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Old 15th Mar 2018, 11:27 am   #21
peter_scott
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Maybe it's just the way I design things but I always thought the AVO Transistor Analyser was an unnecessary piece of equipment.

I trust the HFE and FT specs etc.

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Old 15th Mar 2018, 11:28 am   #22
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Kodak Disc Cameras
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 11:42 am   #23
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3M desktop thermal copiers "Scotch Copiers", heat provided by one or two high wattage incandescent bulbs, and used themal sensitive paper. These were sold for home/small office use in the 1960s/1970's possibly into the 1980's.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 12:41 pm   #24
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They used to use the paper from those in dot matrix printers when ribbons became NLA.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 12:56 pm   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
[Diazo copier - It [and the department that ran it] was known as Ozalid, as in "take this third-angle projection over to Ozalid and get me two copies, will you?"
Is there any significance to the fact that removing the "l" from Ozalid and reversing it spells "Diazo"?
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 1:00 pm   #26
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Is there any significance to the fact that removing the "l" from Ozalid and reversing it spells "Diazo"?
Indeed: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozalid_(trade_mark)).

Last edited by G6Tanuki; 15th Mar 2018 at 1:06 pm.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 2:15 pm   #27
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I know that steel needles are still available, but I don't miss having to change the needle after playing one record in the wind-up record player I had as a child.

The acoustic coupler modem with a cradle for a telephone handset that we used with a teletype terminal to access a timeshare computer in the 1970's. The only plus point was that it had to have a direct line bypassing the site operator and so was frequently used for private calls when no-one was using the computer. Also the teletype itself, so noisy that it had to have its own soundproof room, a plus for the private calls!
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 3:00 pm   #28
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What about 'modern' useless digi tv set top boxes that went redundant overnight because of the tuning capacity farce?

Instant film (Polaroid) cameras should be well dead and buried but in fact Fuji are still knocking em out
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 4:59 pm   #29
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Polaroid was the name I always associated with instantly becoming redundant due to lack of media for all products and not just cameras.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 5:26 pm   #30
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What about 'modern' useless digi tv set top boxes that went redundant overnight because of the tuning capacity farce?
True.

Analog Sky- and BSB-TV boxes should also be on the "now-useless tech" register.`

I'd also include "Mercury" on-street phone-booths (well pretty much any phone-booth) and those inline-to-your-phone things that purportedly stuffed a couple of extra digits into the number you were calling in order to route the call via an alternative service-provider who claimed to be cheaper.

Nobody I knew *ever* saved the cost of the box/subscriotion-to-a-secondary-phone-service by cheaper calls.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 5:33 pm   #31
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A couple of decades back there was a 'thing' that was often deployed by BT in rural areas where there was insufficient physical phone-line capacity: if you wanted two phone lines to a premises they fitted this thing to your line - it essentially split the available upstream bandwidth between the two voice-grade lines.

I forget what it was called now, but the big issue was that it totally screwed-up dialup Internet access.

So plenty of people who ordered a "second line" from BT so they could be online and still use the phone found that BT did this cheap-and-nasty fudge which totally crippled their dialup to the point where it just didn't work.

Anyone remember what it was called? It was a sort-of pseudo-ISDN if I remember correctly.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 5:52 pm   #32
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In radio links that was usually called a 1+1, mix the additional circuit up to a higher frequency and back down again. I can imagine VF modems wouldn't like it at all.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 6:10 pm   #33
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Prestel and Homelink banking.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 6:32 pm   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
A couple of decades back there was a 'thing' that was often deployed by BT in rural areas where there was insufficient physical phone-line capacity: if you wanted two phone lines to a premises they fitted this thing to your line - it essentially split the available upstream bandwidth between the two voice-grade lines.

I forget what it was called now, but the big issue was that it totally screwed-up dialup Internet access.

So plenty of people who ordered a "second line" from BT so they could be online and still use the phone found that BT did this cheap-and-nasty fudge which totally crippled their dialup to the point where it just didn't work.

