Many bits of tech have been preserved, some even have dedicated communities for modding to keep em working far longer than consumer crap was designed to last. On the other hand, much has vanished into obscurity... into landfills or private collections.
Had this specific Vtech laptop when I was much younger, all I can find on it nowadays is the owners manual and two blurry thumbnails. Couldn't even tell you what cpu is inside it as this was before ARM started creaming everybody.
What sort almost entirely obscure shit can any of you think of? Game consoles need not apply, you can even find bios dumps and an SDK for an Apple Pippin if you look hard enough.
-8-track -reel-to-reel -vinyl -early mp3 players including zune -personal organizers (have dealt with a really autistic community on a certain model still coveted in certain circles) -NTSC television (there is a small community of restorers, one guy on youtube watches his torrents on a beautifully restored 1960's color set for color, and on a 50's B&W set for B&W shows.)
Jackson Allen
MiniDisc. I still want to kill my dad for throwing pic related away without even asking my permission.
Not sure if you're including PDAs but I miss those. Though they were technically much more proprietary and closed than the current iOS/Android stacks, a Windows Mobile or Palm device felt more more understandable. I was a member of a software sharing group and I've gone through my fair share of those devices back then. Seeing a Palm IIIc the first time in real life blew my mind. Good times.
I also remember seeing a sort of toy PDA marketed to young teens that had practically no features called a Cybiko at Toys'r'us. It was about as expensive as a real PDA making it completely useless but it looked neat with its clear/transparent plastic casing like many other electronics of the time. I was surprised to see it has a Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko
I'll mention clear/transparent plastic casings as an independent entry as well. I'm not sure why that stopped being a thing. Peak aesthetics.
Jonathan Jones
Boomer logic amirite? If it's old, throw it out.
James Ross
Why burger parents always do this? (I'm always under the impression it's a burger only thing, in my country family usually won't even get near your stuff when you're away, also many of us will lock our rooms and take the key when away travelling or on college)
Wyatt Mitchell
Why?
Ethan Thompson
It's mostly done by boomers of judeo-brittonic culture.
I'm slav and if I know I'll never have have use for it again, I sell it. My grandpa on other hand, Pole, has hoarded his whole life cheap chink shit. He had like 3 cheap drills and old, solid, reliable Narex one, that's working for 30+ years, that he almost threw out or give away few times, and only person who used it was me, and I have it in my possession luckily now. You know, what Narex was producing when stalinists were in power was top-notch, you won't ever be able to buy something new when you tried their old products. Not to mention that germs bought Narex when our government sold everything our country every had with market "opening", the glorious privatization, even after what happened in Chile. Fuck.
Dylan Peterson
PDAs were great. Are there any other handheld UIs besides Matchbox? Wish there was a re-implementation of Windows CE or PalmOS. Most handhelds are a full computer like the GPD. Though PocketCHIP was pretty close to the ultimate /cyber/ experience imo. The Cybiko actually had a fantastic ad-hoc messaging system that worked over the 900mhz ISM band. Amazing tech at the time that still hasn't been quite replicated to this day.
Aiden Edwards
Selling it is a lot better than just up and throwing it out. That way you at least get some sort of value out of it and someone else can enjoy it.
Blake Brooks
Any PDA you could use (assuming the battery holds more than 10 minutes worth of charge) is likely less powerful than any smartphone ever produced so I doubt they're worth building new software for. They're essentially just toys now, which is fine by me; I hate it when old hardware happens to have some modern use, driving up prices. Some old Toshiba Satellite still sell for $100+ because older car computers only communicate with them for some reason.
Eli Torres
meh, going to install NetBSD 9.0 on mine and use it for IRC, jabber (and maybe SIP if I get a mic) messaging
Potential for what? Even when It was announced it just looked like trash. If you wanted to play indieshit games, you could've gone to ich.io, if you wanted tech related stuff to fuck around with, you could've just gotten a raspberri pi or any other single board computer and done the same thing.
I mean, it's a neat little device, but it's not a suprise to why it failed
It's not about the SBC, it's about the pocket computer.
Hunter Roberts
It's a raspi but cheaper and more convenient, what's not to love? A cheap SBC that you don't need to plug a mouse, keyboard, and monitor into every time you want to log directly into it holds a lot of appeal.
Luke Morgan
Yes that is what I meant, I'm old enough that I always called them that, from the early limited devices that were basically phone number / address books on thru the palms and such. It's the psion something-or-other that has some crazy following, apparently still prized by some pilots / nerds for some reason. I remember the Cybiko, I wanted one to take apart and play with, maybe increase the range just to see if I could start a wireless network across the whole town for them. Never did get one tho.
Leo Brown
Pocket computer did you say? How about those old Radio Shack "pocket computers"? Always wanted one to play with, never got one
Caleb Baker
Saw a pile of pre-Lenovo thinkpads at a junk shop a few months back, and I wish I had picked one up. Didn't want to drop the $20 though, but if I see one again I'll nab it. Those things are stupid fucking sturdy.
I do a lot of obsolete audio and video tech. I've got 78 and 80rpm shellac, Diamond Discs, all major speeds and sizes in vinyl, Pathe discs, Standard Disc Records, assorted flexidiscs and related formats, piano rolls for nearly every machine, a small collection of nickelodeon rolls for which an extant player isn't even known to exist, 8-track, reel to reel in several flavors, cassettes out the rear, CED, laser disc, betamax, 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm, and Super 16mm film, 35mm film, and VHS (I hate having to call that obsolete now). Still dozens of formats I haven't gotten a representative of yet. I also hoard tube type radios and television, stereo consoles, clock-radios, and any other interesting old tech I can find.
I don't know if it's burger only, but happened to me, my brother, and my sister. Hell in my sister's case she had moved out, but mom didn't like her housekeeping so she went up and threw a bunch of her clutter away while she was gone. I have to work very jealously to protect my collection.
Christian Nguyen
VHS Everything just seemed better in those days. Movies felt like they had more depth. I'm probably just imagining it.
Seriously though as a burger myself I have never had this problem. No one ever tried to throw away anything I owned but they did try stealing my shit multiple times like a pack of feral niggers.
Easton Walker
Yeah, aside from minor points like the degradation aesthetic and the sounds of certain loaders, the entire ecosystem was a mess that I have no yearning to experience it again. Those things can get filled up with unspooled tapes in Hell AFAIC.
Grayson Flores
There were tons of people keeping old tech alive before Apphole came along and said "DRINK SOY! MAKE MOBLE APPS!!! YOU DONT NEED TO REPAIR IT!!!! BUY A NEW ONE EVERY YEAR!!!"
But people still have Ataris and Tube radios, and all kinds of other shit lying around. So theres that ;)
