Older technology you have used

[Cirrus. 1,093]

So recently I've been disassembling some old (early 00's) computers at work so they can get rid of them. I was thinking how they didn't seem really all that old to me.

 

 

I was just wondering what technology some of you guys have used in your lives that already was, or was becoming old BACK around the early 2000's?

 

I put some stuff I could think of in the survey. If you haven't done or used some of the stuff, list it in your post. Listing your age would make it more interesting.

 

I'm 27 and have done/used all of the things in the survey either in school or at home.

 

I don't miss most of it. Setting up and playing a vinyl record can be fun though once in a while.

 

 

All of this kind of reminds me of Pinkie's 90s-ish VHS quality rap in "Testing 1,2,3" 

 

Edited March 16, 2016 by Cirrus.

[Gearbox10mm 794]

How about a Sega Genesis? It seemed like the only way to get them to work was to blow air into the bottom of the game cartridge.

[Cirrus. 1,093]

How about a Sega Genesis? It seemed like the only way to get them to work was to blow air into the bottom of the game cartridge.

You just made me remember that my uncle had that when he was my age. I was 7 and maybe only played it like once or twice.

[frenchie1995 73]

Oh how I have forgotten so many of those things! The only thing from the survey that I haven't done is record on a cassette tape. I used to use cassettes all the time, but to my best recollection, I never really had a purpose to record on a cassette as a kid. I recently bought a new record player since they are coming back in style and it was so fun to listen to all of the old music! So many scratches and skips!!! 

[Flutter's lover <3 8,210]

God yes. I remember carrying around 5-7 differnet 3.5'' Floppy disks for schoolwork back in Elementary and High School...USB drives were outrageously priced at the time...like $40 for 128mb. Our very first home PC had both 5'' and 3.5'' floppy drives....running windows 3.1

 

We still have a turntable for our vinyl records....Still love listening to LPs.

 

It wasn't until I was about 10 that we got Dial-Up internet...we got High speed when I was about 16-17

 

I loved the sound of Dot Matrix printers. Was all we had in School. Which were hooked up to our Windows 98 machines.

 

VCR? Hell yea...we bought So many blank VHS tapes to record stuff. Then we got a PVR/DVR and no longer had to used them.

 

Heck, I'm 27 and I had an 8-Track player in my stereo setup. I remember my dad's Pontiac LeMans having an 8-Track tape deck as well.

[Celtore 2,770]

Oh come on, guys! I loved the dialup noise!

 

Well, im 23 and I've used tapes, floppy's, dialup internet and computers which told you when it was "safe" to turn it off via the power button. I kind of miss floppy disks, though not for their storage capacity. Those little metal parts on them were fun to play with while the machine and Internet booted up.

 

Also, I still have my old VCR and all these movies my parents and my grandfather bought/recorded. I haven't hooked that thing up in a while, but it should still be possible.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Celtore

[Cirrus. 1,093]

Oh how I have forgotten so many of those things! The only thing from the survey that I haven't done is record on a cassette tape. I used to use cassettes all the time, but to my best recollection, I never really had a purpose to record on a cassette as a kid. I recently bought a new record player since they are coming back in style and it was so fun to listen to all of the old music! So many scratches and skips!!! 

You know what would be funny?- Get some middle or high school kids and bring them a stereo Hi-Fi component setup that is properly hooked up already and ask them to record from a vinyl record onto a cassette and than from a CD to the cassette also. Most of them will probably look at you like you have three heads or will look like a deer in the headlights!!!   In all seriousness, it is actually a little bit of a process. Isn't having iTunes these days great? XD

Edited March 16, 2016 by Cirrus.

[baba_booey 4,304]

I used a VCR and VHS tapes.. still have 'em all. I was born in 2001, so I never had access to stuff like dial-up, floppy discs or record players since those were outdated by the time I was able to actually do stuff. Although, I think the first computer I used did need to be turned off as it was one of those older PCs (with Windows 98 IIRC), but I don't remember it much.

 

Also, if it counts, I have a few older consoles that I still play on today - SNES, Genesis, PS1, N64, Gamecube and GBA SP, so there's that too

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,307]

I said "yes" to everything but record player, dot matrix printer (as I wasn't quite sure what that was), and laserdisc.

 

I remember setting up the tape recorder in front of my television and recording Super Nintendo music onto a cassette.  I inherited a giant-ass stereo system from my uncle that actually played records, cassettes, and compact discs, but I never had a record to try on the thing (and couldn't get the stereo to work half the time, anyway).

 

I held onto some VHS tapes for quite a while.  Tapes onto which I'd recorded some, uh, "late night content."  I did more or less similar things with 3.5 floppy discs.  This was still forever ago, though.

 

I owned an Aquarius personal "computer" (it was just a keyboard with spongy keys) well after far better technology existed. xD  I used it to program simple text games as a kid.

 

Oh, and I'm thirty-three.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Ziggy and Angelbaby

[frenchie1995 73]

 

 

I kind of miss floppy disks, though not for their storage capacity. Those little metal parts on them were fun to play with while the machine and Internet booted up.

 

So many memories of sitting at the computer doing this exact thing just flashed through my head!!!  

 

 

 

You know what would be funny?- Get some middle or high school kids and bring them a stereo Hi-Fi component setup that is properly hooked up already and ask them to record from a vinyl record onto a cassette and than from a CD to the cassette also. Most of them will probably look at you like you have three heads or will look like a deer in the headlights!!!   In all seriousness, it is actually a little bit of a process. Isn't having iTunes these days great? XD

 

I personally have a burning hatred of iTunes, but I do get the point you are trying to make!   Every time I used iTunes i ended up losing everything I wanted and everything I didn't want ended up on my iPod...

