Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[Haffhart]

I greatly miss CRTs.

They're heavy and bulky, but they surpassed every other screen until recently with the likes of OLED and microLED.
The switch to LCD in the 2000s, while understandable, those screens were fucking trash at the end of the day.

CRTs are also just very charming and have this nostalgic warmth to them that can't ever be placed.

The Sony Trinitron line was amazing.

Oh I had a Trinitron through my youth. It was silver and small, but also large, because although I've had tablets with bigger screens this thing was the size of a suitcase. I made so many memories with it, watching edutainment stuff (which made me a genius up to third grade), watching classics for the first time (like the summer I discovered the Star Trek shows), it even had some historical value as it was (likely) tuned in to New Years 2000 and 9/11, and I remember watching Obama's and Trump's inaugurations on it. It was made in Japan by Sony, built like a brick shithouse and about forty pounds. So it lasted two decades but was a bitch to move, and it had to be thrown out when someone died. The only thing I'd use it for would be retro gaming but I perfer emulation. I wish I still had that old TV around to use if I ever pick up a retro console or two.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

When I think "vintage", I may think something from maybe the 1950s is "vintage" at the latest.

I guess "Zoomers" think stuff from up to the '00s or even the '10s qualifies as "vintage" now?

Right now the “cheaper than dirt” sweet spot is ~2008-2015 tech. Of course, the pandemic ruined the console market so things like 3DSes are still very expensive (and will probably never be cheap). There’s also a glut of old phones from this era that don’t do 4G and thus are functionally useless, and will likely never have any value.

As for this being “sudden” I disagree. It has been ramping up over the past decade, and will in all likelyhood continue to get worse. USDM, JDM, and European electronics from the eighties nineties are scarce when you consider people outside the West trying to get them, too.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I'm so happy I have all the retro tech I ever wanted to own and got it when people considered it junk. Funnily, never particularily cared about original games. I have tons of original Amiga and DOS era games and their manuals. I threw the boxes away somewhen in the early 00s because of how much space they took up when I was moving around. Wish I didn't because I'm sure I could've sold a ton of that stuff now. The only old box I still have is of System Shock 1, floppy version. (It's easy to say now that lacked the best part of the game but honestly for that time System Shock was pretty cool, even with no voice acting, one of the few games I bothered finishing) No idea what it'd be worth and honestly? Don't particularly care. I always felt collecting stuff like this when it's so expensive that any reasonable person would consider it a waste of good money vs. what you actually get for your money is a hobby for soulless bugmen.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

it had to be thrown out when someone died

Why was that?

USDM, JDM, and European electronics from the eighties nineties are scarce when you consider people outside the West trying to get them, too.

Also another thing I find hard to find: audiocassette tape players. Working tape players.

(I have a bunch of audio tapes but no way to play them.)

I threw the boxes away somewhen in the early 00s because of how much space they took up when I was moving around.

I threw out a whole bunch of boxes to old games I have too, which I don't like now. But at least I kept the manuals.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Also another thing I find hard to find: audiocassette = tape players. Working tape players

I still see tape/CD players around pawn shops for $5. Ones like this:

Although I can’t speak for the tape players on these, I’ve noticed the CD drives are starting to fail on them (and the PCs I have with CD-ROMs). But if you just need to play tapes, they ought to do the trick.

 

[Cloacan]

I also had a very short stint as TV repairman

Those TV repair shops used be everywhere. I think that that my hometown had more TV repair shops than McDonalds locations.

Also another thing I find hard to find: audiocassette tape players. Working tape players.

I was looking for one a while back to rip some old timey family recordings, and it seems that to get a high quality one you have to spend hundreds of dollars. You can find plenty of older ones for fairly cheap, but that tech does not seem to age well. The motors that spin the reels always seem to die. If you are able to repair those, you could probably find a deal on a worthwhile model.

 

[Haffhart]

Quirky and cutesy error messages drive me up a fucking wall. Just tell me what the fuck when wrong. Faggoty "oopsie doodles sowwy the piggy wiggly oinked the cabelinos" is some puerile unprofessional horseshit. I want my program to do what I want, when I want it to, and nothing else, especially not show some childish fuckface handholding babytalk nonsense at me.

