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Old 5th Dec 2020, 5:03 pm   #21
The Philpott
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

With electrical tech you do have youtube heroes coming forward as an influence- Clive Mitchell and Julian Ilett with new electrics & electronics, Andy Moir and Colin Furze with creative and dangerous input, JW and Techmoan with all sorts of related tech new and old. Mr.Carlsson's lab is one i haven't studied yet, but looks interesting.

I think we may well HAVE passed the golden age of collectability, which could place the older stuff in greater demand.
Dave
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 6:50 pm   #22
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

"Backward compatibility" is fine - up to a point. I really wouldn't want my new computer/phone/tablet to come with the ability to read 80-column punched-cards or 8-hole paper-tape, even though they were what I cut my computing-teeth on.

I remember the brief uprage and outroar when Apple announced that they were not including floppy-disc support in the new models of iMac. Within a year nobody cared, because 256-Megabyte USB memory-sticks had become a cheap, efficient, reliable and ubiquitous way to port data.

And who in their right mind would design a modern computing-infrastructure to be backward-compatible with the days of 1200/75 analog dialup?

I''d rather focus on forward-compatibility: can legacy systems be adapted/upgraded to work with modern infrastructure? In the radio/audio/video world the laggards can fit Bluetooth modules/use Pantry-Transmitters to make their old radios still work, and the "set-top-box" solution still works for old analog TVs.

In the 1990s I did a bunch of "Current Awareness" seminars for techies - my last Overhead-Projector foil [remember them? another dead technology!] said:

"FORWARD! IN ALL DIRECTIONS!!!"
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 8:01 pm   #23
MotorBikeLes
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Take the large screen TV (Philips, I am thinking of you) where a simple easily obtainable eprom chip but with a special mask. Long since NLA, the set was condemned as scrap by the repair shop. With that one I had a bright idea and fixed it.
The Telequipment D63/DM63 has an unobtainable TEK chip. I had no failures, but happen to have a couple of chips tucked away. No way I could find a way around that, nor could most repairers. But Mark H of this forum DID find a way around.

Thank goodness for my 1980s radios, though the Grundig Satelite could be a repair too far with some of its chips.
Les.

Last edited by Cobaltblue; 5th Dec 2020 at 8:16 pm. Reason: Removed Vehicle refferences
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 8:12 pm   #24
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Several posts have been deleted or edited for totally unnecessary Vehicle references.

Please stay on topic, no vehicles.

Cheers

Mike T
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 8:42 pm   #25
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by duncanlowe View Post
... A friend of mine owns a traction engine, and certainly isn't rich.
He will be if he sells it

Collectable items in the past, before the advent of tech, were all works of art.

Those works of art are still collectable, and Old Masters still change hands 'for the price of a hospital wing'. ( Del Amitri )

When the Industrial Revolution arrived it introduced the World to the concept of mass production. Now anybody could have an 'Old Master' in their living room, although lit by candles or gas lamps.

Prior to electricity there were not many domestic bits of tech, but when it arrived it opened the floodgates. Now homes were full of radios, gramophones, lights, washing machines, irons, ovens, bed warmers, you name it.

This flood was the result of electricity and mass production, and as collectability is determined by scarcity, nothing was deemed worthy of collection.

Today we are at the end of the first generation to recognise the rate of progress, and so there is maybe an understable nostalgic action to hang onto those 'Old Masters', but will they ever be worth more than any other mass produced item ?. Admittededly, the 'first' of anything will attract attention, but the vast majority are just products off a conveyor line.

Will our children want to fill their living rooms with our old tat, or should we be finding museum places for them ? ( The radios, not the children. )

When I say museum, I don't envisage something like the V&A, more like the rural crafts museums dotted around. Nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live like that.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 8:54 pm   #26
duncanlowe
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

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Originally Posted by Cobaltblue View Post
Several posts have been deleted or edited for totally unnecessary Vehicle references.

Please stay on topic, no vehicles.

Cheers

Mike T
OK. Sorry. I believed it was relevant as an example of how more modern stuff could remain supported when it was no longer simply analogue.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 10:00 pm   #27
GMB
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

In a post, now deleted, I suggested that vintage technology in general seems to maintain a life where the modern world has enough backwards compatibility in infrastructure to keep it relevant. So AM and FM radios still work and are useful. But when the day comes when they stop working I wonder if people will loose interest. We can see that with TVs which I would suggest are now a much more niche aspect because you have to provide your own feed for them.

Quote:
I really wouldn't want my new computer/phone/tablet to come with the ability to read 80-column punched-cards
You confuse the ability to do it, which any modern PC can do (with the peripherals) with being a requirement.
Quote:
When Apple announced that they were not including floppy-disc support in the new models of iMac
Modern Windows PCs have no problems with floppy drives - if you want them. Just because modern PCs don't have them doesn't mean you can't have them. So some vintage peripherals are still very useable - and will remain so unless the software of the future turns its back on them.

