i'll have you know...
... that my slide rule and log tables are emphatically NOT out of date and redundant.


But for proper oldishness, I have a fob-watch style volt/ammeter, and my m/grandparents carving knife/fork. The cfork even has one of those fold-out lever things, and the knife had been sharpened so often it is more of a spike.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 11:22, 5 replies)

Was this in TNT magazine last week. It was about IT graduates and new computer technology. Thought it very apt for the QotW.


PS2 mouse and keyboard plugs
Coax network adapter
LPT printer cable
No USB ports
Hot to cold cable



To list a few. That computer must be about 12-15 years old. I love unexamined stock photos.
( riverghost servicing your mum since, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 11:19, 9 replies)

Not by choice
At work, a large part of the system I use is DOS based. No fancy clicking with the mouse, just using the arrow and letter keys. I can actualy do this pretty quickly, there's next to no load time and once you have it memorised, it goes into muscle memory.

There is also a much newer part of the system, it's mostly used for emails and displaying the DOS system's data without going in.

I'd like to say the DOS system is more reliable and never breaks, but that's not true. It breaks all the time, has random crashes, goes off line and simply refuses to let me do my job. I constantly have to phone people back and remember to update accounts. It's from 1993 and it's simply not relevent any more.
(Mong goose, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 9:49, Reply)

old tech huh,
well upto last week i could still watch my old VHS stuff, nothing like watching mortal combat in really bad quality to take you back, i have a huge collection of records that still get played, ranging from brass bands to jasper carrot, stil have hooked up and occasionally play:

PS1, Nintendo Gamecube, SNES, spectrum and my fave, my old amstrad 464.
oh and one of the many tv's we have is still black and white.
(sennik85 hiding from the world, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 9:32, 1 reply)

I make prints;
my favourite method, mezzotint, was invented by one Ludwig von Siegen in Utrecht in 1609, and fundamentally hasn't changed since. A copper plate is roughened with a fine-toothed steel rocker, which is rocked from side to side to make it travel across the plate. Rotate the plate a few degrees, repeat until the whole plate has a random pattern of pits which hold ink then, using steel scrapers,burnishers and oil, remove rough metal thus creating areas of tone by lessening the amount of ink held. The plate is then inked and wiped by hand, and prints are produced using a hand-cranked cast iron Rochat press. It takes me on average 35 hours plus to make each image, I have absolute control over every aspect of the process: I love it- apart from the inking, no chemicals or electricity are involved, and once a plate is rocked I can work on the image on my kitchen table. I'll be putting a couple of my mezzotints up on Deviantart this weekend
( uncle bastard is twanging a dan moi, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 8:53, 6 replies)

I still use time machines
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 5:22, Reply)

Since my belt buckle broke
I've simply tied it into a knot the old fashioned way.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 4:50, 2 replies)

I like to make beer...
O.G. 1065 S.G. 1006 A.B.V. 8.0%
(A Friday Night)

The taste of hops and fermented malt. The specific gravity of a kiss.
Not so dissimilar after all.
My favourite flavour – the crisp balance of grains, augmented by the humulus lupus.
The alpha acids isomerised, the beta acids unoxidised.
Dry hopped and served up in a 16oz glass.
On the tip of the tongue; the melding of saliva and beer never quite so exquisite as now.
I could be drunk on the idea.
(IdlePeAcEsign if trouble were my mistress, i'd send her to them, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 2:05, 2 replies)

until about 9 months ago
I used to regularly post on several Usenet groups.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 1:59, 1 reply)

I just played half life 2 again..
.. great physics but fuck all really happens, big wide open spaces with little detail or action.

Mind you, fuck loads better than any call of duty product.

How old is the franchise now.. ?
( Signify, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 23:04, 12 replies)

MMORPGs?
Fancy graphics? Sound effects? Billions of stats?

Fuck em.

I play this

Every. Single. Day.

