Old and obsolete tech you know how to use - (and that for some reason insist on using)

[Never Scored]

Do you work for the government? Because that's the only place I still see those machines at use.

It still gets used a lot for purchase orders, at least in my parts.

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Do you work for the government? Because that's the only place I still see those machines at use.

I use fax as well

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Typewriters. It doesn't sound like much, it's just a keyboard and it writes on paper, then people act bewildered when they have to use one. It's not hard, there's just a few 'wait...' moments where some thinking is required. A computer is to a typewriter what a home printer is to an office printer.

This one is not electric but it IS on the tech-tree: animal husbandry.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

10 PRINT "wat"
20 GOTO 10

I know how to program somewhat OK in BASIC.

Old BASIC. Not that newfangled visual crap.

Because that's the only place I still see those machines at use.

I use fax as well

Fax is still normal in Japan though, isn't it?

(not a bad thing either)

 

[President Joe Biden]

I can operate a manual transmission. shitty jokes aside, I like to tinker with early 20th century pistols. There are a lot of strange, unique, frustrating, and beautiful handguns that came and went before the World Wars. Stuff people have never heard of, from companies that made bicycles, sewing machines, cars, refrigerators, bombs, etc. The older stuff like the pepper-boxes and Martini rifles are nifty, I even had a Snider .577 used by the Ottoman Empire at one point, but I don't collect antiques. History becomes a lot more interesting to people when they can hold it in their hands, and unlike a lot of the cool stuff that people collect, it's still relevant and useful. People don't use phonographs anymore, but they still blow holes in each other with 1911s and 91/30s.

If you are in an industry that even remotely deals with the government, you are set up to fax. Timestamps for sent and received, able to check against service provider records, it's still useful. In my experience, on state and federal levels, you have a better chance of getting through to someone with a fax. Emails and phone calls are somehow easier to ignore for them I guess, I don't have an explanation.

 

[Kiislova]

I can operate a manual transmission.

Is it true that manual transmission is a theft deterrent on the US? Is not that uncommon in Europe (is the norm, actually)

 

[President Joe Biden]

Is it true that manual transmission is a theft deterrent on the US? Is not that uncommon in Europe (is the norm, actually)

Pretty much going to be shit on by all of your friends if you hang out with "car guys" and you can't row your own. Very few vehicles even come with it as an option anymore, it used to be standard. We even called it "driving a standard transmission." Even our larger trucks don't have it as often. You see a lot of new automatic Volvo/Mack trucks doing hauling duty now too. Oddly enough, the US market kept the manual transmission in the Porsche 911, our manual transmission orders for that car are significantly larger than anywhere else they are sold. Porsche decided to keep it for our market, and it's one of the last sports cars that you can get one on. America's sports car, the Corvette, even went solely automatic for the new generation. You can get a couple of cheap commuter cars with stick shifts, but they always pair them with base engines and trim levels. The larger engines and nicer interiors will always be automatics. The sporty Civics, Mustangs, Miatas and Golfs have people buying stick because of the age group, but that's about it. A manual transmission can make a shitty under-powered car bearable, but most cheap cars come with CVT transmissions, which is a mixture of bicycle switchgear and rubberbands, and they all suck.

I would say it's an okay theft deterrent, most likely you will have them destroy the car when they can't drive it or they will burn out the clutch or blow the motor in first gear or reverse if they get that far. The best theft deterrent in the US is owning property far away from inner cities.

 

[Stoneheart]

The sporty Civics, Mustangs, Miatas and Golfs have people buying stick because of the age group, but that's about it.

Golfs without the

just why? its just soooo nice to drive. the VW DSG is pretty much perfect. Its like magically reading your mind and the street, always with the right gear already.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I too can drive stick. Came in handy for getting a good deal on a used car from a dealership. 35 mpg easy.

 

[Slav Power]

Are MS-DOS/Windows 9x computers and candybar phones considered obsolete nowadays? Since that's the stuff I know how to use, and I sometimes use my Nokia 3330 as a backup phone. In fact, that's what I've been using during the period between my smartphone becoming unusable and getting a new smartphone.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

Are MS-DOS/Windows 9x computers and candybar phones considered obsolete nowadays?

MS-DOS/Windows 9x: Yes.

candybar phones: Mostly, I guess. If you put an active SIM card inside it and have still work, then I would say it is not obsolete yet.

 

[Jump]

I still use a Simpson 260 VOM almost daily at work. The place that calibrates the rest of my test equipment still certs it every year.

I have a fax machine at my house I use every day to send my paperwork back and forth to the office. Since wuflu started they don't want people going in just to drop off paperwork.

I use my late grandfather's rusty old Lincoln AC225 tombstone welder for general bullshit around my property even though I have a modern MIG. I don't know why, I just enjoy it.

 

[Basil II]

VHS and CRTs are comfy.

