Old Tech thread

[Alex The G and T]

View attachment 128189

With a nice Chianti.

 

[dask]

 

[Alex The G and T]

Exact same desks we had, ten years later.

Of course, then, the boys would have been drumming with pencils and playing air guitars and air pianos and air violins.

 

[Danny McG]

This is from 1919 when they predicted the "pocket telephone"
(I've a funny feeling that I might have posted it previously, somewhere in Chrons)

 

[Danny McG]

1980 pc

 

[farntfar]

When men were real men, and floppy discs were real floppy disks.

 

[mosaix]

1980 pc
View attachment 128570

Is that a rabbit hutch underneath? Perhaps he's demonstrating to pet shop owners.

 

[Pyan]

Is that a rabbit hutch underneath? Perhaps he's demonstrating to pet shop owners.I

Or is it where they'll keep the mouse at night when they get around to inventing it?

 

[Ursa major]

floppy discs were real floppy disks

But only when they were 8-inch floppy disks....

 

[farntfar]

I used 4,5 in, 8 in and 10 in in my work.
And they all flopped.
But along came 3,5 in and they flopped no more.

 

[Alex The G and T]

I was taking a basic BASIC class at college, once upon a time. As I was driving home my car was T-Boned, right in the Driver's door.

I was mostly unscathed, rather than a few fractured ribs which did not make themselves apparent. until a week or two later, when the other aches and pains had yielded to reality.

My car was in sad shape and as I sat in the tow truck I looked back to see that my car was in flames. The driver parked on the freeway median, the fire department filled my car with fire suppressant foam and then we finished towing the wreck home.

I had my textbooks and most of a semester's programming work stored on a couple of 4.5 floppies in a tote; floating about on the floor of the remnants of my car.

Much to my delight and amazement, I didn't lose a single byte.

 

[farntfar]

And you try tellin' that t' the pendrives of today and they'll not believe y'.

 

[CupofJoe]

The IT teacher at high school use to call the 7in discs "floppies" and the 3.5in discs "stiffies".
Which led to no end of teenage giggling.
And it might be a Mandela effect but I am sure he once said that a three and a half inch stiffy was worth two seven inch floppies... and there was more laughter.

 

[Elentarri]

We also called them stiffies and floppies. No one giggled about it though.

 

[mosaix]

Anyone remember the drinks mats that resembled 3.5" floppy discs? They were quickly banned from the office where I worked after a couple of accidents involving genuine floppy discs having drinks spilled on them.

 

[Vertigo]

I was taking a basic BASIC class at college, once upon a time. As I was driving home my car was T-Boned, right in the Driver's door.

I was mostly unscathed, rather than a few fractured ribs which did not make themselves apparent. until a week or two later, when the other aches and pains had yielded to reality.

My car was in sad shape and as I sat in the tow truck I looked back to see that my car was in flames. The driver parked on the freeway median, the fire department filled my car with fire suppressant foam and then we finished towing the wreck home.

I had my textbooks and most of a semester's programming work stored on a couple of 4.5 floppies in a tote; floating about on the floor of the remnants of my car.

Much to my delight and amazement, I didn't lose a single byte.

When I was in working in the oil business just pre IBM PC we used to use Hewlett Packard 9826 computers. Not dissimilar to IBM PCs but using Motorola chips instead of Intel and they had 5.25" floppy drives, though HP called them scientific calculators, that ran on BASIC! You had to put in a floppy before turning on that it loaded the operating system from, so it was mostly just left in when the drive wasn't needed for anything else.

One time we were taking kit out to a survey ship in the Persian Gulf in a Zodiac and it capsized (we had some seriously crazy people working for us!) and everything including the computer with its operating system floppy went to the bottom. It was about a week before a diver was available to recover the stuff which was then hosed down with fresh water and left on deck in the sun to dry out. After which it all worked fine, though the drive never actually sounded 100% thereafter.

 

[Danny McG]

And you try tellin' that t' the pendrives of today and they'll not believe y'.

Luxury, I had nowt but a strip of mouldy rabbit fur and a thorn to scratch notes with

 

[dask]

 

[dask]

 

[Ursa major]

On the radio the other day, they were talking about how many people** now use smartwatches to view sporting events... so in terms of screen size (if not screen resolution), the Watchman was way ahead of the game (no pun intended, but what the heck).


** - The item was about the diversity in both the number of different viewing devices being used and the number of companies with the rights to show sporting events.