Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Lost Technology
I was at our local school district’s technology department and noticed a bookshelf in the corner. On it, they had all the media types I used to see as a student (I’m 65) and some I used when teaching from 96-2012. Film reels, overhead projectors, slide carousels, film strips, and some other things I have forgotten. Once, around ’98 or ’99, I was trying to explain what IBM cards were to some seniors in the class, and they had no frame of reference at all. Technology moves so quickly now that vast swaths of everyday devices are unknown to the young.
At one job, I had a ribbon printer – remember that awful sound? My truck that I bought new in 1999 came with AM/FM/cassette. Since then, I’ve changed the audio system a few times – it now has a good Bluetooth system and I think it can play CDs but I’m honestly not sure. I’ve got a box of cassettes someplace around here; the same goes for CDs and VHS tapes. The last factory in the world that made VHS players has closed. We have a bunch of DVDs – I’m still buying DVDs because they can’t be woke-edited. One day, my copy of Blazing Saddles will be worth some money, unless our children can only watch it in illegal underground gathering places after the woke police outlaw it.
Maybe the best proof of how quickly stuff becomes obsolete is that drawer of charging cables and dongles everyone has now. I need to get in there and clean it up, but it’s a little scary. What if I need that USB-to-something cable one day?
Published in General
We had a ribbon printer at one office where I worked. Even with the sound cover closed it rattled the windows. We called it “the anvil chorus.”
In Hunt For Red October every time the ribbon printer goes off I figure the Russkies will find the Dallas
Classic episode of Mad Men
I have two VCR players – one each from my mother and MIL when they passed (ironic as JY and I never owned a VCR). Years ago I hooked one up to my computer using some complicated USB adapter and successfully converted all my brothers’ and sisters’ wedding videos to DVD.
I have a box of my dad’s home videos awaiting conversion; alas it’s a time consuming process and you and the computer need to be dedicated to process.
In the meantime, an entire box of cords (thankfully labeled) need to be saved.
It seems to me far more important that a lot of government records exist in forms that can no longer be accessed.
I actually did use a cable I found stuffed in my drawer full of junk the other day. And then I did, however, throw away all of the old multi-pin printer cables that I had. Pretty sure they aren’t coming back.
My family has shot a lot of color 35mm slides in the past. And we have some large format B/W negatives. In the late 90s I bought a 35mm film scanner and a flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter for the negatives. I got some good use out of them but then they went into storage.
After I became retired last year I decided to tackle scanning some of those slides. Both scanners required a Windows operating system no later than Win XP for the drivers to work, so I put together an XP machine just for that job. I was lucky to scrounge suitable hardware for free.
A cousin sent our grandmother’s slide collection for me to scan, as well as his own. I scanned over 800 slides. Some of them were the old 126 format (and a few 127s), which I had forgotten existed. The 126 is about as wide and high as the 35mm is wide. I was able to handle those on the flatbed with the transparency adapter.
I still have my father’s 35mm slide collection and my own to scan. I also have a lot of stereo pairs in 120 format, both B/W negative and color slide. I’m looking forward to getting those to display on my 3D TV, or Looking Glass viewer.
My stereo rig is similar to this one, except with Twin Lens Reflex 120 film cameras.
One of my senior projects was a device to optically read IBM cards and to duplicate them on another card. We had an 026 keypunch machine.
The 026 couldn’t duplicate cards? I know the 029 could, but I didn’t use 026 as much. Maybe they just didn’t want to pay for the option on the one(s) you used?
I don’t recall that it could. Maybe that was an attachment?
BTW a sister-in-law was a full time keypunch operator.
I looked up an 026 machine and the one shown has the “Reading Station” used for making duplicate cards. But maybe there were more “basic” versions that didn’t include it.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/026.html
When I was involved with an Explorer Scout group in Oregon based on computer systems, the business where we had our meetings had a room-full of 029 machines for the keypunch-operator employees, while a couple of 026 machines that I presume were leftover following the upgrade to 029s, were in the actual computer room available to the system operators and programmers for minor “touch-up” jobs etc. Those must have had the reader/duplication capability.
It’s interesting that the first google “hit” for the 026 machine was from Columbia University. Years ago, I was working on setting up a computer school and – among other systems – I bought the DECSYSTEM 2065 from Columbia that was the original development system for KERMIT, among other things. I had that and others (such as a dual-cpu/SMP DECsystem 10 from Intel) in storage, but then my medical problems began and I lost all of it when I couldn’t work and pay for storage.