Would you perfer edgy error messages? Say when your browser can't load a page it shows a cartoon of a gang of South African niggers digging up copper cable to sell for drug money. "Don't outsource to shitholes and try again later."

Why was that?

It was either an old suitcase-sized Trinitron or the antiques and family photos, we only had a minivan. I kept the remote though.

 

[The Gifted Kid]

I notice that a number of GCN games are becoming vastly overpriced. Seems to be because of "Zoomers" coming of age and feeling nostalgic for their childhoods in the '00s, and because of "influencers" and other Internet phenomenon bringing them to prominence. For example, there could be a used GCN game for about $10 in 2010 (a "Zoomer" born in 2000 would've been about 10), and now that game is selling on eBay for around 10x as much (said "Zoomer" would be around 23 now).

So the tech trend I don't like here is previously dirt cheap tech becoming insanely overpriced because of some internet trend.

It's so weird to me how the Gamecube has become so popular nowadays. I actually had a Gamecube back in the day and I just remember being pissed off I couldn't play all the cool games my friends had. The Gamecube wasn't bad but it was certainly nothing amazing and at the time I always wished I had a PS2 or Xbox.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It was either an old suitcase-sized Trinitron or the antiques and family photos, we only had a minivan. I kept the remote though.

Sucks when space limit can prevent moving everything one wants.

It's so weird to me how the Gamecube has become so popular nowadays.

Like I said, I guess it's because there's "Zoomers" coming of age, and to them the GCN is a nostalgic thing from childhood.

(to me GCN is a newer thing that isn't quite "retro" like 8-bit is)

 

[Haffhart]

It's so weird to me how the Gamecube has become so popular nowadays. I actually had a Gamecube back in the day and I just remember being pissed off I couldn't play all the cool games my friends had. The Gamecube wasn't bad but it was certainly nothing amazing and at the time I always wished I had a PS2 or Xbox.

Well it did have some good exclusives and first-party games, but most everything you could want from that generation is on the PS2. The Xbox and GameCube libraries are basically expansion packs.

(to me GCN is a newer thing that isn't quite "retro" like 8-bit is)

My personal categories are:
Antique - 70s
Vintage - 80s
Retro -90s
Old - 00s
Passé - 10s

Of course there can be lots of overlap.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

My personal categories are:
Antique - 70s
Vintage - 80s
Retro -90s
Old - 00s
Passé - 10s

Of course there can be lots of overlap.

To me it could be more like:

antique - before 1900 or 1920
vintage - 1900 or 1920, to 1960 or 1970
retro - 1960 or 1970, to 1980
old - 1980s (but 80s vidya is retro)
"passé" - 1990s and maybe the '00s (but 90s vidya is old)
new - 2010 or maybe 2000 to later ('00s vidya is "passé")

(maybe I'm somewhat old lol)

 

[Haffhart]

To me it could be more like:

antique - before 1900 or 1920
vintage - 1900 or 1920, to 1960 or 1970
retro - 1960 or 1970, to 1980
old - 1980s (but 80s vidya is retro)
"passé" - 1990s and maybe the '00s (but 90s vidya is old)
new - 2010 or maybe 2000 to later ('00s vidya is "passé")

(maybe I'm somewhat old lol)

Oh, I was specifically referring to technology and video games, but this isn't a bad system for old things in general. Once I was talking about the Wii to someone and they called it passé so now that's what I call 2000s and early 10s tech. Retro is hard to separate from the classic 2D systems but there's only so many words to go around.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Oh, I was specifically referring to technology and video games, but this isn't a bad system for old things in general.

I guess I may classify '70s vidya as both "antique" and "vintage" then.

(not much vidya back then though)

 

[Boom Boss]

It's so weird to me how the Gamecube has become so popular nowadays. I actually had a Gamecube back in the day and I just remember being pissed off I couldn't play all the cool games my friends had. The Gamecube wasn't bad but it was certainly nothing amazing and at the time I always wished I had a PS2 or Xbox.

It sucked that Gamecube didn't have some of the multiplats the other platforms did, but I did love all the Gamecube exclusives. I loved growing up with games like Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and the Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II with Link.

 

[Stasi]

I hate the overall degradation in quality of modern tech either through planned obsolescence or just incompetence.

