Vintage technology

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I miss the days of Windows 95....... I was late getting into it; but it sure served me well in the late 1990s.

I also remember using Windows 98 and 2000 in middle school as well. Time sure does fly fast......

i still use w98se on my audio restoration puter.

Yes. A Babbage Difference Engine has been reconstructed and its crank could be turned by a steam engine. The Reconstructed Difference Engine is powered electrically ( NOT electronically!). The crank is turned by an electric motor but can also be hand operated. The Babbage Analytical Engine was planned but was never constructed. It was, in principle, the first programmable computers.

ruveyn

Now I had a silly thought of powering one through an exercise bike.

Any thing that produces sufficient torque will do the trick.

ruveyn

If I could, I'd buy a vintage Sony Watchman, even though I would need a digital converter (at least in the US) to use it again.

My love affair with Commodore machines (the Amiga in particular) is one I can't keep quiet about. Then again, you tend to get passionate about a machine that inspired its users to always do what hadn't been done before.

The Amiga is, I find, not given the credit it deserves. By and large, history seems to have forgotten what it was and what it represented: a 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking system, a graphical OS that may fairly be called the first modern graphical OS (one that arguably wasn't equaled until Windows XP came along); it had built-in sound and graphics capabilities which were a quantum leap beyond any other machines in its price range. It had 512 megs of RAM (well, the regular machines did) and that was enough to run nearly anything you wanted with a speed and fluidity that was, at the time, breathtaking. Expansions existed, but the regular user didn't concern themselves with such things. If a program was made for the bog standard Amiga, it'd simply work.

Most of all, it was fun. It was a joy simply using the machine. It was simple, consistent, yet quirky here and there, as if the creators had been having fun making it for you (which they had). It created an enthusiasm, a kind of excitement which swept you with it: when I grew up, it seemed nothing was impossible on that machine. Even when Doom came along, we were quietly confident that someone somewhere would find a way to make it run on a stock Amiga 500.

After all, they'd done just that with Wing Commander and who knows how many other games. Too little RAM in the Amiga? Please. Everybody knew you had to divide the memory cost of a PC program by three to get its Amiga requirements anyway, so that wasn't a worry.


*lost in memories*

i remember way back in 1985/86 when the first amiga came out, i had a barracksmate [in the army then] who excitedly unboxed his unit, put it together and had a geeky good time with it, i remember being amazed that it had actual photographs on it's display, and digitized sounds/music. but the claim of the first modern gui belongs to Xerox and its proprietary PARC [1976] system, which apple fairly ripped-off for its own profit.

Hi Elias! We chatted about the Amiga yesterday! Awesome!

Looking at it, I can't disagree with the official definitions. I still don't feel either PARC or the old Apple OS are anything close to a modern OS though: the latter I did try back in the day, and it was practically a straitjacket with very little in the way of functionality.

Whereas Workbench, well... I'll put it like this. Windows 95 was a step down in OS functionality to my mind, despite coming out ten years later.



Hi! Um... we did? Where?

I still have my Amiga 1200, maxed out on RAM, 16mb or something?, Blizzard card, extra CD drive, external hard drive, modem.

I had been toying with the idea of getting a PC until I saw how slow a friends 133 PC was on the internet and so stuck with my Amiga for a good few years more.
First PC I got was the Dell 8200.

On the subject, I use a 1966 motorcycle to get to work every day, even though it is nearly 500cc, in heavy stop/start traffic, I still get 84 miles to the gallon.

I wish I still had my original A1200 -- it was much like yours, with a Blizzard card, 18mb internal, extra CD and hard drive plus modem. Blizzard cards are practically impossible to get ahold of nowadays. Most of all, I wish I knew what happened to it, but I don't due to an occasionally defective memory (part of my diagnosis).

But when I say it's a modern operating system, I think it's a fair assessment: an expanded A1200 system lets you do pretty much anything you'd do on a modern PC other than play the latest games and watch streaming video. Plus, you know, multitasking.



Sometimes, the old ways are still the best.

One piece of vintage technology I miss is the Curta Calculating machine. This was before photovoltaic powered electronic pocket calculators such as one can buy for under 25 dollars at the local Staples Store. The Curta looked like a pepper grinder but it could do the 4 arithmetic operations to -12 - places pdq. In its time it was a Wonder Machine and it could be carried in one's pocket or brief-case.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

While we are at it, What about K&E, or Pickett slide rules. They guys who put Neil Armstrong on the moon did not have TI electronic hand held calculators. They had crew cuts and slide rules.

One time I brought my slide rule to work and showed it to my younger co-workers. Most of them had no idea what it was and a few said: Oh yes... My dad had one of those...

Curta Calculators and Slide Rules. No batteries or electricity required to run them. And for some calculations they were quicker and easier to use than their electronic successors.

ruveyn

I remember when slide projectors were the norm. In fact, were you aware that the big Press Your Luck game board consisted of 4 slide projectors in each of its 18 squares?

For me, slides were ubiquitous til the end of grade school, then consigned to the dustbin of history. They enjoyed a brief renaissance when video projectors came into vogue: as long as you don't mind the sound of fans, you can put together a decent home video projection system using just a small LCD screen, some foam rubber, duct tape and an overhead projector. Such a system would actually last a lot longer and be far cheaper than first generation home projectors.

Here is a diagram page for the internal workings of the Curta Cylindrical Calculator. They just do not make things like they used to.

Please see: http://www.vcalc.net/images2/Master20s-860x562.jpg

and the German version:

http://www.vcalc.net/images2/Master21G-860x560.jpg

Curta was an inmate of the Nazi concentration camps. He dreamed up his calculator to keep his mind going and after the war he got his design turned into reality. When the electronic calculator came along, machines like the Curta could not compete.

ruveyn