Old tech found in drawers...

[thatsprettyshady]

m444ttb said:

We have a few old cameras that my wife collected inc,using a box brownie and my Dads old Olympus OM1N. Otherwise it's my collection of old,phones (and an iPod Mini). Only one phone is missing. My ex-girlfriend borrowed it in c.2005 and hasn't yet returned it



[snip]

Jonny_ said:

That's the video games and personal audio done, now on to the phones...

First, the mighty 5110. The phone built to survive a zombie apocalypse. Given to me by a mate in 1999 as he'd upgraded to a 7110, this was waaay better than the Philips/Motorola cack that most of my other mates had at the time! Proper dot matrix screen, Snake, battery life measured in weeks... This thing has been untouched since 2001 and still powered up quite happily after a few minutes' charging. I let it fully charge about 3 weeks ago, tried switching it on just now and was pleased to see that it had held a charge, showing 3 bars' worth of life left in it, Not bad for an 18-year-old phone on its original battery.




This is what superseded my 5110: the Trium Mars. Still boxed with all the BT Cellnet/Genie (remember them?) marketing flannel, and a receipt for £39.99 dated 3rd Feb 2001! Sort of works, battery is utterly dead though and the charger has to be held against the port by hand as the plastic clips snapped off years ago. First phone I ever had with mobile internet - WAP, on dial up, which was just about usable for looking at football scores.

[snip]

great posts

[mp3manager]

Plenty of old tech in one pic.

[boxst]

mp3manager said:

Plenty of old tech in one pic.

You are the person that bought the only laser disk player in the UK ;-)

[brickwall]

thatsprettyshady said:

13 year old me had one of these for about a week until the opening mechanism broke.
13 year old me didn't now anything about warranties or SOGA
13 year old me regretted wasting his savings on that piece of crap

You have also just exactly described 13 year old me.

[j3gme]

Pocket space invaders bought in 1982.. Still works

Ghettoblaster still works!

[Oakey]

No pics but I do still have this at my mum's which she uses regularly

[adingley84]

paulrockliffe said:

I tend to clear stuff out rather than keep it, so I don't have much left. I had mini-disc, hugely under-rated at the time, but I had the version that couldn't record on the portable player, which was pretty much twice the thickness of the disc and no bigger. One of the best things I've owned I reckon. I had a separates deck that did 3 CDs and could record to MD that was really neat.

I just had to check this wasn't a post from me! +1

[eliot]

My Olivetti M10, unmarked with case and original manual:

[Impasse]

I bought this to help with my maths O level. I still use it.

[driverrob]

CR6ZZ said:

One of these sits on the mantlepiece in my living room - it's too big to fit in a drawer... The granddaughters find it fascinating and often drag it down to do some sums.

A Brunsviga (IIRC). I was taught to use one of those on my degree course as an alternative to slide rules or 7-figure log tables!

[Steven_RW]

thatsprettyshady said:

... whatever happened to Pipex?

I used Pipex as a reliable ISP when I was playing competitive counter strike. Then they were taken over by talk talk, who whilst crap in the customer service contact department are hassle free in terms of their unlimited package etc. So as far as i am concerned, I am technically still on my pipex contract.. sort of ;-)

Cheers

RW

[MitchT]

judas said:

I collect old pocket computers/PDAs from the late 70s - early 90s

Here's some of my collection.



Happy to accept donations if anyone wants to get rid of theirs

Is that the Seiko computer watch thingy on the bottom shelf? I had one of those!

[Du1point8]

Plus loads more including a beocord 1500

[Morningside]

Steven_RW said:

thatsprettyshady said:

... whatever happened to Pipex?

I used Pipex as a reliable ISP when I was playing competitive counter strike. Then they were taken over by talk talk, who whilst crap in the customer service contact department are hassle free in terms of their unlimited package etc. So as far as i am concerned, I am technically still on my pipex contract.. sort of ;-)

Cheers

RW

There used to be a new VW beetle round here with the numberplate P1 PEX.

[judas]

MitchT said:

Is that the Seiko computer watch thingy on the bottom shelf? I had one of those!

Well spotted

[droopsnoot]

Rostfritt said:

Tech does have a short life when it is on it's own, when attached to some expensive hardware it can end up having to survive a long time.

There was some mention in an Octane article about visiting the McLaren secret storage depot for their older race cars that there's a pile of old Compaq laptops that they were buying off eBay because anything newer won't run the diagnostic software for the F1 road car.

[vtecsilver]

Just remembered I still have this Toshiba Libretto 70CT with the extra capacity battery. It's about 21cm wide, 14cm deep and 4cm thick. Still fires up and is runnning Windows 95. Beside it is a PCMCIA Network card, this laptop doesn't have a built-in network adapter and there's no USB connectors either.



A Casio "32Kb Digital Diary SF 4300", not sure if this still working, I know I replaced the batteries, but took them out again very quickly, possibly because it didn't work.



Picture of the Creative Zen 20GB (real hard disk!) MP3 player. This still works, though it sometimes needs resetting before it will switch on. Still have original box and contents. The white part in the middle is actually a touch sensitive slider!

Edited by vtecsilver on Monday 4th July 12:59

Edited by vtecsilver on Monday 4th July 13:00

[Vitorio]

vtecsilver said:

Picture of the Creative Zen 20GB (real hard disk!) MP3 player. This still works, though it sometimes needs resetting before it will switch on. Still have original box and contents. The white part in the middle is actually a touch sensitive slider!

I had one of these as my first MP3 player:

Lovely how small that was, and the fact that the white part functioned basically as a usb stick was handy as well.

And i should have this one in a box in the attic, it has a tiny little compact flash card sized hard drive inside:

[parabolica]

If you really want to geek out about old tech I'd recommend checking out LGR's (lazy game review's) Oddware Series playlist on his Youtube channel. The guy collects all sorts of old tech and obsolete equipment and does videos about them. Very entertaining, not least because he has the best made-for-radio voice on all of youtube

[Downward]

Skyedriver said:

Believe they were called Comptometer - when I started work in the early 70's there was an office full of ladies using them

Yep I worked at a foundry from 1997 to 1999.
One of the old ladies there used one to do the payroll.