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

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

but I have 2 pagers.

You know sketches where they show someone doing something and then go back in time to show a cavemen doing the same thing with primitive tools for comedic effect? I now imagine a sketch like that but it's a Somalian in the 80's using pagers and two phone booths for group calls instead of yelling into two cellphones.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

1. I can make a phone call on a rotary dial phone like I'm fucking Humphery Bogart or something.

We still had a rotary phone when I was a kid, so that's also natural to me. I'm barely into my 30s. We were bit behind times in here, OK.

 

[fuckidunno]

slide rule
chinese abacus for some operations (kind of nic b/c you can run a chinese abacus hex), carbs, I can throw pottery on a kickwheel pretty OK
a paper MAP!!!
I'm rusty, but I used to be pretty good with the 6502
manual typewriter
The USPTO cassis system

oh, I can still pick up a ball mouse and hand roll it

 

[DNA_JACKED]

Transparency printer repair
Typewriter repair
Fax machine setup
Jumper based bus speed and voltage setting setup (ah the 90s when OCing was fun)
E unit wiring and Lionel motor unit repair
CRT grounding and repair

Currently learning how to repair points ignition and adjust a distributor. There is a certain magic to analog technology.

 

[heyitsmike]

There is a certain magic to analog technology.

Maybe it's just the sailor in me, but WWII era naval technology is fascinating in its use of analog computers. The fact that those fire control computers could do integral calculus in real time with basically just gears, cams and rollers using 1940s technology is a feat of engineering.

 

[Right To Bear Blarms]

I was the last 35mm projectionist to be working at the local movie theater before every place switched to digital. It was a sad time for sure.

 

[Fools Idol]

Yes I'm well aware that they are still very common, especially in small shops but the CNC revolution has made them obsolete for large scale manufacturing.

 

[Sonichu-choo trainwreck]

Maybe it's just the sailor in me, but WWII era naval technology is fascinating in its use of analog computers. The fact that those fire control computers could do integral calculus in real time with basically just gears, cams and rollers using 1940s technology is a feat of engineering.

oh no, I don't think it's pointless geekery -- it's just plain very cool
early ABS control was couple of RLC networks cascaded to take the second derivative (electrical, but analog)
and well, even as they went electronic ballistic computers were analog, as were car suspension design computers

mechanical computers are a lot of fun - a carb when you think about it (somebody else hippd me to this analogy) is a lot like building up a transistor amp (like an emitter follower) in terms of compensation for conditions


it's funny whn you think about it making a mechanical computer is a very very classic thing (as in a difference engine)
We sort of think nothing of using calc to ANALYZE nonlinearities (which is really reverse engineering) but we can simply flip the script and run that process backwards to DESIGN nonlinearities.
what I think is really cool because not that it's just doing the calc, but it's actually a mechanical computer model of ballistic trajectories


it's sort of basiv "duh" stuff - but even the pantograph is cool - a mechanical enlarger

 

[TheRedChair]

I still use my Dell Harman Kardon speakers from the early 2000's. They sound incredible also.
View attachment 1610902

I still use my 2007 5.1 speakers using the lap top connectors for my newest rig. Wonderful gaming output.
Next I am slowly rebuilding my 1993 Sony entertainment system. Original Dolby surround sound. Never got rid of it and I can never cranked fully it up to max... it would vibrate my windows at 3/4 power in my living room. Which is did.

 

[heyitsmike]

Going back to analog computers, here's a series of short videos on a mechanical computer that can do Fourier analysis.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Next I am slowly rebuilding my 1993 Sony entertainment system. Original Dolby surround sound. Never got rid of it and I can never cranked fully it up to max... it would vibrate my windows at 3/4 power in my living room. Which is did.

I still have one of those in storage, used to use it for my bedroom DJ setup when I first started in '95, along with some OG Panasonic booth headphones w/ 25'ft cord.

Most of the time I kept the monitor dBs pretty low, because those Sony speakers had mad thump, but I turned it loose a couple times when I had the house to myself.

