[Closed] Other retro tech, then......

I loved this

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IBM mainframe, 50 years old today.

I'm currently writing code to be deployed on its modern equivalent. I don't have access to it though, sadly.

I got one of these for our 3month euro cycle tour.
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first made in 1994. I think I paid £100 in 2007 for mine. They go for nearly £200 now.

Theyre still the finest SW pocket radio in the world.

Stoner, my father has the same, bought for use on some of his more 'interestingly' located flying engagements. One may be in Mboto Gorge, but one still needs the World Service to catch up with the cricket score.

I bought a short wave radio (cheap one) when I went to Finland, so I could get the World Service. Of course, when I finally got internet access it was redundant, but it was fun for a while 🙂

Unfortunately Her Majesty pulled the plug on the BBC WS over SW so it's now really for just listening to Voice of America and Voice of Russia 😉

It's like a bloody CH4 'I love the 80's' round here.

All we need now is some talking heads who are blatantly too young to have experience the piece of old toss they are talking about, and we got ourselves a stew going.

*harumph*

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@stoner and his 'handspring' - pah talk about wrong horse 🙂

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But way before that, I wrote programs for these

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to interrogate fire extinguisher systems no less. And then I moved on to the mighty
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Once wrote a best mans speech on that in Lisbon airport. Nearly crippled me.

I was a Psion fanboi. This was at the time Apple made funny looking computers.

That psion always reminds me of:
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anyone remember RPN? 🙂

It's more we 'vaguely remember the 80s' Jamie. It's all so boring now. Back in the day, your opportunity to spend thousands of pounds on stuff that was obsolete before it left the shop was legion. And connectivity generally relied on a serial port and a soldering iron.

C'mon you can't tell me that doesn't sound like fun? 🙂

I've still got a couple of Series 5 Psions - when I started out, I was answering emails on a Series 5 with a mobile phone connected via IR. It felt like the space age 😉

I just got one my father-in-law was chucking out - forgot how good the keyboard was.

serial port and a soldering iron.

or, in the near future, IR! 😯

I do Mark. I do. I rather wish I didn't but it's all coming flooding back.

I had a hoop and stick, but I took it into the local town and someone pinched the hoop so I couldn't get home.

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Had a Psion 3A too, nice bit of kit.

IR

A gif representation of IR:

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A couple of old watches I wear sometimes:

[url= https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2230/1779345381_baa63aa9db_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2230/1779345381_baa63aa9db_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/cycleologist/1779345381/ ]Hewlett Packard HP-01[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/cycleologist/ ]Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5289/5296420353_84c2cb9e38_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5289/5296420353_84c2cb9e38_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/cycleologist/5296420353/ ]Casio Cosmo Phase[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/cycleologist/ ]Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

The HP eats batteries - but it's not just a simple calculator, it can do calculations [i]on time itself[/i] 😀

And the Casio tells you where all the planets in the Solar System are. Which is handy in everyday life.

IR was great. Surreptitiously move a pen into the beam to disconnect the accessory, I once met a man on an aeroplane who wondered why IR didn't work from 35,000 feet to his desk. I kid you not. How I laughed - like you'd ever get phones or Internet on a plane. Jeez, what a goofball he was 😉

Obsolete even before it was out of the box, I reckon
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Cosmic Ben. Shame that second one will be obsolete in less than 200 years.

Flash - did they just take a Psion and stick a sony badge on it?

Tomytronic 3D. I had this one; Thundering Turbos....

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Is a mechanical calculator too retro?

[url= https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2232/1780163250_96a9b49d40_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2232/1780163250_96a9b49d40_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/cycleologist/1780163250/ ]Curta Mark I[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/cycleologist/ ]Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

Still use this for adding up long lists - no memory to accidentally wipe, faster to enter numbers than a conventional calculator often.

This thread makes me realise how much of a tech [s]sucker[/s] geek I am.

Got a pair of these burbling away in the living room

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along with the original technics 1200

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That, particular, mechanical calculator will never be retro, more timeless classic!

[url= http://www.s21.com/nokia-9210.htm ]9210[/url]

Was pretty flash in 2001 but next to useless now.
Similar to what happened to my minidisc collection when cd-r became widespread.

A wise decision for once was buying a digital camera in 2000, pics were crap but whenever you took a photo people thought it was something from 100 years in the future!