If you happen to be in Pitneybank and you see Dr Eisenheim, say hi!. If he's a zombie, please revive.
(El Fandango carved a big EF onto his nemesis' doublet on .., Fri 5 Nov 2010, 22:18, 9 replies)

Narrowboats
I live on a narrowboat - a compact temple of obsolete technologies;

Propulsion - provided by a BMC diesel engine
Electricity - lead-acid batteries connected to the above.
Sewage - posh bucket with lid
Water - find a standpipe, fill tank in boat. Use sparingly.
Heat - find dead tree, chop it up and set fire to it in a stove.
Cooking - use the stove. Or (horrors) use the gas cooker.

One of two routes between London and Birmingham will be shut for maintenance for 7 weeks starting from Monday. The other shuts in the new year for a similar period of time.

This is why I'm sitting in the middle of the countryside in a company boat waiting for dawn - so I can see enough to operate the canal locks below me in order to deliver the boat to a small village in Northamptonshire for someone else to go out and play on a 200 year-old transport system.
(baldybeardy, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 21:28, 9 replies)

I recently swapped my old phone for a second-hand Nokia E70.
I wanted an internet phone instead of my Motorola F3 (a granny-phone that just does calls and texts), but I didn't want to pay very much or get a contract. I got an E70 on eBay and ordered a Giffgaff sim (unlimited internet + 100 minutes for £10 a month, get the fuck in).

My mp3 player is a 40gig iriver, which was second hand when I bought it too. I still have my old mp3 player; a pissing massive 20gb Creative that's about the size of a discman. The only thing wrong with it is that the headphone jack is physically broken; it still works as a filesystem and as far as I know the playback is still fine.
( Bob Todd whee, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 20:06, 2 replies)

Facebook Update:
Some old people on b3ta are yakkin' about how cassette tapes are so rad-LOL
(Sadarse works like Mist condensing mud flaps, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 19:27, 5 replies)

Transitors? Valves? pah!
I've got an old klystron in the kitchen. Still use it at least once a week.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 19:21, 3 replies)

elements of the past
and elements of the future, combine to make something not quite as good as either...
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 19:21, 6 replies)

I collect:
Rotary phones - when the Apocalypse comes these things will still work.
Vinyl records, of course. I have lots of recordings that were never released in any other format.
Cast-iron cookware has amazing heat distribution and is super-nonstick (as long as you properly care for it.)
Vintage Pyrex is made of a completely different (and better quality) type of glass than today's Pyrex cookware, and occasionally I see one of my pieces on "Mad Men." :)
( cynfulcynner ...another American nutter, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 19:11, 3 replies)

I still use toilet paper. My kids bought me a toilet brush for my birthday, but it made my arse so sore I had to stop using it.
(A Blair, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:42, 4 replies)

This..


I use this bad boy most days. It's a 1949 2-5/8" RB8 Acme Gridley Automatic multispindle.

My company has about 30 of them.

Churn out fittings for the oil and gas industry at about 1 a second, far faster than any modern CNC could do. Makes a massive racket, is scary as fuck, and when you look through that window it looks like the internals of a terminator.

Completely mechanical.

I think it runs on steam.
(inflateable, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:14, 18 replies)

I am an utter horder
I still use a fair chunk of this stuff for work & play.

Where to start..

- The collection of Amiga / ST's , with a spare for each (500, 500+, 1200, STE)
- Boxes and boxes and boxes of 3.5" and 5.25" discs
- The numerous mid-range computers owned in the past (now gone to good homes), including an Alpha-server, a Wang (fnarr) mainframe, an HP3000 running MPE, various Sun workstations, an SGI cluster (the cabinet of which is now my garden shed) and umpteen other oddball Unix variant systems with bespoke hardware
- Shelves _full_ of manuals of some of _the_most_ obscure shit you could possibly envisage using in a telecoms capacity. Because of course, one day I can totally see myself configuring DECNET again, or having to configure a TACS base station. Dick. I even have an old TACS configuration handheld because "it might come in useful".
- Tools. Fuck me. Tools which fulfil one function, and one function only, very specifically, and are never used again for another 15 years. I'm still loathe to get rid of them - my feeble excuse is that some of them were quite pricey - or nicked and exorbitantly expensive - or so rare as to be useless to anyone other than a handful of people. In my attic they sit, awaiting that increasingly rare event which will require their being disinterred. Example device : a winklefix. If you know what that is, then fair play. Clue : it's not a penis enlargement contraption.
- Analogue phones. I had two shoe boxes full of these until a few years ago. Great for calibration.
- Early GSM phones. Got rid of these as well however, now wish I'd kept them as there seems to be a burgeoning market for very early handsets.
- Games consoles of all shapes and sizes, including early hand-helds (PC Engine GT, etc). I just don't dig this whole Wii virtual console cack.
- An EPROM burner. If you know what that is, congratulations, you're either an old bastard, geek, or wikipedia addict. As it happens it's fished me out the shit on a few repair jobs. So not quite so redundant.

