Old Tech thread

I know that archivists working in museums have to go onto ebay to buy Betamax and 8-track tape players so that they can convert video and music to more modern formats.

I had to go to ebay a couple of years back to buy a VCR so I could play back the camcorder tapes I recorded in the early 2000s. I still need to buy one to play the HD camcorder tapes I recorded in the late 2000s.

And I'd already bought a VCR off ebay in the 2000s so I could copy the analogue camcorder tapes from the 90s onto the digital tapes I was using at the time.

We're lucky everything is now digital, and you only need the right software to open the file.
 
If you get the chance, the Nevada nuclear test site tour is well worth taking. Not many people get to drive along a road with nuclear bomb craters on each side as far as you can see...

Or use a porta-potty on the edge of a hydrogen bomb crater.
 
Wang 2202...is it?
(I found the the image online on a dead site but the OP wasn't 100% sure)
800px-Wang2200.png
 
Danny, what a blast from the past. This might have been the least well known of all Sony products (of those which were mass produced.) But weren't they the Giant back in the "Walkman" days? ---- How that changed. Sony now is just one of many fighting a losing battle with the smart phone.
 
My Dad had a small TV like that when he worked night shifts. It wasn't a Walkman. He had bought it in Saudi Arabia so it would have been American. It was much less chunky than that but it had a huge aerial bigger than it was. I thought it was real Sci-Fi as there was nothing like it available in the UK then. This must have been about 1984-5. I've Googled "portable TV" images and it may have been a Zenith Model No. BT044S.

Does anyone else remember watching black & white portable TVs while camping run off the car battery? But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
 
I do. My father brought a portable B&W with us on every family camping trip. We only ran it from the battery a few times because most of the family campgrounds we stayed at had power.
 
My brother (22 years younger) had one in the early 80's and he thought he was in tech heaven. He could watch it in the car! It ran on D batteries if my memory serves.
 
Does anyone else remember watching black & white portable TVs while camping run off the car battery?
Every one I ever saw, my Dad's, my friend's dad's, relations etc etc all had the crappy black plastic handle on top that had broken off at one side :oops:
 
It might look incredibly clunky but it probably still ran better than Windows Vista :LOL:

As for the steering wheel gubbins - well perhaps the "home computer" had early portability pretensions and you could "steer" it to a different room!
 
At least you didn't have to type with only your thumbs!
 

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