Love that calculator.

I seem to have a draw full of stuff like this:

[img] https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2vjOqRJ8N379dpIG09YrrvrXP1gXRsqSYCRlklLyDUhw27ViR [/img]

Which sort of explains my small but still inexcusable part in the development of this.

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Nothing wrong with being a retro tech geek. I mean it's better than brass rubbing and train spotting. So I tell myself.

crikey, minidisc. I forgot that.

I had one of these
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and that reminds me, when I first met Mrs Stoner (2000ish) to be we blew an underspend from our flat refurb on a DVD-RAM recorder that took DVD cartridges. I think it cost about £800 and we put it with a 20" Sharp Plasma that had been discounted from £5k to £2.5k. It was like watching TV through the bottom of a pyrex dish, but it was a flat panel so we were still KINGS I tell thee!

A mate's parents had something like this

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A technology that went from vaguely niche to entirely obsolete in about the time it takes to eat a wine gum. As opposed to Betamax. Someone should have performed a mercy killing on that. Remember the video shops - 4000 VHS in 50 shelves and a small filing cabinet for Betamax.

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Had one of those. Similar to Stoner, first house, kid on the way, spent some saved cash on this to record our firstborns amusing antics. B&W viewfinder, 9000 different connectivity options. About a million quid. It may be in the loft.

I might go and find it. I'm getting depressed now!

I have a Palm Vx - anyone want it?

GET THEE BEHIND ME 🙂
*tempted*

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We had two in a row, identical. I learned to drive in one. Felt like 2023 had landed in Cumbria.

I'm another Sony ICF-SW100 fanatic, I've had one since late 94, bought it in Duty free when i flew out to Zimbabwe in 94, truly fantastic radio and it kept me company for 6 months in Africa, 6months in Turkey and 6 months in India but my original was taken from my possession thanks to an "unofficial" checkpoint in Northern Kashmir 10 yrs ago, needless to say i bought another when i got back to the UK but i've since broke the battery cover as the plastic locks on it are are very small and finding a replacement part is proving hard.

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Also had one of those Psions back in 95/96? - i thought it was the dogs bollox at the time and used to play the golf game at every opportunity, i also used it for college work (sometimes) and had all my Thermodynamics formulae compiled into programs that helped me calculate that [i]steam is wet[/i] rather than the usual 2 pages of paper calculations. 😀 , i also had the matching printer - i guess i was a bit of a geek.

I also had one of these portable Sony Dat machines but it kept eating tapes for no reasons and i could not find anyone willing to attempt a repair so i sold it as not working on ebay years ago.

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I've still got my tried and trusted Sony pro Walkman, many an early 90's rave was recorded on such a machine 😀

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Stop posting that curta ben, i have absolutely no need, nor will i ever have a need for one but that does not sully my desire for one.

Ben cooper I see your curta and raise you these beasts
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My mum used one through the 60-70s used to sit and watch added up huge columns of numbers in seconds in £ s.d. big handle updated the display, it looks like this one is a new fangled decimal machine

for fewer dollars you can get these - russian pocket calculator

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That Russian thing is a circular slide rule, isn't it?

anyone remember RPN?

Still use it on a daily basis

[url= https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7329/13701773813_b707183f6b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7329/13701773813_b707183f6b.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

Still got one of these lurking in it's box..
[url= https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3783/13702894173_71f00f6c85.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3783/13702894173_71f00f6c85.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/107347896@N06/13702894173/ ]P1020921a[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/107347896@N06/ ]pickers48[/url], on Flickr

Still have all three of these...

HP 620LX
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HP iPAQ HX2490 (still in use as a sat nav running TomTom) [img] [/img]

Sharp EL-9300
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Casio fx-85n (over 20 years old and still in use)
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Someone on here actually has a Curta?
(Sits in the corner, quietly sobbing)
There was a little shop in Glastonbury, sold instruments like barometers, had a number of Curtas in the window.
I winced at the price...
I've got a portable Minidisc recorder upstairs somewhere, a neat little Panasonic one, and a really nice full-sized Sony Minidisc recorder that has Fade-in/out, PS/2 keyboard input for captioning, and other editing functions. Still works very nicely.

SOMAFUNK! Panic!!!

