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Old 27th Feb 2021, 12:31 am   #61
Paul Stenning
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

For me a big one was home video recorders. For the first time we could watch programmes when we wanted (once we'd figured out the timer so it recorded!) and even rent movies to watch at home.

As with anything new the early machines were very expensive, difficult to use, not that reliable, and uncertainty about competing formats so most people rented, but they soon improved, VHS was winning the war, and they became cheap enough to buy outright.

Amazing technology at the time. But compared to PVRs, which are now a dying breed replaced by streaming, it's old and quaint. I still have a working VHS machine though and around 80 tapes (mostly music compilations and concerts etc never released on DVD).
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Old 27th Feb 2021, 12:45 am   #62
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I remember back in the early 80s seeing a 3.5" floppy disc and being impressed thinking how do they get so much data on such a small disc, being used to 5.25" discs with a capacity of 100k.

Then in the mid 90s the 100Mb Zip disc with 10% of the storage of a typical hard drive of the time in the size of a floppy disc. I still have about 40 discs some of which were used in a photo project I was involved with around 2000. And I even have a USB reader for them.

Now I use a 32G SD card to store all my music for use in the car.

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Old 28th Feb 2021, 12:13 am   #63
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Back in the days when 20-40MB MFM hard disks were normal in 286 PCs, I was given a 200MB or thereabouts hard disk and controller (supposedly with an intermittent problem but it worked fine for me). It seemed massive and I wondered how I would ever come close to filling it!
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Old 28th Feb 2021, 1:32 pm   #64
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I suppose plasma TV will soon be under this heading, though, like DAT and minidisc, they still have their adherents.
Oh - I've just realised that's me!
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Old 28th Feb 2021, 1:51 pm   #65
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Has anyone sent a Telex recently? There are machines being sold as 'vintage', with corresponding price tags. Having a telex has to be the next hipster fad. I ought to corner the market and buy them all up.

A £20 dumbphone is the ultimate status symbol in my opinion. If you can afford to have such a beast, then I am deeply jealous. Us worker bees need fancy smartphones so we can be at the market's beck and call 24/7 -(
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Old 28th Feb 2021, 2:01 pm   #66
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Is a dumb phone one which is too stupid to know it’s supposed to break when you drop it?

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Old 28th Feb 2021, 5:36 pm   #67
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

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Is a dumb phone one which is too stupid to know it’s supposed to break when you drop it?
I beat you to that joke years ago and I may not have been the first. I followed it up with "And it still thinks a battery is a jolly good place to keep some electricity."

I have a 'thick phone' for two simple reasons:

It has far better range, and up in the hills of the Borders it can connect to cells up to 40km away. So if someone comes off a horse in a way that needs serious help, I'm the one that can make the call. The smart phones are all useless. But they do compensate for this with a range of graphical games. Their mapping apps are useless without a connection and their GPS behaviour is spotty.

Secondly, the battery will run the thing for just about a week, fallen from 2 weeks when it was new.

I'll have a smart phone when they've caught up.

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Old 2nd Mar 2021, 8:51 pm   #68
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Smartphones work better in that situation if you go into the settings and turn off the 4g so the phone only works on 3g.

Otherwise it will continue to try and access 4g and will often claim that there is a signal, so you try to make a call, then it changes to "no service"

These phones are supposed to default to 3g automatically but if there's even a trace of 4g bouncing off a hillside the phone will latch into it.
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Old 8th Mar 2021, 11:00 am   #69
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

One thing I recall was back in the early 80's a report of a data storage system (using a crystal??) that could theoretically store 5 gigabytes BUT was discarded as impractical because it would have taken over 100 years for the computers operating at the speeds they then had to actually use the media/find something.
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Old 8th Mar 2021, 12:32 pm   #70
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I find that 100 years to use 5GB a little difficult to swallow given that we were happily running databases in excess of 2GB back then, albeit on a mainframe computer that filled a room the size of a football pitch.
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 12:05 am   #71
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Phone cards were one area of technology which in the UK at least seemed to come & go in about 20 years.

I did wonder why BT give up on phone cards but stuck with coin operated pay phones.