Anyone remember what it was called? It was a sort-of pseudo-ISDN if I remember correctly.
It was called a DACS (Digital Access Carrier System).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi...carrier_system

It could be used whenever there was a shortage of line plant, so if a neighbour ordered a line you could find yours was 'DACSd' without your knowledge.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 6:48 pm   #35
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At least with a 'proper' party line, you knew who was eavesdropping!
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 7:21 pm   #36
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Quote:
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It was called a DACS (Digital Access Carrier System).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi...carrier_system

It could be used whenever there was a shortage of line plant, so if a neighbour ordered a line you could find yours was 'DACSd' without your knowledge.
That's the *******! In the mid-1990s I was rolling-out 'home email access' to a bunch of clients - this was based on 28.8K dialup modems, UUCP and an offline client.

"Log-in, download your new messages to your laptop, compose your replies then when you've finished click the big red 'upload' button to reconnect and send everything".

We had various out-in-the-sticks users [who tended to be the senior-management-types in their country-cottages/weekend-second-homes] who often found things didn't work. Turned out they were on DACS, which really didn't play well with modems. I remember a particularly-fraught meeting with "Severnside"-area BT over this, which resolved itself miraculously when I mentioned that one of the people troubled by this DACS-impeded service 'just happened to be' a funds-manger with control over quite a few hundred million ££ of investments in BT.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 7:38 pm   #37
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I was most surprised when my daughter turned up with what appeared to be a new polaroid camera, using the existing technology (Yes i think you CAN still get the films- likewise the Sylvania flipflash modules!)

The consumables for my poor old 126 and it's Magicubes, and 127 cameras, by contrast, are not supplied- so they are 'useless'. Those 15 exposure disc cameras faded out pretty quickly but with the same sort of retro novelty appeal as a polaroid land camera i wouldn't be surprised if they had a renaissance.

My slide rule is definitely in the 'curio' bracket, which is exactly why i got it.

Old technology sometimes seems to be helped into obscurity by the extra input and precautions required to use it, in the same way that a vehicle with 12 grease nipples that require attention once a month or every 500 miles is likely to be sidelined by the majority.

I discovered that seemingly u/s or wandering morganite pots on 50's/60's era avometers can see an extended life if you take the trouble to run them through their full travel and back again before attempting live usage. It took a while for that rather obvious penny to drop- and of course if they have not had much use this priming is not required!

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Old 15th Mar 2018, 8:25 pm   #38
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What about the 'GESTETNER' [?] copier. Worked by burning tiny holes in a revolving sheet which could then be used as a screen for printing mono copies. Very good quality but took around 30 mins to produce the 'master'. Also very expensive! I used one when I was 16. John.
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 8:59 pm   #39
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I've not come across that version of creating Gestetner stencils. My experience largely consisted of using a typewriter without its ribbon to cut (most of the way) through the stencil, or occasionally adding diagrams by drawing with a sharp stylus - being very careful to make sure sections didn't become detached in the process, though the typewriting often did detach the bits inside loops within letters.

The technique described by HKS sounds more flexible. How was the burning process controlled though?
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Old 15th Mar 2018, 10:16 pm   #40
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
A couple of decades back there was a 'thing' that was often deployed by BT in rural areas where there was insufficient physical phone-line capacity: if you wanted two phone lines to a premises they fitted this thing to your line - it essentially split the available upstream bandwidth between the two voice-grade lines.

I forget what it was called now, but the big issue was that it totally screwed-up dialup Internet access.

So plenty of people who ordered a "second line" from BT so they could be online and still use the phone found that BT did this cheap-and-nasty fudge which totally crippled their dialup to the point where it just didn't work.

Anyone remember what it was called? It was a sort-of pseudo-ISDN if I remember correctly.
I almost got lumbered with one of those things but I was lucky
The engineer came back and ripped the thing right out again.
They had told the engineer to scramble the line with the dead one that went into the building anyway.

This is the beast.
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/shared_service.htm
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