EDIT : Also, a bright red GPO rotary pulse dialling phone. It looks like the hotphone from any number of cold-war thrillers. It is pleasing to the eye and has a suitable heft to its handset / cradle. If anyone is interested in such a device (although not that colour) by all means get in touch via PM, as I know of a place that gets them in bulk for refurbishment.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:09, 7 replies)

not that old really
when i stay at my parents house i still use the cassette player i got for christmas when i was a young'un to listen to old tapes of stuff like hitchhikers guide, lord of the rings, isihac etc, while i fall to sleep.
i have mp3s of most of them now, but it's not the same without the low hum of the cassette playing.
(the_spoon I am Jack's lack of talent, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:00, Reply)

It'll outlive us all:
Cast-iron cookware. I have an 8" skillet inherited from my aunt I use virtually every day, and a 12" one I bought myself years back. The pride of my collection is a 12" dutch oven. Huge batches of chili, stew, whatever. It all tastes better when prepared in that pot.
(Nanuq, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 17:56, 3 replies)

A 1998 Ford Escort estate.
Still works though. Only 69000 on the clock too.

Also still got a working 1985 CD player, Toshiba XR-9P. That still works too!
www.thevintageknob.org/toshiba-XR-P9.html
(Captain Coffee Break, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 17:50, 5 replies)

My next door neighbour religiously uses
a manual roller type lawnmower with the big curly bladed drum. I always know when he is mowing as I can hear this sound like a helium filled dachshund being dragged backwards through a hosepipe...having said that his lawn is immaculate: mine, cut with my poncey flymo, looks like the Somme!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Fri 5 Nov 2010, 17:42, 1 reply)

A perfect subject for my return!
Having lurked away in the depths for so long, I feel that I should come out of retirement and embrace B3ta once again.
I am such a hoarder of technology, both old and new!
I don’t really know where to begin, everything is such a mish-mash of old and new.
I suppose the best place to start would be the study (or man-zone as my better half calls it)!
Currently I have an old IBM keyboard with the really clicky keys that sound like a cacophony of arthritics bus passengers falling off the top deck, when typing at full speed. This is connected to a KVM and no less than four fairly modern PCs! Seeing as no PC’s these days have 5 pin DIN connectors, It has to be put through a PS2 adapter and then onto USB for some of the machines.

I still have an old 1970’s Pioneer turntable and hundreds of classic albums on vinyl- I particularly love Jethro Tull. This is connected to an old Nikko amplituner, not the best sounding but looks awesome!

Then there’s the vintage model railway equipment, which I clean up, and put electronic DCC decoders in them to run on my modern, digital layout.

In the living room, I have an Xbox 360 & PS 3, yet I still have a working Commodore 64 set up under the TV.
Ironically both the Xbox and PS3 have failed in some way or another (Red Ring and Disk failures respectively) and the 1980’s machine is still working perfectly.
I have an old Akai ½ inch Reel to Reel recorder and various tapes, I just love the sound, much better than cassettes, yet I have a Digital Multitrack studio.

I have a set of Roland V drums but play a 1960’s Ludwig out of preference!