Quote:
And who in their right mind would design a modern computing-infrastructure to be backward-compatible with the days of 1200/75 analog dialup?
Backward compatibility is not about designing it in, it's about not dropping it just because you can. Linux systems work just fine with 1200/75 dialup - if you want to do it.
I would suggest that one of the successes of the Windows PC - which is going to have a very long life - is that it has generally kept old interfaces working. But the shame is that the individual machines have a timed life due to internal firmware rot so do not appear to have a vintage future waiting.
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Old 5th Dec 2020, 10:16 pm   #28
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Sure, Windows may still have software-support for legacy devices, but the _hardware_ generally doesn't [just try connecting an IDE drive to any PC sold in the last decade... or finding an ISA/EISA slot on its motherboard... or a VGA video-output, or PS/2-style mouse/keyboard connectors].

In my attic I've got a bunch of original slow-SCSI disk-drives - none of which have a capacity of more than 500Mbytes. They contain a RAIDed image of the mailspool of one of my clients, taken the day before the Y2K rollover happened. "Just in case". Sure, if I was pushed and there was no limit on budgets I could perhaps find a Sun SPARCstation-1 and build it up with a suitable SunOS image and maybe get sendmail into a position where it could connect to the outside world and transmit the content of the mailspool.

Just because "you can do it" doesn't mean it's sane to do.

Look forward!
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 12:25 am   #29
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Steampunk is trivialising the function of vintage mechanisms and electronics, favouring form over function. It's pleasing that people admire retro styles, but upsetting that the meaning and function of the artefacts is often completely castrated. There's a very new (and parallel) craze in the world of classics which is off topic; but will be obvious to those in the know.

Dave
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 1:13 am   #30
Junk Box Nick
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

To me it's about finding the (my) sweet spot between it's no longer of any use because it's compatible with nothing while newer is far far better in every respect and planned obsolescence which in some of my experience boils down to 'let's make it difficult for the user to use perfectly fit for purpose kit so they will just buy a new one'.

In my working environment technology has gone from what was once almost a user-manufacturer fraternity to making it as difficult as possible for the user to use older but perfectly serviceable kit. Years ago old software was readily available. Today you have to know the wangles to set up kit just a few years old. In the face of this lot of places with rigid procurement procedures scrap perfectly good equipment. In our little corner we gave up 'latest and greatest' years ago. The irony is we often produce tricky work for those in the trade who despite having latest and greatest find these tasks too difficult! (It's best not to let on - the work probably wouldn't come.)

When this kit becomes vintage - perhaps someone will be interested in it though probably from a different (younger) generation - keeping it going will rely on a few dedicated souls who, in an element of defiance, have kept all the software and knowledge, rather like we have experts in obscure techniques on this forum.

This kit has no appeal for me but vintage means different things to different generations. I think what is interesting is that younger people, if not exactly in droves, are interested in 'our type of vintage' simply because it has more soul than a lot of more recent technology.

(This post written on a twelve year old machine running Linux Mint 19 OS)
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 4:56 am   #31
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

I will also confess to collecting several utterly useless items because the form and design appealed to me - I have Sinclair's flat TV for example (non working and even if it did NZ is now digital TV) and his micromatic radio. I'd like one of his old digital watches if I could find one as they were one of the first I'd even seen. Likewise I have an electric razor of a design that appealed, even though I have had a full beard for the last 50 odd years and no intention of loosing it I find the designs inspiring and how the future could be. The true collector of course does not worry about value - or even number. I understand the aim of the Japanese ceramic collectors is to get their collections down to as FEW a number of items that illustrate their taste and that a famous Raku one was dismayed as he could not get his number down to six like a rival but was stuck on seven. I sometimes think when I contemplate the numbers of Avos etc I have that MAY not be such a bad idea after all - but then I try to decide which one can go!! LOL.
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 11:28 am   #32
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

I've had a collection. But I'm a not a "collector" - at least not in the sense that most people are using the word. Genuine collectors amass a number of "entities" (to use a very vague generic term for just about anything) which have some characteristic of feature in common. Could be radios from one manufacturer. Could be toasters made between 1940 and 1950.

I know I am not a collector because I have just dispensed with about 70% of my "pile of electronics" (it was never a "collection") - and am working hard to get rid of the remaining 29%. I will retain about 1% as a souvenir of a mad time in my life, when I allowed myself to give a home to endless bits of interesting electronics. And I acquired items solely because I was interested in understanding more about the item - not because it might add to some mythical "collection".

In this regard I seem to be unusual - though not unique. I have met people who were very happy with just one or two items of vintage electronics. An AR-88D receiver say (which is a fine classic communications receiver), but had no urge to get any more. No hint that they felt compelled to add an AR-88LF, just because they had the D!

The true collector will thus never be happy with just one example of say the well-loved T1154 transmitter. One such person I knew of just "had to" acquire an example of every mark of that transmitter: T1154, T1154A, T1154B, T1154C, T1154D, T1154E.......and so on. I might point out that only difference between the T1154A and the T1154E is that one has an aluminium case, and the other has a steel case. Only the true "collector" could obsessed with this level of detail.......



