Vintage technology

Post Reply New Topic

if only windows 7 was that efficient.

Crazily enough, I still own a Panasonic VHS VCR my parents got almost 15 years ago, when we moved into our current home. Still works like a charm, amazingly!

Wurlitzer and Robert Morton theatrical pipe organs in various old/new installation movie theatres and pizza places [most notably organ stop pizza in mesa AZ] are still going strong even in the face of digital theatre organs for a fraction of the price. nothing can exactly duplicate the sound of those old monsters.

My parent's coffeemaker is almost 26 years old. It's been used everyday since it was brand new, and isn't showing any signs of giving up yet. I still have a portable Olivette Praxis 20 typewriter from 1983.

Well, they really haven't improved the technology for boiling water and pouring it through a filter basket.

dynamic loudspeakers using paper cones are a vintage [nearly a century old] technology still used by bose corporation among others.

I wonder if the CRT TV will ever have a cult following 20 years from now or will it become a dead and buried technology?

Vinyl records went obsolete in the early 1990 and yet, there is still a strong cult fallowing out there.

8-tracks went obsolete in the early 1980 and that is pretty much a dead and buried technology.

78 rpm recordings are still being played today including in my own collection, so I would guess that as long as there are working 8-track machines there will be people playing their 8-track tapes.

I keep a few pieces of old electronics around in working condition. In addition to some old game consoles I acquired second hand (Atari, NES, etc.), I have several devices of different ages hooked up to my home stereo - the TV provides digital input to the late 1990s era receiver from the "modern" devices (Blu-ray player, Xbox 360, etc.). and I also have it connected to a 1980s tape deck, 1990s CD changer (it was having skipping problems recently until fixed with some strategically placed drops of WD-40), and a 1970s audio system I found at a thrift store (with turntable and 8-track, though I do not have any 8-track tapes to play on it). I've also got an early 1980s high-end Denon CD player that is in need of repair - I think the laser is going bad or something like that

I wish I could find somebody who could fix my dbx CD player, circa 1985, I have found no other player with its features [variable dynamic range, variable stereo width, variable microdynamic impact].

My friend's stepdad once showed me a quadraphonic 8-track system he owned, and I thought it was insanely cool. It was like surround sound, but retro. The sound quality was quite nice too, definitely as good as a well-maintained vinyl record. Unfortunately, the collector's market for quadraphonic 8-tracks is rather crazy, and tapes in the format can go for quite a pretty penny.

aside from quad open reel tapes, the quad 8-track format was probably the best sound quality [considering home equipment] that the average consumer had back in the day. no crackles and pops, just a bit of tape hiss which most speakers of the day did not accentuate. if I had been of age back then I woulda stocked up on those q8 tapes and made sure I had multiple working specimens of both tape and player to last me down to the present day. did you know that the original redbook CD specification called for 4 discrete channels of audio, of approx. 40 minutes [the same as most LP records of the day]? that was scotched by the Japanese [co-producers of the CD format] who demanded that one single CD be able to hold the whole Beethoven's 9th symphony. too bad. just think what music would be like nowadays with 4 channels of sound. with today's tech that could easily have extrapolated out to at least 8 derived or matrixed channels. wow

This may be out of context for the current situation, but i am trying to get my hands on an old intel 8008.

the compact cassette always has had the capability of being recorded-on/played back in 4 discrete channels of sound, it was just waiting for the equipment to come along which did not happen until the 1980s.

A lot of garage bands in the 80s and 90s use those 4-track cassette recorders. tracks 1 and 2 where recorded on side A as left and right and tracks 3 and 4 where recorded on side B as left and right but in reverse. If you where to put one of those 4-track cassettes into an ordinary cassette player and play side B. You would hear track 3 and 4 but would play backwards.

I really wished that the co-creators of the red book CD standard would've went with the original 4-track format. it would have fostered tremendous growth in the home audio market along much different lines than today.