After posting about my ICF SW100 I realised I hadnt used it for nearly 5 years...and then it dawned on me I had probably left some batteries in it! I dug it out and sure enough, exploded Duracell-goo in the battery bay 🙁

Ive just opened it up (at least you can) and given it a clean out. Fortunately all the goo is now crystallised and could be picked away with a tooth pick well enough. Put back together again and tested and it all works fine. So do check, and then remove the batteries again!

I guessed it would be you or THM that still used those things, mefty! 😉

They're an abomination of bad maths! And I say that as a Surveyor who still owns a set of Parry's Tables!

Somafunk, i had a wm-d6c too. Loved it. I used it to record my gigs and do illicit recordings of gigs. (found a live herbie Hancock gig recording the other day). Lent it to a friend who plugged an adaptor into it a melted the motor. Got me a new one on his home insurance. He later asked to borrow it again. I think, he cant be that stupid again can he? Yep, he did it again.

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1995 PlayStation scph 1002. Audiophiles dream. Cheap but the CD sound is supposed to rival high end players. Something to do with the DAC (digital to analog comvertor) present in these early models. Has to have all the ports on the back to qualify.

That controller with no sticks.
That dinosaur.
That manta ray.
Using Biro's insides to disc swap games.
Awesome days.

Does it count? It is old now.

My ZX80 and 81 got nicked years ago in my student days, but I managed to keep hold of one of these, still works too, we fire it up now and again to amaze/appall the kids. Atari 400.

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Now that's all a bit modern. Can you imagine a device that turns your pocket watch into an alarm clock? Unbelievable 1820s tech. Pic lifted from a dealer, hope they don't mind. A Gossage 'Patent' Alarum. My grandad was a watch and clock repairer and we still have a few bits and pieces, though I like his toolbox more than most of the clocks.

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Bad maths, pah. Just different maths, once you got used to it, it was very efficient and there is nothing better for quick and dirty financial analysis. That calculator has found many a flaw in complex models, much to the chagrin of their authors.

PS: I actually have two of them.

Sorry, the penny's just dropped as to what RPN is. We used to call it "egdelp"...

Its half past midnight, I have supplies of Rum and it's getting geeky in here....
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Before I had an iPod, I had a minidisc. Before that it was cassette. I had one of these:

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It was a marvellously designed piece of kit. Barely any bigger than a cassette box. Metal case. Mine had a remote control and a graphic equaliser.

Nobody's made a 26 inch wheel joke?

Still got my minidisk player somewhere, brilliant... OK, i can fit a bazillion albums on my phone now but there's nothing like the tactile feel of inserting a nice clonky bit of media, cd doesn't do it either. Felt engineered.

[img] http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/download/file.php?id=242044 [/img]
I had a set of these, they could illuminate very little and you had to turn them off as often as possible to make it round a decent ride, the battery weighed a huge amount.

I was the king of cub-camp after getting one of these for a birthday present:

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Despite taking 4 x c cells, it seemed to do 30 seconds at full power, followed by the rest of the weekend at about 1% output.

Wonderlights - the only Wonder about them, was wondering if they were actually going to turn on/the bracket would stay in place/you would actually be able to see anything with them. Truly awful, yet we all had them 😕

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Bought one of these when I was on holiday in Jersey back in the 80's. Still got it with the original case and transformer, on battery lasted about ten minutes

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Much newer than most on here but equally obsolete:
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You couldn't really walk with it without limping to make sure it didn't skip, it was the size of a paving slab and the sound quality was pretty much awful but still.

I actually remember taking the mick out of the first kid to turn up to school with something called an "Eye Pod"...

A JVC walkman - it was carved out of a block of pure awesome - it ran off a *single* rechargeable battery, had a radio and was outfitted with FULL LOGIC.

It was one of those devices that when it failed there was nothing else available that came even close to being as good.

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cock of the walk with one of these

[img] http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01491/soda-stream_1491513i.jp g" target="_blank">http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01491/soda-stream_1491513i.jp g"/> [/img]

If that PS1 is allowed I'll put this here too:

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The best "Aliens" game ever on that.

I got one of these for xmas in 1984. It was ace. You could create voices using the ADSR function AND it was a calculator!

