Okay, okay..........so who here still uses an abacus?
I don"t, just asking
I still occasionally pull out my trusty HP55 LED calculator or the later HP10B LCD business calculator.
12 outdated technologies that refuse to die - discuss and how many do you use?
- Thread starter mech986
- Start date
I still occasionally pull out my trusty HP55 LED calculator or the later HP10B LCD business calculator.
Okay, okay..........so who here still uses an abacus?
I don"t, just asking
I've owned one for like 50 years, but no longer remember how to use it.
Okay, okay..........so who here still uses an abacus?
I don"t, just asking
I remember learning about how to use them in school, but not much beyond that. For most of my calculating needs, I have this:
(among others)
Novachord
Member
Old technology-I’ve got a late 1920s Garrard portable wind up. I take it to work at Christmas and have a 1930s disco with a cup of tea, playing my grandparents old jazz records. The last 78 rpm they purchased seems to be Mr Sandman, unfortunately it has got a crack from the centre to the outside and has a click, click, click noise all the time.
My work colleagues are impressed how loud it is and most of them have never seen one working.
My work colleagues are impressed how loud it is and most of them have never seen one working.
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I got a "Page not found" message when I clicked on the link.
Still have mine and use it. I replaced the rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery (3 AA-size cells) a while ago. I like the RPN stack arithmetic it does. My copy did not come in that plastic case, however. I showed it to a buddy, and he wondered where the 'equal sign' key was. I explained how it worked to him.I remember learning about how to use them in school, but not much beyond that. For most of my calculating needs, I have this:
(among others)
Do you develop the film yourself, or can you get that done somewhere?
Just wanted to say welcome to AK. I thought that was a nice post.
To stay on topic - but, I confess, without reading to see how many times this might have been mentioned: I have more than one slide rule, and I use them once in a while. They don't even require winding up!
Bible: The runaway best seller of all time. No other book has sold that many copies.
And after that, they will power the car with their feet, aka The Flintstones.
I pay my utility bills via mailed checks.
I 'spoze.
Well, this thread is almost 11 years old.
Missed that.
davidhun
Well-Known Member
Kinda apropos for a post named "12 outdated technologies that refuse to die".
We bought a rotary dial phone so we could slam it down satisfyingly. Surprisingly, it works with our VoIP provider with no modifications or converters.
Which makes sense, your cable modem does all the conversion.
As long as we're reviving a long-dead thread about long-dead (or mostly-dead *) tech, can I get an Amen to my prayer that touch-tone coding should continue to be supported for a lot longer? For at least as long as *I'm* supportable, that is, and as long as my main bank keeps supporting it.
Don't panic - I have no reason to think it's going away. I imagine hat there are important reasons that it has lasted this long. Maybe the US DOD uses it for launch codes, or something. I'm prepared to overlook that.
I think it's in keeping with the necro-thread's intent if I mention that touch-tone and face-to-face are almost the only ways I interact with my main bank. (ATMs, too, of course, but mostly ones located at sites of my main bank, and mostly for deposits.)
To tempt GChief even further, let me just say that I think anyone who routinely uses "modern" online methods to interact with their main bank is tempting fate, not to mention tempting uncountable millions of hackers. If you're a user of online banking, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the only reason you haven't been hacked yet is because you're relatively "small fry". I think AI will change that pretty soon, but that's a different OMYAC thread.
(*) Here, I'm invoking Billy Crystal as "Miracle Max" in "Princess Bride". How appropriate is that for a "refuse to die" thread? Huh? Huh?? Now go get me an MLT.
Don't panic - I have no reason to think it's going away. I imagine hat there are important reasons that it has lasted this long. Maybe the US DOD uses it for launch codes, or something. I'm prepared to overlook that.
I think it's in keeping with the necro-thread's intent if I mention that touch-tone and face-to-face are almost the only ways I interact with my main bank. (ATMs, too, of course, but mostly ones located at sites of my main bank, and mostly for deposits.)
To tempt GChief even further, let me just say that I think anyone who routinely uses "modern" online methods to interact with their main bank is tempting fate, not to mention tempting uncountable millions of hackers. If you're a user of online banking, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the only reason you haven't been hacked yet is because you're relatively "small fry". I think AI will change that pretty soon, but that's a different OMYAC thread.
(*) Here, I'm invoking Billy Crystal as "Miracle Max" in "Princess Bride". How appropriate is that for a "refuse to die" thread? Huh? Huh?? Now go get me an MLT.
I work for a tax accountant, and I keep a HP 12C on my desk, even though I barely use it for anything besides the basic functions. My boss had me run an amortization calculation once, mostly as a test, but beyond that it's there for when I don't feel like setting up his adding machine. Speaking of which.....
How about hand-cranked calculators?
A Victor 700 series adding machine, likely from the late '40s/early '50s, which I found at a thrift store some years back for $15. It sports a modern "keypad" arrangement, as opposed to the column adders and horizontal 9/10-key layouts which had been prevalent in the earlier part of the 20th century. As shown above, I got to use it as part of an accounting project when my boss asked me to do things "the old-fashioned way" for one of his clients, and his modern digital adding machine happened to crap out, which gave me an excuse to make his request more literal than usual.
Along the way, I had to learn how to re-thread the ink ribbon, so I took the opportunity to get some "nudie shots" while I had it open:
The battery pack in my HP-35 had been rebuilt using the guts of a cordless phone battery pack (likely NiMH as well) before I got it. I'll probably end up doing that for a couple of my other early HP calculators as well. Unfortunately, the chargers for both my HP-35 and HP-45 no longer charge the battery packs, so I suspect that they need new capacitors, as is the case for electronics this old.
The plastic storage case was an original included accessory, along with the soft slip-case. Note the slot in the top lid where the manual goes into; this was no mistake, as Bill Hewlett figured that storing the manual there would provide extra added protection for the calculator within. Of course, not long after introduction, Bill inadvertantly showed that said added protection wasn't truly necessary when he accidentally dropped a HP-35 during a press demonstration, and it was unharmed. Such "drop tests" became a typical aspect of sales demonstrations after that.
Not all VoIP interfaces do. When we switched from a POTS copper pair to Verizon FiOS service, the installer saw one of my many rotary phones hooked up in our basement and used it to check whether or not our new ONT (Optical Network Terminal) converted pulses to tones. While it did, the converter within the ONT is much more stringent when it comes to the rate of said pulses, so several of my vintage phones which had dialed out fine with the copper pair would no longer do so on FiOS until I lubricated the dial mechanism.
-Adam
gizzyman47
Addicted Member
Vinyl- check
Cassette- check
Reel 2 Reel -check
Cassette- check
Reel 2 Reel -check