Obsolete things from the 1980s
- Thread starter Retro
- Start date
My mom had a Walkman, dunno if she still has it. My brother and I had a portable tape player that we would play a Sesame Street cassette on that was copied from a record. We also had a videotape of me probably two years old at grandpa's house for Christmas where one of the presents was a My Little Sony.
We ended up getting lot of old tech as hand-me-downs because our dad worked IT at the time. I don't remember most of what we got besides lots of floppies (3.5") and CDs of old software, a laser printer, two dot matrix printers, zip drives, a jaz drive (jammed, but came with the case!), old Pentium computers, CRT monitors (remember the venerable Sony Trinitron? 15" monitor)
Once we moved house, most of it went to the trash. The rest ended up in trash during subsequent moves.
Once we moved house, most of it went to the trash. The rest ended up in trash during subsequent moves.
Astro What
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Fax machines still exist amongst almost every office in some manner or another. One of the medical clinics I do consulting for has both a dedicated fax machine and then to add to it the copier has fax capability. Then add on top of that the medical software has the ability to fax directly from it.... so it is not a dead functionality.
And for printing.. if it's simple text, I'll always prefer a dot matrix. It's cheaper to use and more reliable.
In one way I miss the arcade games.. in another (mainly my pocket book) I prefer the consoles. But you can't beat the friendships you made in the arcades.
The ironic thing about payphone (even if it was of great benefit) near the end they were a favorite choice of drug dealers since they thought they were harder to trace calls.
I STILL keep paper maps in my vehicle.. both standard roadway and also topographical for several areas. The thing many don't think of.. if those satellites and cell towers take a might dump on themselves... you don't have anything if you don't have paper.
Several of the things mentioned in the video are just trash (like boom boxes) but others still exist and are used.
If you want to talk flash-back.. how many remember the modem sounds as it was connecting to the BBS you were dialing?
And for printing.. if it's simple text, I'll always prefer a dot matrix. It's cheaper to use and more reliable.
In one way I miss the arcade games.. in another (mainly my pocket book) I prefer the consoles. But you can't beat the friendships you made in the arcades.
The ironic thing about payphone (even if it was of great benefit) near the end they were a favorite choice of drug dealers since they thought they were harder to trace calls.
I STILL keep paper maps in my vehicle.. both standard roadway and also topographical for several areas. The thing many don't think of.. if those satellites and cell towers take a might dump on themselves... you don't have anything if you don't have paper.
Several of the things mentioned in the video are just trash (like boom boxes) but others still exist and are used.
If you want to talk flash-back.. how many remember the modem sounds as it was connecting to the BBS you were dialing?
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Even after all these years of digital video recorders having become the norm, I still get a bit of that wow feeling over their VCR forebears and am so glad that I don't have to put up with those anymore. These days it's glorious UHD HDR on a large flat screen TV, no recording degradation, recording multiple channels at once while playing a recording, no ruined entangled tapes and more. This is one great example of where the "good" old days weren't so good.
@Astro What as far as those boomboxes go, I called them exactly what they were: stereo cassette radios. I really dislike the other names which sound so stupid.
Also, the good, expensive large ones were really something to behold and, crucially, had decent sound quality too with good bass. Shame I could never afford one of those which I think were something like £400 back in 1982, a huge sum of money and not chump change even now.
@Astro What as far as those boomboxes go, I called them exactly what they were: stereo cassette radios. I really dislike the other names which sound so stupid.
Also, the good, expensive large ones were really something to behold and, crucially, had decent sound quality too with good bass. Shame I could never afford one of those which I think were something like £400 back in 1982, a huge sum of money and not chump change even now.
I think that paper maps will come in clutch soon within our lifetimes because eventually someone will makes a mistake when shooting a rocket into low earth orbit causing a crash that cascades into tons of space debris taking out all satellites for a century or more.
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