Obsolete Technology: 40 Big Losers

[dnalexander]

Obsolete Technology: 40 Big Losers
By JR Raphael, PC World
Old tech friends we used for years are now deceased or on life support. Remember shrieking modems, paper phone books and the C:\ prompt?
By the time you read this story, the Internet may be obsolete.

Playing video games at an arcade

Once a favorite activity of geeks worldwide, going to the arcade to play video games began fading away in the mid-1990s, just as going to the arcade to play pinball had done a decade before. A few arcades survive, but the days of gamers lining up to toss quarters into "Street Fighter" or "Mortal Kombat" are long gone. It's easy to see why: The advent of advanced gaming systems allows you to experience the same action at home, minus the dungeon-like lighting, the deafening game noise and the premature exhaustion of your lunch money for the week.

Chatting with the SysOp

The SysOp -- short for system administrator -- was a figure of power beginning in the late 1970s and continuing into the early 1990s. As the creator and overlord of the local bulletin board system (BBS), the SysOp watched over the users who dialed into his pre-Internet electronic communication system. He chatted with visitors, kept the system running smoothly and occasionally hit the disconnect button when someone remained logged in for too long.

Hearing the sound of a modem connecting

How a familiar series of sounds could simultaneously be so grating and so gratifying is a mystery that man may never unlock. Jonesing for a fix? Try the 56K Modem Emulator.


Using carbon copy paper
Status: Nearly deceased
With even low-end printers now able to scan, copy and possibly make toast, you don't see old-fashioned carbon copy paper too often, making carbon paper a candidate to join purple-on-white mimeograph paper any day now in the museum of antiquities. And I doubt that anyone's complaining.


See all 40 at the following link.

http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=21159559

[Diane Amberg]

Ah yes, the old hand cranked mimeo machine. I remember it well, and the smell of the mimeo fluid, and the old AB Dick paper too.

[W. Gray]

I can remember watching at work in the early 1980s of someone using a standard telephone of the time to dial up a number and then placing the headset in a cradle which had two rubber seals which fit closely around the ear and mouth piece. It was an acoustical coupler of some type to tie the computer into the DoD internet. There were no monitors then and everything was typed in and typed data came back.

In 1975, when I was living in Springfield, Missouri, a guy came up to our house in a Lincoln Mark II or III and was talking on a telephone in his car. I don't know how it worked as to towers to connect to, etc.

If anyone remembers the Lincoln Mark series, the Mark I was a reintroduction and came out in 1956 at a cost of $10,000, when a ford sedan could be had for $1,500.

[W. Gray]

In 1978, the base administration office called our finance office at McConnell AFB to say there was going to be a "word processor" demonstration. When our person asked the caller "What is a word processor?" the caller said she did not know but we could find out if we sent a representative to the demo.

What the word processor turned out to be was a larger than usual IBM typewriter with a small memory--very primitive compared to today. It might have worked from tape and had no spell check but it was great. Our office of 54 people received an allotment of one. Eventually, some of these super typewriters came with a small five or six inch green screen.

In 1980, the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center in Denver with about 2,500 people had one fax machine. It was used to send "we have to have it now" letters.

It was 1988 before we received our first computer with a Wordstar application, spell check, etc. And it was around 1998 before we received Email capability.

[srkruzich]

I can remember watching at work in the early 1980s of someone using a standard telephone of the time to dial up a number and then placing the headset in a cradle which had two rubber seals which fit closely around the ear and mouth piece. It was an acoustical coupler of some type to tie the computer into the DoD internet. There were no monitors then and everything was typed in and typed data came back.

That was a johnson 300 baud modem.  There is a difference in Baud rate and bit rate which is what modems today are sold as.  All modems are either based on a 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, or 9600 baud rate.  The bit rate is determined on which baud rate  you have plus how many phased signals that are sent down the line.  for example you double 9600 and you have 19200 bit rate.  quadruple 9600 and its 38.8 multiply it by 6 signals down the line and you have 56kbs modems.

[Joanna]

... now I feel dumb...
It's okay, I don't need to know that anyhow. I just need to know someone who knows it; and looks like I do!

Don't tell my boys though, they still believe I'm the smartest woman in the world. 

[flintauqua]

Steve,

Here is a subject area where you are definently more knowledgeable than I and I respect your opinion without question.  So I have a question to ask.  I started my computer era with Atari DOS running on an Atari 1200XL.  I have been told that this dos had the same origin as what Gates & company supposedly sold to IBM before they had legally obtained it from someone in Oklahoma.  (and why did my Aspire just start going slower than said Atari )

Your thoughts?

Charles

[dnalexander]

I too read Steve's post with interest and a little bit of nostalgia. Back in 1980 when Steve knew that he would have been on the cutting edge of technological knowledge;  now that bit of information almost relegates him to the title of ancient technology historian. Thanks Steve for refreshing my memory. It really doesn't seem that long ago I was using one of those modems.

David

[srkruzich]

Steve,

Here is a subject area where you are definently more knowledgeable than I and I respect your opinion without question.  So I have a question to ask.  I started my computer era with Atari DOS running on an Atari 1200XL.  I have been told that this dos had the same origin as what Gates & company supposedly sold to IBM before they had legally obtained it from someone in Oklahoma.  (and why did my Aspire just start going slower than said Atari )

Your thoughts?

Charles

Uhm i never saw atari have a DOS. I seem to remember it was cp/m or something like that. CP/M was much faster than DOS aka IBM Dos because it was true multitasking software.  CP/M Was doslike except that it A. Was a port from Unix. The commands are similar in it  and B. CP/M was true multitasking long before OS/2 and windows attempt at multitasking.

Kaypro was a big manufacturers of CP/M's back in late 70's early 80's.  Then came the IBM Pc which was a 8086 processor i think or was it a 8088. Hmmm i forget.  Sigh  My memory bites!  Anyway, pc jr was the first one.  Then came the 186 processor which was kinda wonky so they quickly went to a 286 processor.  The IBM AT.  That puter sold for 12,000 and it included a RGB monitor, okidata u86 printer, and two floppys and a mountain backup tape a 1200 baud modem, and 40 mb hard drive.  THe memory was 512k but you could expand it to 2 megs with a expanded memory card.

I don't know what the processor on the second machine you had was. But i suspect it was a 186 or something like that and it was slower because it did not multitask. The Atari if i remember right was a moterola processor and it had two buss's one for incoming data and one for outgoing data.  The 186 and 286 only had one buss that input and output.

[srkruzich]

I too read Steve's post with interest and a little bit of nostalgia. Back in 1980 when Steve knew that he would have been on the cutting edge of technological knowledge;  now that bit of information almost relegates him to the title of ancient technology historian. Thanks Steve for refreshing my memory. It really doesn't seem that long ago I was using one of those modems.

David

ROTFL yeah i guess i was there when God made dirt you know

Uhmm todays technology i was using back in 1999.  I was working for scientific atlanta, and we were creating todays techology back then.  For one thing you can get digital cable, high def tv over sat or cable now.  That was being done back in 1999.  We developed the mpeg3 and mpeg4 video streams that are used in the settop boxes.  On top of that we integrated all the available communications technologies into one system so that we could provide everything.  We had satellite, fiber, twisted pair, bnc, cable, wireless, uhmmmm ohh sonar fiber rings, microwave ect.  we could recieve from all forms and transfer down the cable to your tv, or computer and then transmit from your computer or tv back to the various technologies.

My job was to take it and make everything work together.