It’s how we students put our programs into the IBM 360 – via a card reader, of course. And only a few grad students could use the IBM 2301 9-track(?) tape deck storage units
You mean key-to-tape? I don’t remember ever seeing one of those in person. The 2301 was a magnetic drum storage unit, when I was using the PDP-8 in High School I remember seeing the instructions for those kinds of things in the programming guides, and wishing/hoping/dreaming we could have had one.
I took my first computer course the spring semester of my freshman year EE curriculum. We had these graded programming assignments, along with regular paper homework and lectures:
1. Solving resistor network problems in a Fortran-like language on a GE 225 computer.
2. Solving for values of a complex mathematical equation in GE Assembler language
3. Wiring up the circuit board of an analog computer to solve a calculus integral problem, in real time with a deadline of when the grad students running the lab would kick you out.
All were difficult because of short deadlines. The first two assignments were created with and submitted on IBM cards, with a 12 to 24 hour turnaround time for every edit. The keypunch room was hot and loud; I never got out of there without a headache.
And this was only a 2 credit course.
I remember the slide projector. We had one, but only used it when my aunt and uncle came to visit. They traveled all over the world, and always brought carousels of incredible pictures – not like the ones your Uncle Ed and Aunt Mable brought of your cousins . . .
But I’m sure they also took a lot of pictures that didn’t make it into carousels. :-)
Don’t remember about the tape. But when my college replaced the 360 with a 370 it had a small drum some place in it, which we were not permitted to use even though some of us managed on the sly. I did use magnetic tapes on my first job out of college, we were using a Honeywell 316.
We did have a PDP-8s (later an 8i, eventually an 8e) which we used for Sat Nav. Program loaded from paper tape at first but I don’t recall using it but one time. Changed to tape, I wasn’t involved in that.
We did our own keypunching but only got to admire the analog computer.
Every system I ever knew of that had it, drum storage was used only by the system itself, for page-swapping etc. Drum cost too much and had too little total space (Something like 128k words for the PDP-8) to be used for user-program storage etc. But it was very useful for temporary storage because it was faster than tape or moving-head disk, and it cost less than system (“core”) memory did.
Are you kidding? My first television station had one of these:
Next to that baby a ribbon printer was a whisper. Remember the all-news formats of the 80’s in AM radio. They would have a tape loop of about four of these things clattering away in the background.
Up until about 5 years ago I had 8″ floppy disks, Bernoulli’s and Zip drives in my collection. I cornered the market on CD-Rs just before cheap thumb drives made them obsolete. My first USB memory stick had 256K and cost me $70. Now they practically give away anything that holds less than 8MB.
P.S. From what I’ve read, I’m grateful to have never had to suffer through a PDP-8/s.
Wow, “replying” to that does something that Ricochet/WordPress really doesn’t like…
Oooh…
Baudot, right?
Probably.
Yes, it was small that’s a fact!
Wait until all the libraries are closed, think of the knowledge that will be lost.
Especially compared to things are now, but actually pretty good for the PDP-8 time, especially just for “working storage.” System memory was limited to 32k although the one I used in High School could only be expanded to 8k and only had the basic 4k. Even if you had a “fully-loaded” PDP-8 with 32k, a 128k drum was still 4 times that, and made it possible to “timeshare” among several users with good response times.
I have to hand it to 35mm motion pictures. They were compatible all over the world, Zanzibar to North Korea, played at the same speed everywhere. And the standard lasted well more than a century. To this day, I can get a reel of “35” shown if I have to. I can’t say that about my 1/2 open reel videotapes.
Starting HS my dad had an 8mm I used. I’m guessing that’s with the dodo bird and your videotapes?
If it’s standard 8mm, yes. There are still a lot of working 8mm projectors out there. Because standard 8mm film is just 16mm film slit down the middle, it’s relatively cheap and easy for film companies to just punch twice as many sprocket holes into it during manufacturing. There might still be some 8mm made in small batches overseas.
Super 8 fares a little better. Having left the mass market long ago, film and processing are now mostly aimed at pros and semi-pros, but are still available. Nowadays the processing includes digitizing to 4K. Well shot Super 8 can look startlingly good on HDTV.
I had an 8-track cassette player for my car – still remember the ch-chung every time it switched tracks – even in the middle of a song.