether for a useful little tool.
Comments
My parent still have my Amiga stuff up in the loft, i've told them they aren't allowed to bin it
Luckily i've got all data backed up from it and readable still, on my modern day NAS accessible anywhere in the world! When i finished uni i went through all floppies and got a reader for PC to read all my amiga media, along with all my Uni stuff which was on ZipDisc at the time Now that obviously takes up a tiny portion of my backup compared to photos and videos!.
I got my HP TC1100 a while back, from a seller in the USA.
Been sniffing around eBay, looking for a cheap memory upgrade for it and, having finally found one, I had to pull the TC1100 to bits to fit it.
While doing so, I found that there's one of those square, plastic, anti-theft tags stuck to the inside of the case and there's a little glass capsule (like the trackers that you can inject into a dog's neck) epoxied in there as well.
It's also got a bunch of "Department of Defense (with an "s") Certified" stickers on various components inside it too.
There's also DoD and USAF stickers on the HDD saying that it's been certified that all sensitive data has been wiped from the HDD so I'm guessing it was sold-off at some point rather than being nicked.
Seems like, at some point, my cutesy little toy was used for something quite important though.
It has a low-res display connected to what seemed like minus 3G and was overtaken by advances in technology almost as soon as it came out. the thing is it was beautifully made, nice to hold and I wish I could find a practical use for it.
Sounds like a shockwatch indicator, it turns red if the unit is subjected to shock above a certain level of G. We used to put them on repaired HDDs before dispatch back in the 80's.
Nah, it's one of those electromagnetic transducer doodads, as I said.
Seems like it'd be pretty daft to glue a shockwatch inside a laptop, where it'd be difficult to check it or replace it.
with Windows XP Professional and Linux Mint 17. Despite XP no longer being supported, it's still quite snappy
on that old lappy! The OS that gets the most use on there is Linux, even though it's slower than XP.
The laptop's battery is totally depleted, so it has to be plugged in to the mains to get any use, and there's no
wireless network card, so it has to be wired up to my network to get on the internet. The installation of XP
is kept offline for obvious reasons! At least Linux Mint 17 has long term support until April 2019, so I can
still get a few more years of use out of it with a comparatively modern OS installed.
(Specs ... 1.2GHz Pentium 3 CPU ... 512MB RAM ... 60GB HDD)
Because they only had limited accuracy, we never quoted something e.g weight to 6 decimal places.g 1.999 or 2.001 counted as 2.00
Finally got the new memory installed and, I gotta say, what on Earth were HP thinking?!
It's got 2 memory slots. One of them is accessible via a panel on the back and the other is internal.
Trouble is, the "accessible" one is positioned right next to the connector for the wifi card and next to part of the chassis and, as a result, you can't actually get the DIMM seated until you take the whole damned thing to bits and loosen all the screws for the motherboard so you can ease the connector away from the chassis.
Anyway, having got 2gb of RAM into it, I'm quite impressed with how it's running under W7.
People often seem shocked that I can run what is, basically, a P3 laptop with W7 and if you're using it with, say, 512mb of RAM it will be unusable but if you bung in a decent amount of RAM it'll work fine.
As it is now, it'll make for a decent little machine for using to do diagnostics, check whether wifi and network connections are working properly and downloading drivers etc.
Machine cost £28, PSU cost £7 and the memory DIMMs cost £22 so £57 altogether for a useful little tool.
Quite chuffed with it.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/revox-B760.html
OMG it's 35 years old!!!