'Obsolete' technology that you remember using.

[Treeinthewoods]

The first computer I ever messed around on was at my grandparents house, it was a Tandy and the screen was orange all the time. It did play Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator though, I just had to pretend it was always some weird kind of night mission with orange vision goggles.

The second computer I messed around on was a Wang and it was all green instead of orange. It could play five card draw poker.

Everybody is talking about obsolete stuff like the VCR that was at one time useful, but did anybody know a person who got a Beta Max? That is some obsolete ass technology.

 

[DanDeFool]

cassette tapes also VHS and Windows 95
and let's not forget floppy disks
also...PEN AND PAPER! XD

Windows 95! Ha!

I once pulled one of the Molex connector pins out of a hard drive because I had to change which hard drive I was using to go between Windows 95 and Windows 3.1/DOS.

Ah, the joys of growing up with computers.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Random mid-late 80's tech, even though I grew up in the 90's. Our family was always a bit technology-retarded and we lagged behind quite a bit.

I remember in primary school when we had an IT lesson where we got to put in, save to, then take out...
Floppy discs!

I can still barely comprehend that my sister's SD card, one little plastic card about 1 cm in width and length, can contain 4.000 floppy discs!!!

It boggles my mind.

 

[DanDeFool]

Anyone else remember those games that actually made learning fun in an unexplainable way? Math (or any other Gen. Ed. subject) Blaster, anyone?

You mean, like....

SUPER MUNCHERS!?

http://www.myabandonware.com/media/captures/S/super-munchers-the-challenge-continues/super-munchers-the-challenge-continues_1.gif

Awesome.

 

[Lyx]

- VHS
- Casette Decks
- Atari 2600 Console
- C64 with Datasette, 5 1/4 Floppy, Monitor, Printer and misc Competition Pro Joysticks. Also some old and really inaccurate lightpen for the same machine
- Amiga with misc stuff
- DOUBLE SPEED CD-ROM DRIVE!
- 14kbps dialup modem (thats about 1kb/sec for those who dont know

I as a child probably used some other "interesting" household stuff too, but i cannot remember something specific right now.

 

[Daniel Laeben-Rosen]

Well... VHS(which still sees use), cassette-tapes, Windows from 3.1 and up... Also my favourite camera is almost 40 years old.
Most obsolete thing I remember and I deffinetly remember being glad that it's obsolete:
Dial-up modems.
Yeah...Anyone who doesn't remember those should try one and then rejoice at broadband technology as if it was the second coming.

 

[ephesus64]

I actually had a VIC-20 before I had a Commodore 64. I only had a couple of games for it--one was Asteroids and Meteoroids, and I was scared of the black holes that appeared if I lived long enough.

I had an IBM PS/2 for a while, the old white 386 ones with the proprietary system architecture. Those were the systems that also originated the PS/2 connectors for mice and keyboards (which are now also obsolete). It was too slow to run Doom.

Also, for most of my early childhood, the household television had a UHF dial. That was just because my parents were too cheap to buy a new TV when the old one was still working, though. There was a phone with a rotary dial in the back room for the same reason.

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

a computer with windows 98. Good times, when the best game out there was doom 2. Ah good stuff.

98? You young whippersnappers don't know what obsolete technology is! Back in my day, we had 95, and we were lucky if we could get any game more complicated than solitaire! (Actually, there was Chip's challenge, which was awesome!)

What else? The original game boy, the sega game gear (got it for 50p in a car boot sale), VHS tapes (which I still use, if only to watch Star Wars), 3 1/2 inch floppy disks....

How, at 20 years old, has so much technology from my childhood become so horrendously dated?

95? You space age magicician!
I had a 93. First console was an NES.
I still own a 93 flight stick I used to use to play the first Combat Flight Simulator WWII edition. In fact, it's installed on my laptop ^^
Also, more recently, the EyeToy

 

[Lyx]

Yeah...Anyone who doesn't remember those should try one and then rejoice at broadband technology as if it was the second coming.

Actually, websites back then loaded about as fast, as nowadays websites (without certain "filters") load.... similiar to OSes not becoming faster ever. Any new ressources that open up are only there for humans to be more wasteful (yeah, i know, there are some nice things done, but the overall trend is to waste most of the available ressources).

 

[Quartz_Dragon]

- phonograph console with a reel-to-reel recorder and multi-band radio built in
- 8-track tapes
- cassette decks for computer program storage
- floppy disks of various sizes (3.5", 5.25" AND 8" disks)
- dial up BBS systems that I connected to at a screaming speed of 1200 baud thanks to my dedicated external modem (which was four times as fast as my friend's 300 baud acoustic coupler modem)
- DOS 3.3, OS/2 version 2 and Atari TOS 1.0

gah...
so old.

