Old Tech thread

Dave said:
We've got DVD and VHS players. I've got practically every Disney animation up to 1990 on VHS (and the original and best Star Wars). I recently had to get a DVD player for my laptop - I don't think any of them come with a DVD player any longer, but I still buy local history resources than are published in that way. We have a large selection of CDs which the kids turn up their noses at and ask, 'why don't you use Spotify, it's only **** per month'. Because you will never "own" the recordings, you need Wi-Fi, and they can remove artists from their catalogue for political reasons with zero notice, that's why.
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And there's no context. No sleeve notes. No art. And, in the immortal words of someone long forgotten, 'you can't roll a joint on a download'.
 
JunkMonkey said:
And there's no context. No sleeve notes.
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And even if there were....

A slightly different thing I've noticed is that when I've played a CD on my laptop using Windows Media Player (or whatever it's called), the names of the tracks it displays do not always match what's on the CD.

I suppose that either whatever source WMP uses is inaccurate (or corrupted) or the CD number has been reused by the manufacturer, the CD itself not containing, not have had any need to contain) the names of the tracks.
 
Talking of VHS - am I the only one who uses old VHS cases for the purpose they were obviously subconsciously designed?

They are JUST the right size to store a 3.5" internal HDD
cases.jpg
 
Talking of CDs, I remember being awe struck in the late 1990s, my eldest daughter was starting university and we bought her what was, at the time, a high spec computer.

She was familiarizing herself with it for a few days before she left and put a music CD in, it turned out to be an enhanced CD and suddenly the group popped up on screen playing the song! - a hasty scrabble through our CD rack revealed a handful more that were in the enhanced format and showed the bands playing.

In those pre YouTube days this was gob- smacking.

I would suggest that enhanced CDs are now obsolete tech and have thus earned a place in this thread
 
Danny McG said:
I would suggest that enhanced CDs are now obsolete tech and have thus earned a place in this thread
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Judging from the price CDs are in our local charity shops - one I frequent sells CDs five for a pound, another four for a pound, and they both consider anything that looks like a box set to be a single item. I think a lot of people would agree with you.

I buy a LOT of CDs.
 
Danny McG said:
I would suggest that enhanced CDs are now obsolete tech and have thus earned a place in this thread
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There were also a lot of CD-ROM products that were enhanced CDs that only held data. The Microsoft encyclopaedia "Encarta" was one which everyone bought, and not for an inconsiderable amount of money, but there were also many Dorling Kindersley DK children's products. People had whole shelves full of these CD-ROMs.

I still have Family History products on CD-ROM but many were designed to work with Windows XP and to use them now is quite complicated and not really worth the bother when the same information is available online. Of course, that information online is all usually behind paywalls now (so is that progress?)
 
I have a Gorillaz CD single that when I tried to rip on to my laptop showed me there was a driving game* on it.
Nothing on the disc or sleeve about the game. you had to put it in a computer to know it was there.
* It's more of a Driving Sandbox as there are no game elements, just obstacles to explore. If you tried hard enough you could leap out of the defined area and fall endlessly.
 
Dave said:
There were also a lot of CD-ROM products that were enhanced CDs that only held data. The Microsoft encyclopaedia "Encarta" was one which everyone bought, and not for an inconsiderable amount of money, but there were also many Dorling Kindersley DK children's products. People had whole shelves full of these CD-ROMs.

I still have Family History products on CD-ROM but many were designed to work with Windows XP and to use them now is quite complicated and not really worth the bother when the same information is available online. Of course, that information online is all usually behind paywalls now (so is that progress?)
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In addition to the big chunky desktop computer I'm typing this at (and all the various phones, tablets, chromebooks and other, up to date(ish) stuff knocking around the house) we have an old XP tower plugged into the downstairs TV to get round this very issue. My 12 year old son is playing the original Myst on it. An we have a chunky old Win 95 laptop too - because we couldn't get Doom to work on anything else. Myst and Doom. He's a gamer boy. I think this is what passes for classical education these days.
 
I'm going back a few years, before Facebook and smartphone social media became popular.
WAP chat sites, I was a member of several and an admin on two.

Even then I lived in the sci-fi sub forums of those sites :)
 
Danny McG said:
I'm going back a few years, before Facebook and smartphone social media became popular.
WAP chat sites, I was a member of several and an admin on two.

Even then I lived in the sci-fi sub forums of those sites :)
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WAP! That rings a faint bell. I remember it as being a shiny, amazing new service.

But then I also remember using Usenet and being on the SF&F newsgroup on it, almost a decade before I got a mobile phone. My further education, which gave me free access to computers and the internet before the WWW, was clearly worth it :)
 
Venusian Broon said:
WAP! That rings a faint bell. I remember it as being a shiny, amazing new service.

But then I also remember using Usenet and being on the SF&F newsgroup on it, almost a decade before I got a mobile phone. My further education, which gave me free access to computers and the internet before the WWW, was clearly worth it :)
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usenet still going strong. Mainly for document exchange I think. Binsearch -- Usenet search engine
 
And boy were they right!

They just got the shape wrong, they aren't as round as that film roll.
 
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