I complained about my new thinkpad keyboard crapping out with only minimal use in another thread. I was going to sell it because I couldn't be bothered to replace the keyboard but decided to do some searching online to see if there was any fix. Found some guy with another lenovo laptop with exactly the same problem who suggested reseating the keyboard ribbon cable.

Cheap flat flex connectors are not really that vibration proof and usually need to be secured with glue, which nobody does because it's another manufacturing step. This happens literally all the time now, in a plethora of devices. The ironic thing is that it could be avoided altogether with a different design of the same connector which is widely available but a bit more expensive. This stuff even starts to creep into expensive high-end devices and it fucking sucks.

So my keyboard has been fine since last post but my screen started crapping out (flashing black and white when turned on with no picture being displayed). Tested with an external monitor and there is a picture so not a board/iGPU issue. Decided to try a similar solution and re-seat the display ribbon cable and...it works fine. Un fucking believable. These ribbon cables are evidently held together on a hope and a prayer and not actually connected properly out of factory. If its vibration or whatever causing it then even looking sideways at the laptop is enough to cause problems because it doesn't travel with me, it sits on my desk playing youtube videos when I work from home because I can't get ad-block on my work laptop.

Thinkpad used to be a quality brand but evidently these days Lenovo turned it into a big pile of shit.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Thinkpad used to be a quality brand but evidently these days Lenovo turned it into a big pile of shit.

Mobile devices are all like this, if you want something approaching reliability you need to either buy something insane like a thoughpad or stick with stationary computers. People are still buying ten+ year old thinkpads and there's still a market for them, which is just sad. It's a pity that things like the Framework won't really get anywhere because of both price and what you get for that price.

That said, I bought an old (~2017, kaby lake) Thinkpad Tablet for use as tiny desktop. The built quality is so-so but not terrible. In devices like this passive cooling (= no moving parts) really helps. I switched out the harddrive to a 1 TB NVMe and repasted the SoC. Funnily it does have the better flat flex connectors I mentioned in that earlier post, but probably because that's the bare minimum for a tablet you're supposed to hold in your hand and which will see some G-forces. I also got a Fujitsu convertible of roughly the same vintage and it's a lot better built than the Thinkpad, just with worse hardware specs.

If it ever happens again you should dip some glue on the flat flex cables. Not directly on the connector but across somewhat lower from it to make a connection to the cable and what's around it. It'll hold the cable in place and should be easy to remove with a bit of alcohol. You don't need any special glue, just use a normal one, don't put it directly over electronics and let it completely dry before turning back on again.

 

[Never Scored]

I'm kind of incompetent with hacking, and I personally prefer to avoid "pirating" vidya.

Why do you care about pirating old games if you don't mind me asking?

With a lot of the Nintendo from this era especially, a lot of it has been out of print for nearly two decades.

The Gamecube shit is weird though. It happened with N64 as well. PSX was very clearly more popular in that late 1990s. Like I remember being literally being called a fag by friends* in the 1990s for my preference of N64 over PSX. By the way people talked by the 2010s, you'd think nobody played PlayStation and N64 obliterated it in the market. I wonder if the same thing will happen to Wii U.

*For the zoomers reading, this is the way friends talked to each other in the late 1990s.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Why do you care about pirating old games if you don't mind me asking?

eh personal choice

Also looks like the N64 had a reputation of being childish* back then. I didn't know or care and liked N64 anyway.

*(despite games like the Turok series, that 007 game, and Conker's Bad Fur Day)

*For the zoomers reading, this is the way friends talked to each other in the late 1990s.

I imagine it may not go that well if one casually talked like that around "Zoomers" now.

 

[Usagi-Stop]

Personally I don't pirate unless the game is retardedly expensive, or is impossible to aquire through legal channels.

Seriously I'm not paying $100+ dollars for a game from 20 years ago that everyone had.

 

[Mr. 0]

Personally I don't pirate unless the game is retardedly expensive, or is impossible to aquire through legal channels.

Seriously I'm not paying $100+ dollars for a game from 20 years ago that everyone had.

or if that game is like Destroy All Humans 2! and backwards compatibility doesn't work for it (or work correctly) for whatever reason