Was the card technology too easy to hack & BT didn't want to change all the cardphones when mobile phone use was raising?
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 12:48 am   #72
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

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Originally Posted by Richard_FM View Post
Phone cards were one area of technology which in the UK at least seemed to come & go in about 20 years.

There was also the BT Chargecard, which lingered on until three years ago, and good riddance to this expensive way to make calls.

When I first started in the telecoms maintenance in 1990 I was given a
radiopager and a BT Chargecard to respond to calls from the office, by
finding a convenient working payphone.

Mobile phones were still the preserve of those on higher pay grades.

Eventually the cards were withdrawn, and we finally got company
mobiles.

I got my own personal BT chargecard linked to my BT account, there was
nothing to pay other than the call charges, and it was just for
emergencies.

You didn't need the physical card, just the account number and PIN, which is still emblazoned on my brain.

Here's the letter I got.
https://www.***********/gp/g3zvt/203q53
Not sure if the date on it is AD or BC, anyone know?
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 12:57 am   #73
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I still have a BT charge-card but can’t remember when I last used it. On a kind of related note, I noticed the PCB( Public call box )in our village has now been removed. I walk the dogs past it every day and used to check it was operational. Not a K21 or anything, Just one of those steel & glass ones with the BT piper logo.

I remember the “ mobile” phone we used to take out on analogue TX feed lineups. It was about the size of an A4 folder, ( the majority of which was battery)and had a proper handset with a cord linking it to the main phone body.
One had to sign it out, as it was a shared phone for the whole department, & was presumably quite expensive at the time. Now everyone has one, and they do a lot more than just make calls.
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 3:29 pm   #74
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Phonecards were very much 'here today gone tomorrow' - in the early-90s if you went to an exhibition/conference all the trade-stands would be giving out phonecards with a few quid of credit on them: Racal, GPT, Wandel&Goltermann, Chernikeeff, Marconi, Ericsson, Cable&Wireless, Colt Telecommunications being ones I rememvber having.

There was a brief phase when they were actually collectable, with some cards selling for silly prices.

I gather that part of the reason that booths-that-accepted-phonecards rapidly faded from the scene was that the company - I think they were Swiss - that made the card-reader mechanisms stopped producing them leading to spares-availability/support issues. Of course the coming of cheap 2G mobile-phones and the expansion of coverage led to the rather rapid obsolescence of _any_ kind of payphone.

In the early-2000s BT experimented with 'enhanced' multimedia phone-booths that could be used to send/receive emails and text-messages - a valiant attempt to stem the mobile-phone onslaught. They never caught on - partly because there was a silly minimum-charge of around 40p!

See here for more info on this busted-flush.... https://www.manchestereveningnews.co...booths-1200153
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 10:28 pm   #75
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I remember seeing one of those multi-media phones in the foyer of London's Farringdon underground station that I used to use when going to work in the mid-2000's. It didn't seem to last long there, I never saw anyone using it, and I don't recall seeing any others anywhere else.
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 11:18 pm   #76
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

What about valves ?

We all love them.

Which ones sound better?

Oh dear, what have I just started. Sorry moderators.
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 11:28 pm   #77
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

How about the Amstrad 'emailer phone', a landline phone which essentially incorporated much of the functionality of today's smart phones. It was probably just too far ahead of its time, but a genuine innovation otherwise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN21f7p-1sI
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 11:35 pm   #78
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I remember Stockport having at least one multimedia box, with dark blue trim as part of BT's colour coding.
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Old 13th Mar 2021, 11:46 pm   #79
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

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How about the Amstrad 'emailer phone'

Or the Bush Internet TV.

https://collection.sciencemuseumgrou...ision-receiver

Which I've seen, there was also a set-top box version which I hadn't.

http://chrisacorns.computinghistory....hInternet.html
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Old 14th Mar 2021, 12:47 am   #80
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I recall seeing a demo of the Post Office's Prestel service on a works visit to Martlesham in the 1980's. As well as information you could order goods, an early form of on-line purchasing. The demonstrator explained that the final "buy" option had been disabled on the demo apparatus, following an unfortunate incident where the demonstrator had inadvertently made an actual order that had included a very expensive case of vintage champagne!
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