 

[sasazuka]

The most obvious answer: compact discs. I like owning music in a physical format and have no intention of paying to stream music online. If I'm sitting down in front my laptop and want to hear a specific song, I may just go to Youtube to listen to it for the price of sitting through a 15-second GEICO ad but I do have a portable stereo right next to me for playing CDs, which is something I could also do on both of my laptops since they both still have DVD-ROM drives but if I'm playing them on a portable stereo then it's not using up any system resources.

I also still sometimes shoot 35mm film photographs although it's been at least 2 years since I last had a roll developed.

I still use a VCR and DVD player.

I hadn't used a VCR in about a decade until recently when I wanted to watch old commercials from things my parents taped off television in the mid-1980s and I was surprised how well extended play TV recordings my parents made as early as 1983 still hold up considering we haven't been storing the VHS tapes in refrigerated vaults or anything.

For that matter, I was half surprised that the Sharp VCR even still worked to watch those tapes and did so without any major tracking issues. Admittedly, it was the second VCR I tried, my own Toshiba VCR from the late 1990s wouldn't even power up.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

Pretty much going to be shit on by all of your friends if you hang out with "car guys" and you can't row your own. Very few vehicles even come with it as an option anymore, it used to be standard. We even called it "driving a standard transmission." Even our larger trucks don't have it as often. You see a lot of new automatic Volvo/Mack trucks doing hauling duty now too. Oddly enough, the US market kept the manual transmission in the Porsche 911, our manual transmission orders for that car are significantly larger than anywhere else they are sold. Porsche decided to keep it for our market, and it's one of the last sports cars that you can get one on. America's sports car, the Corvette, even went solely automatic for the new generation. You can get a couple of cheap commuter cars with stick shifts, but they always pair them with base engines and trim levels. The larger engines and nicer interiors will always be automatics. The sporty Civics, Mustangs, Miatas and Golfs have people buying stick because of the age group, but that's about it. A manual transmission can make a shitty under-powered car bearable, but most cheap cars come with CVT transmissions, which is a mixture of bicycle switchgear and rubberbands, and they all suck.

I would say it's an okay theft deterrent, most likely you will have them destroy the car when they can't drive it or they will burn out the clutch or blow the motor in first gear or reverse if they get that far. The best theft deterrent in the US is owning property far away from inner cities.

I want a standard Mustang but I'll probably buy a truck instead. You have more control over your vehicle with a manual transmission so I'm sad to see them vanish.

The only vehicle I had issues with was a truck my daddy had, a manual with the gear shift on the steering column. I just couldn't since I drove a Ford automatic or a Volkswagen fastback with the shift on the floor and my teenage mind couldn't deal with it.

A Toyota Land Cruiser with a choke. Don't see those anymore let alone anyone who know what a choke is.

 

[Happy Fish]

You're only as obsolete as you feel!
No seriously, the more old and low level the tech the more of a wider the application it seems to have, and new tech always seems to be revisiting old tech. Your fancy new 5G death rays? It's just radio, bro. On that note I'm a licensed ham radio operator, so I guess there is that.

 

[Kiislova]

The more old and low level the tech the more of a wider the application it seems to have, and new tech always seems to be revisiting old tech.

On that note, it seems all those fancy new programming languages pop up and become obsolete and/or bloated as fuck at a fast rate.

Meanwhile in C land...

 

[heyitsmike]

I can use a stadimeter. It's a device used to determine the distance to an object of known height. On my first deployment it's what we used as we approached the oiler so we could take on fuel and stores. But by my next deployment we had gotten a laser rangefinder.

It looks like a sextant but it's not.


On the arc, you set the height of the object, in this case the oiler. Since you already know what ship you'll be rendezvousing with, you can look up the height of the mast above the waterline in Jane's. Then, to determine the distance, you look through the eyepiece, which has a mirror that splits your view in two, and adjust the knob until the top of the mast and the waterline line up.

That gives you an angle. Now that you have theta and the length of the opposite side (height of the oiler), finding the length of the adjacent side (distance to the oiler) is simple trigonometry. You read the distance directly from the knob. So effectively a stadimeter is just an analog trigonometric calculator calibrated in feet and yards.

 

[XYZpdq]

cd-rs with a bunch of mp3s burnt on them
I transferred my old spindles to hard drives a while back, but my mildly-old car's cd player handles them so I keep them there, and if being in the car eats them whatever I have a giant pile to throw out eventually anyways
does a PSP count? I've been using that as a handheld emu gizmo for stuff that won't work on a touchscreen on my phone
as for stuff I don't use anymore since I just don't have the opportunity, reel-to-reel and minidisc

 

[heyitsmike]

Forgot to add that I use an over the air television antenna. Since more people are cutting the cable it's kinda getting resurrected from the obsolete tech graveyard. Over the air color television was becoming widespread 50 years ago, becoming obsolete 25 years ago and is now becoming widespread again. Time is a flat circle, etc etc.

Better picture quality than cable and satellite and it's free. If only there was actually anything good to watch. But hey, at least I'm not wasting money on it.