How do you handle old technology? Just dump it and move on? Or love it and still use it.

Examples of old technology that have been dumped and are unloved include cassettes (both audio and video) and computers with huge cathode ray tubes (CRTs as the Americans called them or VDUs - Visual Display Units) in Europe.

Examples of old technology that has been dumped and is still loved include vinyl records and windows xp.

Maybe you have a hankering over 8 track stereo in your car or a mobile phone as big as brick, as with anything it's what floats your boat.


hugs


Pauline xxx
This post was edited by Pauline Smith at September 10, 2015 6:30 PM BST

Now here is a thought, are DVDs old technology now we have BluRay?

I think things like cassettes (audio and video) and vinyl records I keep because they don't take up too much room but big items like tellies I would ditch. The last telly I got rid of I gave to the British Heart Foundation and I've given old printers and a few other things to other charity shops. Hang on to your record players and records because vinyl is coming back!xxx

its interesting that feature films made and shot with digital cameras are being archived on film as it has a life of over 100 years versus a hardrive which can fail at anytime as we all know to our cost and lost precious photos!!!

Good point Andrea! x

I remember the "fun" we had trying to load games off a tape onto my Spectrum 128k computer. You would sit there for ages listening to the squeak and whines as it loaded it and the funny pattern on the TV screen before it suddenly stopped....
And the screen went blank ....
And you had to rewind the tape and start all over again!!! :-)
Happy Days :-)

Oh the joy of owning Star wars on Vhs then compact disc and now blue ray.... any more upgrades and I will
expect Princess Leih to be sitting on the sofa with me.

You should be so lucky, John!

I had a really nifty cassette walkman type thing which had an fm radio tuner shaped like a cassette which you slotted in. It was state of the art.

Taping the top 40 and trying not to get the dj voice

I have a Sony mini-disc digital audio machine in a draw without the charger! fabulous!.....its not even heavy enough to be a door stop!

My vinyl collection is unrivalled and I even have a gizmo that can load my operas onto my computer. Plus I have a collection of videos and audio tapes and the means to play them!! xx

Can anyone still read a floppy? I'd love to know what I was doing during those years.

I'm sure the technology is still available.

Ditto my last comment. lol
This post was edited by Mal Ware at September 11, 2015 3:03 AM BST

Much of my old technology is in my head. Fortran 4 (or watfor), hexa-decimal 8 bit characters with punch cards and tape drives. Fortran 32 16 bits, disc drives and tape backup. An 80's version of COBOL. All sorts of things a useful as my parents phone number from the 50s.
Some days I wish I could get it all out and make room for new stuff
This post was edited by rita clark at September 11, 2015 3:13 AM BST

Julia both my computers, 6 years old, bought used from a local college, have floppy drives. Not sure why I haven't used them.

This post was edited by rita clark at September 11, 2015 3:17 AM BST

j
This post was edited by J L at October 19, 2015 5:40 AM BST

Speaking as someone that works in the media production biz, I'm glad to see the back of vinyl and DVDs. Never liked the scratches on vinyl, and DVD is a slow, unreliable format. It also transpired that data would literally 'slip off' DVDs after 10 years. I've never experienced it but I can believe it.

Speaking as someone that designs music artwork, I'll miss vinyl because my canvas was so much bigger than CDs/DVDs dimensions -- and with digital downloads there's no canvas whatsoever.

Speaking as someone that's also a bit of a computer geek, I'm really happy that the ZX Spectrum Vega guys got their Kickstarter money -- http://retro-computers.co.uk/

I wear my Atari T-shirts with pride.

D.x
This post was edited by Daryl Shannah at September 20, 2015 1:44 PM BST

I still use my Atari to produce music. Recently, I bought a modern PC with all the necessary software, interface cards and interface, but it isn't set up yet, as it threatens the usefulness of my faithful Atari, which has never crashed and never gone wrong in any other way. Haven't played a cassette for years, but running out of floppy disks for my Atari.

If that is a 512/1024 Atari it should hook up to a hard drive easily enough. I nearly bought one for mine in the early nineties.

k
This post was edited by J L at October 19, 2015 5:41 AM BST

@Julia -- Equally great/a bit lugubrious that Atari ST's MIDI clock chip zero-latency thing is still the chip of choice for studios. You need to move on, girl, and get a Mac.

I recently moved the edit suite to Win 10. It came with 'You've got a month to reverse back to Win 8.1' button. After two days of Adobe crashing, I was back.

I still have a reel-to-reel tape deck.

My Atari hooks up and syncs perfectly with my digital 8 track and analogue 8 track reel to reel. It's as if the Atari is hungry to sync up. Never found a PC that comes anywhere near the simplicity and reliability of the Atari. Got a couple of Macs - an i-mac and an older power Mac, but can't let go of the Atari. Every PC I've come across is next to useless when it comes to MIDI.