[Wax n' Wane 103]

Anyone here ever use an old mechanical typewriter?  Messy, but something I loved to use.

[Discordian 6,023]

I use this wonderful old technology called pants every day. I know, I'm so oldschool.

[Scrubbed user 3,417]

I still remember our old Dell that ran on Windows 95. It was pretty middle-of-the-road for the late 90's. We still have a couple of games that were on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks that we can't use. Even though I never really used the internet until about 2005, I still despise dial-up.

 

Not that long ago, I took apart a computer that had an Intel Pentium II in it and a 3DFX GPU. I had never seen a motherboard with Slot 1 on it.

[Envy 6,480]

I've used/done most of those.

 

Funny story, the PC I got in 2004 for some reason never had properly working USB drives. I remember in my senior year of high school (2006/2007) I used a (the small type, never heard of the bigger type) floppy disc to bring files to school with me. That was already well out of date at that point, although the PCs very much still had floppy drives!

 

All too familiar with dial-up internet! I was already becoming addicted to the internet with it. My mom hated that because it took up the phone line. We ended up getting high-speed internet and cell phones around the same time, it would have helped if we had cell phones before then!

Edited March 17, 2016 by Envy

[Concerned Bystander 2,906]

Yes to all of the above, and also pulse dialing phones.  I still have much of that 'older technology' sitting up in the loft.

[CandyStrike 603]

I remember listening to cassette tapes, but I was too young to work them and I think CDs came about before I was old enough to understand how to use them.  But, VHS I remember! I still have a VHS player and some tapes. I might have used floppy discs in elementary school, but I don't remember. 

[Sapphire Lightning 784]

Learned to code as a kid on my Commodore 64. I would print out rough drafts of school work on my Dot Matrix printer, but the final copies always were printed with my DAISY WHEEL PRINTER (that is even more old school). I did that because we were allowed to use a typewritter but not a computer for school work. Well a page printed on a daisy wheel printer looked type-written so no harm no foul, right?

I remember as a kid copying my mother's Thriller LP over to tape so I could play it in my Sony Walkman.

I ran my own BBS in the early 90's using a 14.4 kbs modem (max speed 2 KiloBytes per second).

 

Those were interesting days, and I live vicariously in those days by running my own set of IRC channels. (With my IRC client set to black background to make it look like I was using a terminal program.)

 

Anypony here remember dialing in to a BBS? Do you even know what a BBS is?

[Once In A Blue Moon 896]

I had loads of cassette tapes - every time something like Just William or, the most used one, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (read by Stephen Fry), was coming up on the radio I'd pop one in and record it. Then there would be skips in the story as I had to rotate or switch out the tape. Rather bad piracy, now that I think about it, but my excuse is that I was young. Same for VHS - Noah's Island, Robot Wars.

 

I had a couple of games on 3.5" floppy disks (I recall a good Jungle Book one), but we got Red Alert on a CD and I can't remember any floppy disk games after that. I also remember getting loads of CDs per game (one for allies, one for soviets in Red Alert 2, and I think it was 4 for Rome Total War) whereas these days all a CD has on it is a steam code for me to download it - it might as well be on a floppy disk, given how little data is required.

 

I haven't seen any cathode-ray tube televisions or computer screens for a while. Still almost no space on my desk, though, so presumably I've just acquired more clutter since then.

[Shanks 10,817]

I am 30 years old andI have used and grown up with a lot of technologies which are now considered obsolete My first video game console was an NES, I used to play computer games in the school computer lab on an old school Mac with one of the games being Oregon Trail. I used to have a casette and then a CD walkman, I remember freaking out when I got my first computer that didn't have a floppy disk drive. I still have some not so fond memories of dialup internet,  I have watched ALOT of VHS tapes in my day and I could probably think of a few other examples with some time.

[Denim&Venöm 21,238]

Fun fact: I actually recorded on tape a few weeks ago when I was supposed to have gotten my cable box swapped out. 

 

And I have a record player right next to me. 

[Crypty Scribbles 6,770]

Hell! Nostalgia thread!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE_iCgBUacQ

 

 

I use this wonderful old technology called pants every day. I know, I'm so oldschool.

C'mon dude. Pants are not so old. Only couple thousands years.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Crypty <3~

[Scrubbed user 3,417]

That startup sound is literally my childhood. 

Edited March 17, 2016 by Azure Flare

[power strike 198]

the oldest i have used was a hp computer with windows 95 with one of those big floppy bendable floppy disks that had duck tales on it (still has the title cover on it) not sure how much they are worth and also used a atari console called  ( the colombia home arcade) still works just cant find the cords and have a box of games for it xD

[Riganthor 484]

I have used a typewriter once and had a pc in my room where you had to put in commands into DOS to get a game started. Oh and a black and white TV and we have a original pong game somewhere in this house

[Sunwalker 981]

I am 31. I have already recorded shows in a VHS tape and watched them in a tube TV. I still have memories of when the tape just got tangled inside the VHS, and I had to untangle it, haha

 

I have started browsing the Internet with dial up several years ago. I still remember how slow it was, and how expensive it could get. Usually you had to connect, quickly look for what you want, and then disconnect. Unless on weekends, when phone calls were cheaper. And it was common for dial up plans to have limited minutes . The dial up modem noise was cool, though

 

I have also recorded and listened to cassette tapes