I am such a sentimental fool too, one of my Dad's guitars which he gave to me as a teenager - an old 1970's Daion Les Paul copy, not really worth anything but plays really nicely - got ruined when my place got flooded, not by the ingress of water but the mould that took hold afterwards and ate through anything and everything downstairs.
I decided to dispose of it when we were clearing up the aftermath.
At the local tip I picked it up from the boot of the car and looked at it, looked at my partner and started sobbing, I couldn't throw it away. I was really upset by the thought of it being crushed and mangled, so much so, that my partner had to drive me home. Later that year for my birthday, she had it restored as best that she could, it will never be playable but it is hung on my study wall as a reminder of the past and that newer isn't necessarily, better!

Apolgies for length - it does stretch back to the seventies you know.
(tehmattmonster Board Sig, Board Sig? I'll give you a Board Sig!, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 17:29, 1 reply)

Last week I did a print for a friend, and had recourse to visit the photolab of the shop I get them done in.
They were on Photoshop CS1.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:37, Reply)

mp3 player
About 8 years ago I bought a Creative Jukebox 3 off ebay for about £50. Since then I've managed to break the screen, the headphone socket and the hard drive, all of which I replaced myself with a little screwdriver and spare parts also obtained inexpensively from ebay. It's an absolute genius piece of kit in that it looks like a discman (and so no-one will ever steal it) and will probably still be working in another 8 years.

Conversely, my friends seem to go through ipods like tissues.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:37, 3 replies)

I remember when all this was fields
I still own and fairly regularly use my Sega Master System, with Alex Kidd in Miracle World built in - thats right, the posh version. That is how I roll.
(Myoldmansadustman, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:35, 3 replies)

Shaving
Until recently, in my opinion, the Gilette Mach 3 was the best shaving method by a country mile. The two-blade Gilette Sensor isn't quite enough and the Wilkinson Quattro is just too big. The 5-blade Fusion thing is so wide it just drags.

Complaining about the price of them, my mate got a Gilette Safety razor, the chrome things that you fit a razor blade into the top and screw it into place. He demonstrated it when I met him at his house before going out on the lash. It seemed quite cool, but I wanted something more bad-ass.

So I bought a pair of cut-throat razors and strop off eBay. They needed honing a bit and not having a proper whetstone, I used a kitchen knife steel to sharpen the edge, and then sat at my desk and stropped a keen edge to the blade for a good half hour making me look a bit of a serial killer, as my wife pointed out.

I prepared my face with hot flannels, soap and so on and then went to make the first pass whereby I jabbed myself in the cheek with the edge of the blade. 10 minutes later, standing in a bathroom that now resembled a slaughterhouse I finally stopped the bleeding and had another go.

It was ace, and apart from the leading edge of my chin it was pretty simple. Apart from slicing my face open, I only nicked myself twice. It takes maybe 2 or 3 shaves practice before you can avoid drawing blood. However, Mrs Sandettie can't watch and refuses to be in the room at the same time.

Oh, I will add that the only way I'd get a closer shave would be to do it from the inside.

Obligatory length joke: About 4 inches, surgically sharp like a brand-new scalpel and held inches away from your eye obscured from view behind your hand.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:25, 21 replies)

I still have my original wife
Some of my friends have traded in theirs for flashier, more expensive models, but at the end of the day, I like what I have. Some of the newer ones come in a variety of colors, have higher suction, can be smaller, but I'm not sure if the advances are worth the cost.

Some are sold as new, and it's only later when one finds out a previous owner has made them undrivable. Plus, the new ones are DAMNED expensive and are prone to being stolen.

You can take a cheap car and put alloy rims, a new paint job, tinted windows and a nice sound system in it, but it still is a cheap car.

Compare that with, say, a 1967 Corvette Stingray. Sure, it's getting on in years, and there may be some cosmetic irregularities, it may not have all the new-fangled add ons, but the thrill you still get when you drive it just can't be beat, especially since you know its moves like the back of your hand.

The classics cannot be improved upon.

No, I will stick with what I have. I got her for a reason and to be honest, after the breaking-in period, I really like the comfort of the ride and am looking forward to a looonnnggg road trip.
( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:10, 12 replies)