Obsolete technology we still use, love and play with

Old-school computer games (Adventure, Zork, even Hunt the Wumpus).

 

I have all of the Infocom games. I have the original boxes with all of the little tchatchkis, and I have all of the games on CD rom.

 

keyboard....obsolete technology. use it every day at work. also about 50% of the time at home. i frequently use speech recognition...i talk, it types... accuracy probably 98% or so and getting better (after 3 years you would think its learned something!!) ... that is still better than my typing!!

 

Pulse dial no longer works here so no dial phones any more.

I know someone with a pack of playing cards made from cardboard. Remember them?

 

another obsolete technology i use is a car that needs gasoline. which begs another question... if you had a car that could do 50 mph, get up to 60 miles of range, costs less than a Prius, seats 4 (actually its 2+2 implying that only children or small people can sit in back) and NEVER uses gas, how many vehicles owned by current Priuschat members would this car replace effectively?


now i realize the answer on a percentage basis, would be probably much lower than the general population... so any demand for it here would suggest a much greater demand overall

 

My main mailserver is still mounted on a post in front of the house...

I still have a turntable to spin vinyl on... Cd's don't properly reproduce the pops and scratches as well...

I also still have a rotary dial phone in my garage.

 

I still use a skeleton key. I'm sure it's decades older than I am.

 

An old wooden shoe shine kit with an electric shoe shiner in it. Smells like an old Lionel train when it runs.

It was my Dad's growing up. I remember him using it in the late 60s.

I still use it.

 

Me too. The inner doors in my house are all old locks with skeleton keys. Really weirds people out to lock the bathroom door.

 

I'd say the QWERTY keyboard, as that was designed for manual typewriters to slow the speed down (less chance of the keys sticking together), but that isn't what you want here.

I still have my Atari 2600, which I pay on rare occasions. I love Adventure.

 

If that is obsolete then what is my shoe shine kit with manual brushes in it?

 

Board games! Yes, we actually put away guitar hero once in a while and bust out games like clue, Life, Monopoly, etc.

My kids think it's neat to be able to play games without batteries! (sigh.)

:hippie:

 

I'm still messing around with a HP Jornada 728 handheld that runs Windows for Handheld PC 2000. In fact, I just ordered a bluetooth adapter card for it. I refuse to give up on it. I will find some use for it.

 

Mario Bros. on Super Nintendo

 

Stolen from an email that DH was forwarded:

We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and
faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

 

In my family we have a board game called "Commisar". It's a parody of Monopoly and the cold war. Instead of going to jail, you go to Siberia. You use rubles for money. And the goal is to sell enough junk on the black market to get enough money to leave the country. My mother and I bought it at a garage sale in the 80s I think. It was probably 20 years old then but in pretty good shape with no missing pieces.

Whenever we play the game, we inevitably end up talking in very bad Russian accents. The same thing happened when I played it with my friends in Boston when I was visiting. I bought a game on eBay and brought it as a gift. Sure enough. We started playing and eventually all of us were speaking in very bad Russian accents. I swear, I didn't start it. Of course, the humor is lost on the younger generation. They don't remember the cold war. So the game is pretty obsolete.

 

OOOh the memories:
Commodore VIC-20



with the optional Hard drive below:

 

Yes we had/still have many of those listed above, but
Still using (loving?, not so much):

axe and log splitter
ancient coal range, to heat the house & water all winter
194x Massey Ferguson tractor, to top the paddocks and haul heavy loads
flywheel drill press (hand-cranked) for whatever needs precision holes
low-pressure plumbing, including outside tower tank providing water to much of the house
fly-swatters x2
hand shears (non-electric scissor shears) for the sheep