Richard

P.S. I won't go into it, but there is some psychology behind the urge to collect stuff - and I don't see that changing any time soon. The OPs fear that collecting of <xyz> will cease is extremely unlikely. Particular types of <xyz> might stop being collected because they are no longer available (see my earlier post), but that won't stop the collecting.
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 12:12 pm   #33
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

You sound like me, Richard. I enjoy fixing things and when I've done that, if I've no actual use for it, it's out the door.

I didn't know about the Japanese idea of collecting as few whatevers as possible but that's how I approach things. I like old telephones but don't want one of every colour as I don't particularly like some of them and not need that many 'phones.
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 3:26 pm   #34
Junk Box Nick
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

The psychology behind collecting I find interesting. I know some obsessive collectors. What is the motivation? A huge collection of records, every edition of a particular book or even vintage radios, though the latter will have more visual appeal, isn't an immediately obvious status symbol. I have very occasionally been a complete-ist but only because I happened to have built up a collection by accident, through a subscription or part-work for example, and may want to fill a gap when something was missed.

I'm probably more of a hoarder than a collector and have always been happy to get the mileage out of purchases which is much of the reason I have the vintage stuff I have. A lot of it was relatively new when first acquired; and if second-hand because it was available at a much better price with only marginally less performance or features than latest and greatest. Other acquisitions posed a challenge: could I make something of and give life to this thing that in any other hands was headed for the tip? I have sometimes done this in the face of scorn and as a result perhaps with a certain amount of bloodymindedness.

It probably helps that I have inherited a lot of make do and mend genes. Yesterday saw me using some woodwork tools that belonged to my father. They will date back to the 1930s. It's nice to think they still have a life in my hands.
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 4:00 pm   #35
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

That sounds familiar as well, Nick.

As I say I don't collect things but that isn't to say that I haven't got a house and five sheds full of junk that might be useful sometime. It's annoying as when I think about having a purge that'll be the time that something I've sat on for thirty years does prove its worth and make me even more loathe to dump stuff.

A few years ago a friend and I went to the Traditional Heritage Museum at Elsecar. Looking round I kept saying "I've got one of those" and even "I was using one of those yesterday."

The same friend often remarked that for all that I don't make any effort to be 'Green' I did more re-cycling, and consumed less of the planets resources, than anybody he knew.
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 4:25 pm   #36
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

The dividing line between collecting and hoarding [post 34*] certainly can get very thin for a lot of us [don't we know it]. This interesting thread seems to have two sorts of responders. One takes it to mean the overall social and practical future of vintage technology, in the broader context of society. The other seems to focus on what will be the technical nature of any technology that becomes vintage in the future? Of course the two are not incompatible by any means!

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Old 6th Dec 2020, 4:46 pm   #37
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

Quote:
......what will be the technical nature of any technology that becomes vintage in the future?
Part of that question is when does something become vintage? Here's my definition.

Something is "vintage" when you can no longer buy it new from any normal commercial outlet. That excludes those few that turn up on Ebay as "new old stock" - sometimes many decades after they were last sold as a regular commercial item.

Note that I am not suggesting anyone would actually want to start collecting all the things that become "vintage" under that definition. And the really clever collectors do their buying before anyone else starts collecting - that way they often get given stuff, rather than have to shell out at "collectors' prices"!

Richard
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 5:02 pm   #38
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Quote:
The psychology behind collecting I find interesting. I know some obsessive collectors. What is the motivation?
I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that the motivation is the same as for any other addiction. Only this addiction is generally a good deal less harmful to the collector, than some other things people get addicted to.

Where collecting does get harmful is where it drives someone to scamming, extortion and outright theft. I know of cases. There was an editorial by Rob Mannion, then editor of Practical Wireless magazine, maybe some 15 - 20 years ago, where he describes his very unpleasant brush with the collecting community. Sadly I had to endorse what he said.


Richard
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 5:23 pm   #39
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

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I won't go into it, but there is some psychology behind the urge to collect stuff -
The Pokemon Syndrome "Gotta Gettem ALL"

David (AR88, no suffix letter!)
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Old 6th Dec 2020, 6:30 pm   #40
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

I hope for a future in which objects return to TonyDuell's 'sweet-spot' of functionality and repairability. I have old stuff because it's nice to look at, and is often of a higher build quality than anything equivalent I could possibly afford today.

Being able to continue to use something that has had a very lengthy life, compared with another plastic gizmo with software that will become incompatible in the next 10 years is why I have DIY valved hi-fi rather than the latest B&O.

I took my Uher cassette deck to work the other day, and my colleague bid for one on eBay as soon as she discovered it could run on 12V. The robustness of cassettes and the repairability of the machine means that she can run it off her batteries (she lives up a hill without running water, but a few photovoltaics) and record/playback her own tapes. Much more robust and practical than an SSD recorder, though its 40 years old.

The convenience overload of modern technology often makes it worse at doing one thing well, then it has to be dumped when some plastic clip snaps. Things like amplifiers and test equipment that can be repaired and work with a reasonable analogue input surely aren't going anywhere.
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