 

[Daniel Laeben-Rosen]

Actually, websites back then loaded about as fast, as nowadays websites (without certain "filters") load.... similiar to OSes not becoming faster ever. Any new ressources that open up are only there for humans to be more wasteful (yeah, i know, there are some nice things done, but the overall trend is to waste most of the available ressources).

I know that, doesn't mean I miss the damn things for a second.
Glitchy, noisy, phone-hogging pieces of wasted plastic that they were. Not to mention expensive. Did I mention noisy?
Y'know, NOT hearing that ear-splitting shriek any time I feel like checking my email or spend a few on MSN is awesome.
I just really hate dialups.

 

[StBishop]

floppy disks, VHS and 2D TV

2D TV? I still have 2DTV, and its only in HDTV...its such old tech now lol

It was a joke =P
Blu ray is so obsolete that red rey is obsolete before it has even been developed. The future lies in green ray.

3D is also obsolete. 4D is the way of the future.

Actually, you'd be looking at ultra violet ray.

Just putting it out there.



Edit:


OT:

Print media? Magazines and newspapers specifically.

 

[geon106]

Actually, websites back then loaded about as fast, as nowadays websites (without certain "filters") load.... similiar to OSes not becoming faster ever. Any new ressources that open up are only there for humans to be more wasteful (yeah, i know, there are some nice things done, but the overall trend is to waste most of the available ressources).

I know that, doesn't mean I miss the damn things for a second.
Glitchy, noisy, phone-hogging pieces of wasted plastic that they were. Not to mention expensive. Did I mention noisy?
Y'know, NOT hearing that ear-splitting shriek any time I feel like checking my email or spend a few on MSN is awesome.
I just really hate dialups.

WHAT!

I loved the noise of dial up

Didn't like the speed and that it hogged the phone line, but i enjoyed the noise. It was fascinating hearing the computer dial out, then "talk" down the phone line to the exchange and then to the server at the ISP and so forth

It's just as I love the noise of an Amiga reading the disk, it so soothing and makes me reminise(sp), weird i know as it sounds like its dying or being stabbed by the floppy inside out but still

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Well, VHS tapes, a CD player, a video iPod, a PS1, a PS2, a Gameboy, a Gameboy Color, a Gameboy Advance, Windows 95, controllers with wires, a TV that was thicker in the back then the screen size......Yeah, that's all I got.

 

[Lyx]

About dialup noise - most modems had a way to enable or disable the speaker, so

It's just as I love the noise of an Amiga reading the disk, it so soothing and makes me reminise(sp), weird i know as it sounds like its dying or being stabbed by the floppy inside out but still

And followed by an.... umm... lets call it "intro" For some bought games, i actually prefered to play the "unofficial" version anyways, just because i felt something was missing without an intro.

 

[Stormz]

I used a Walkman and VHS. Still have VHS, we don't buy movies for it, but it's there if we want to watch an older movie.

 

[Something Amyss]

Random mid-late 80's tech, even though I grew up in the 90's. Our family was always a bit technology-retarded and we lagged behind quite a bit.

I remember in primary school when we had an IT lesson where we got to put in, save to, then take out...
Floppy discs!

I can still barely comprehend that my sister's SD card, one little plastic card about 1 cm in width and length, can contain 4.000 floppy discs!!!

It boggles my mind.

While it doesn't really surprise me so much, it does give me a bit of pause to think at one point, I needed multiple 5" and later 3.5" floppies for school.

Now, everything I've ever written, every song I've demoed to MP3, every video I've done, all fit on one SD card. I could probably fit every digital photo I've ever taken on there with considerable margin of error.

Thank God I back the thing up.

Vinyl records were big for me in my youth. Technically, they were already becoming obsolete, and I was overjoyed to get a cassette player. I always split the difference between early adopter and curmudgeon. I used to have a CD changer, then MP3 players came out and I was like "OMG! I can fit TWENTY RECORDS on one of these!" Now I have six months of music on my iPod.

 

[Quartz_Dragon]

I loved the noise of dial up

Didn't like the speed and that it hogged the phone line, but i enjoyed the noise. It was fascinating hearing the computer dial out, then "talk" down the phone line to the exchange and then to the server at the ISP and so forth

When I worked at an ISP doing dial-up tech support, me and a couple of the other guys used to get together in the room that housed all the modem racks and try to determine the connection speed based on the handshaking noises. It was easy for the V.32 and V.42 connections, but was really hard for the X2, K56flex, V.90 and V.92 connections. I still wax nostalgic whenever I hear a modem dial-up connection.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Walking.
http://www.geekalerts.com/u/segway-beta.jpg

 

[rosemystica]

VCRs and VHSes... and we even had a really old Betamax (but that died pretty quickly).

Typewriter (Grandma had one and she let me play with it all the time in order to practice spelling).

Floppy disks (though those were already on the way out when I was using them for school).

Dial-up internet!