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This is a question Redundant technology

Music on vinyl records, mobile phones the size of house bricks and pornography printed on paper. What hideously out of date stuff do you still use?

Thanks to boozehound for the suggestion

(, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 12:44)
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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.
(, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:09, 7 replies)
Your_emphasis_makes_the_Baby_Jesus_cry.

(, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 21:12, closed)
_
Noted.
(, Sun 7 Nov 2010, 23:18, closed)
I thought I was bad...
...for having an IBM AS/400 in my living-room. Looks like I've got a l-o-n-g way to go! :-D
(, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 0:37, closed)
psst
EPROM blower, not burner
(, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 1:54, closed)
blower for those PROMs with fusible links
burner for the UV-EPROMs which were erasable?
(, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 2:07, closed)
What about
EEPROMS?
(, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 15:10, closed)
'sizzle' them
or perhaps 'etch-a-sketch' them would be more apposite.
(, Sun 7 Nov 2010, 19:45, closed)

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