At one point I'd just put something hard & German on, walked outside to have a smoke, and noticed the windows were fucking resonating like secondary cones.

It's my lay opinion that the amp on those old Sony's sucked far more amperes than the packaging admitted to, probably to skirt regulations of some sort; with the return being some absolutely monsterous sound.

It wasn't until I got a Bose system, that I found anything comparable in raw power at the speakers.

 

[White Devil]

I was the last 35mm projectionist to be working at the local movie theater before every place switched to digital. It was a sad time for sure.

I had worked at a movie theater as a teenager and I really wanted to be a projectionist / learn how to do that. Then they switched to digital and I kind of lost my interest in it. I quit soon after but for things completely unrelated. (like the fact that they were illegally making 15-16 year olds stay to 2 AM, the shit pay, dumb work politics and drama, etc)

 

[Haramburger]

I can clickety-clack operations on an abacus at warp speed, faster than a digital calculator not that it really matters in today's day and age. Also learned COBOL from my dad, which despite being a dead language still has value with legacy mainframes today.

 

[heyitsmike]

I still use my 2007 5.1 speakers using the lap top connectors for my newest rig. Wonderful gaming output.
Next I am slowly rebuilding my 1993 Sony entertainment system. Original Dolby surround sound. Never got rid of it and I can never cranked fully it up to max... it would vibrate my windows at 3/4 power in my living room. Which is did.

Don't know where you're sourcing your stuff but I highly recommend Parts Express. Their house brand, Dayton Audio is a lot of bang for your buck.

I have two of their SUB-800 8" subwoofers and one of their SUB-1000L 10" low profile subwoofers. If I had room for a full setup I'd use them for bookshelf speakers as well.

 

[XMassAllYearRound]

I can think of two things:
Punch card operated musical boxes (These seem to start to become oddly popular recently).
"Carousel" projectors. I know how to give them maintenance, prepare the slides and load em up, this has never been useful in my life, not even once.

 

[heyitsmike]

Do people even still use kerosene heaters anymore, or they all electric?

I remember growing up we had one that was broken out every winter. Not every gas station sold kerosene, but there was a nearby Hess that did. I think sometime back in the mid nineties they changed the law and required all kerosene canisters to be blue due to fires caused by people using the wrong fuel. So my parents just sprayed painted the red one we had been using. And then they'd use a siphon to fill up the heater, light it with a match and voila, cheap heating.

Don't know why I randomly remembered that.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Do people even still use kerosene heaters anymore, or they all electric?

I remember growing up we had one that was broken out every winter. Not every gas station sold kerosene, but there was a nearby Hess that did. I think sometime back in the mid nineties they changed the law and required all kerosene canisters to be blue due to fires caused by people using the wrong fuel. So my parents just sprayed painted the red one we had been using. And then they'd use a siphon to fill up the heater, light it with a match and voila, cheap heating.

Don't know why I randomly remembered that.

I still have one of those; along with an old camp/railroad water-heater.

Attach to any standard water hose fitting, fire it up, and it heats cold water fast enough to be almost scalding pretty much instantly. But it sucks kerosene super fast.

 

[Kheapathic]

Stuff I still know: Phone Directory, MS-DOS, Rotary Phone.

Stuff I still use: Analog Clock/Watch, Arcade Boards.

 

[White Devil]

Stuff I still know: Phone Directory, MS-DOS, Rotary Phone.

Stuff I still use: Analog Clock/Watch, Arcade Boards.

I see less and less people with analog wrist watches now. Everyone has a fuckin smart watch. I can't imagine having to charge my watch every couple of days.

 

[Toolbox]

I see less and less people with analog wrist watches now. Everyone has a fuckin smart watch. I can't imagine having to charge my watch every couple of days.

It sucks that Pebble went bankrupt and were bought up by a company that did next to nothing with their tech, because if they continued working on their low-power lcd/e-ink watches battery life would have been great.