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We had those in school music class - learning to play 'Karma Chameleon' and writing BOOBIES on the same device 😀

cock of the walk with one of these

Haha! We had one of those..... remembering the sound it made when you pressed the button on the top is very evocative.

Also, "engaging" the bottle and pulling the lever did rather feel like loading a shell into a (albeit plasticy) howitzer!

My mate Bob had the smaller VL-10 but it was a bit too fiddly. I struggled to play Vienna on it!

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All this stuff is old, not retro.

It was a marvellously designed piece of kit. Barely any bigger than a cassette box.

Was leafing through PDFs of radioshack catalogues trying to find a pic of my first personal stereo by Realistic. I'm pretty sure it was actuality a reboxed car stereo - same eject/play/fast forward mechanism as you had in a car - and took six HP2 batteries. Not exactly pocket sized, it came with a shoulder strap and you had to wear it like a handbag 🙂

Back in the mid 90s I used to buy up the old Sony pocket TVs cheap from the free-ads - as people realised there was limited entertainment to be had from watching fuzzy, feint, postage stamp sized tv, carefully open them and take the screen out, still attached the internals, and slot it into a 35mm slide projector - bosh - homemade video projector!

Someone on here actually has a Curta?

Actually two people on here have a Curta!

My late father had one, still in the case, which is mine now...

olly2097, never knew that about the sound from a PS1. Have one in a box in the loft, as well as some old, spare speakers. Might have to give that a try!

Still have a working VL-10 as above.

Well, I'm glad it's not just me that appreciated a minidisc player/recorder... I still have mine somewhere and it was the perfect beast to hook into a club mixer and record sets back when I was DJing.

Ah, now I'm getting all mistie-eyed about having to sell my turntables! Damn you all!!!

I still have a PS 1 though. With a load of games. And a Palm 3.

Have one in a box in the loft, as well as some old, spare speakers. Might have to give that a try!

Flashy, later:
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molgrips - Member

I have a Palm Vx - anyone want it?

or, in the near future, IR!

I have a chipped PS1 in the loft and dozens of Russian pirate games.

Palm Pilot in a drawer somewhere, useless piece of junk.

Mini disc player that I never used, knocking around somewhere.

I still have a Psion 3a, great piece of kit, which I used a lot back in the day.

We got given those Hpaq things at work. Useless. The GPS chip was so slow it flattened the battery before it could get a fix from cold.

In 1995 I remember being very close to buying a 3DO console in HMV, then I actually played the very pretty looking Star Wars game that had interested me. It was crap! Luckily for me I walked away.

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The music department at the college where I was studying electronics had one of these. I was so envious of the students who got to use it. I could only drool from a distance.

Oh yeah dug the ps1 out the other week (slimline not the breezeblock one) for the eldest to play on (he's 4) struggled a bit with the stuff we tried (I wasn't going to fire up silent hill) he's getting pretty good at sonic 1/2/3 on the megadrive tho.
emulator not hardware, think my sister still has a working system.

oh blimey.
I've only just binned my Sinclair RPN calculator - the little indy one in its own case. The batteries leaked 🙁 Folk used to borrow it at school / uni, then hand it back when they couldn't get it to work!!

Sinclair QL. Check. Sony SW radio -- it gave up the ghost, flogged it on eBay to a lad in Ukraine who fixed a few capacitors and sold it on..

Had a Newton, sold it a couple years ago. Sinclair micro TV (my dad's from the 70s really). Sold that as well.

Still got my Technics linear LP player - clamps on the vinyl, so it can in theory stand on its side, usually its at a 30o angle for display..

Used to do some development for the 3DO. It lasted about a year didn't it?

I'm serious about the Vx. It's just in the way, and I dont' want to bin it.

Start the bidding at £0+postage

Stoner, scarily accurate depiction! They've got my moves!

Nintendo Mario Bros game and watch bought for me by my folks in Andorra in 1983. The game was pretty addictive, the alarm woke you up in the morning and no one else seemed to have one. Still got all the packaging for it and it still works!

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The Game & Watch stuff is quite collectable these days I believe. Mate had Parachute, spent hours on it.

I had some sort of twin screen Defender-a-like LCD space game, came in a long thin case like a silver pencil case, which popped open into a Toblerone shape. Full of awesome when I was 14, damned if I can remember what it was called now.

That's just reminded me, I've got one of these somewhere:
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