Other retro tech, then……

This was teh orsumz!

I loved this

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.

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*

@stoner and his ‘handspring’ – pah talk about wrong horse 🙂

But way before that, I wrote programs for these

to interrogate fire extinguisher systems no less. And then I moved on to the mighty

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:

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.

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

IR

A gif representation of IR:

A couple of old watches I wear sometimes:

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Hewlett Packard HP-01[/url] by Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

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Casio Cosmo Phase[/url] by Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

The HP eats batteries – but it’s not just a simple calculator, it can do calculations on time itself 😀

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

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….

Is a mechanical calculator too retro?

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Curta Mark I[/url] by 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 sucker geek I am.

Got a pair of these burbling away in the living room

along with the original technics 1200

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

9210

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:

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

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

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

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.

and

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*

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.

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 steam is wet 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.

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

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

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

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

anyone remember RPN?

Still use it on a daily basis

Still got one of these lurking in it’s box..
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P1020921a[/url] by pickers48[/url], on Flickr