Who loves old tech?

[Lightages]

I just watched this video on delay line memory. It is actually electromechanical, not electronic. I have never heard of this one before.

[RobertoLG]

hmmmmmm, cool! thanks for sharing

[dexters_lab]

love seeing old tech like this!

was some discussion about these types of devices when TNMOC was rebuilding EDSAC

[Howardlong]

We had nickel delay delay lines in the Eliott 803 I used back in the 70s. I knew roughly what they did but didn't know how they did it. They were fairly unreliable, or, at least, difficult to fix when they went wrong.

It was a 39 bit serial machine, and it stored the accumulator, PC and current instruction in the nickel delay lines. Being serial, they sat in this never ending loop. Being serial it made doing simple arithmentic easy as you only needed 1 or 2 bit ALUs plus any carry.

Definitely in voodoo territory when it came to fixing them though.

[Tandy]

You can't beat the occasional nostalgia blast, The BBC recently closed their main studios in London called TV Centre and relocated to what is basically an office building in Manchester.

It was fascinating to see the racks of equipment that had been required over the decades to do what can be done with a digital video camera and software. Even the building itself was designed to accommodate huge TV cameras and even had a room where scenes were painted. The BBC used to have quite a large engineering department that developed and built a lot of custom hardware, must of been a very interesting place to work during the early days of video. Was sad to see them selling off all the workshop equipment.

[smjcuk]

Spot on.

This is an interesting read about some of the kit used to do idents: http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/bbc1_85.htm

[Mechanical Menace]

Spot on.

This is an interesting read about some of the kit used to do idents: http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/bbc1_85.htm

I can just about remember Tomorrow's World showing off a lot of Aunties home grown toys, and setting up the stereo opposite the TV to have a go at the surround sound demonstration lol

[Seekonk]

I have one of the first, maybe the first, HP desk calculators that does only simple math, CRT display and a delay line for memory.  It has a solenoid that locks the keyboard while doing a calculation.

[Rigby]

I have one of the first, maybe the first, HP desk calculators that does only simple math, CRT display and a delay line for memory.  It has a solenoid that locks the keyboard while doing a calculation.

picture request.  i want to see that.  video request, also.  i don't care if you hate your voice or your house/shop is a mess.  i really don't care.  video.  youtube.  now.  please.

[TerraHertz]

I have one of the first, maybe the first, HP desk calculators that does only simple math, CRT display and a delay line for memory.  It has a solenoid that locks the keyboard while doing a calculation.

picture request.  i want to see that.  video request, also.  i don't care if you hate your voice or your house/shop is a mess.  i really don't care.  video.  youtube.  now.  please.

I second this command. (He says, who doesn't know how to create videos.)

[amyk]

[Towger]

What happened to the doomsday project, which used the large laser disks and BBC Micro?  I remember hearing there was a project to try and recover the data, as despite many schools having the disks and equipment no one seemed to have a working system any more.

[Richard Crowley]

Who loves old tech?  No I, said the duck.

We had to use those old fiddly electromagnetostrictive delay-line "memories" when we were attempting some of the first practical graphics terminals back in the 1970s.  Give me a nice solid-state RAM any day. 

Most people who admire those old nostalgic times wouldn't want to actually live there.

[Rigby]

Who loves old tech?  No I, said the duck.

We had to use those old fiddly electromagnetostrictive delay-line "memories" when we were attempting some of the first practical graphics terminals back in the 1970s.  Give me a nice solid-state RAM any day. 

Most people who admire those old nostalgic times wouldn't want to actually live there.

Agreed.  Old memories (the kind inside your brain) are good, and reminiscing is often a constructive thing to do.  Aside from a few video games and other nostalgic things, I am glad we are away from those old, very limited and ultimately very unacceptable by comparison, technologies.  They are sometimes EXTREMELY fascinating to see and play with, though.

There are some old technologies that should have been developed further.  For example, where'd the propane-fueled refrigerator go?  In the 50s they were far more efficient than the electric variety of the day, and they didn't let all of your food rot during a power outage, which are still quite common in some areas of the US, and, of course, the world.

There are some old technologies that could have made things better had they not been killed by the free market, but like Richard, I'm very glad that most of them are gone.

[Mechanical Menace]

What happened to the doomsday project, which used the large laser disks and BBC Micro?  I remember hearing there was a project to try and recover the data, as despite many schools having the disks and equipment no one seemed to have a working system any more.

A team from Leeds Uni and somewhere in the US made an emulator for it, but due to copyright it's not really legal until next century.

EDIT: Or more probably given the last 100 years record of constantly extending terms, sometime after the heat death of the universe.

[nanofrog]

...where'd the propane-fueled refrigerator go?

They're still around it seems (example for home use). Even saw one offered with a Kerosene option.

Prior to this ^, I was only aware of them for the RV market (electric + propane units).

Learned something new today. 

[CatalinaWOW]

I'm with the others on not wanting to go back.  The reason those technologies have been abandoned is because they were replaced by something that not only worked better, it was cheaper.  In the rare cases where there is an advantage to the older tech (non-volatility in core memories for example), the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

An example of how clunky some of those technologies were.  At university there was a research computer that used a custom crt for it's fast local memory.  Quite the thing in its time it stored maybe a thousand bits per tube by charging spots on the screen with current pulses as it scanned a rectangular array of bit locations, and sensed the state of the bits by sensing the current deflected by the charge on those spots.  (Somewhat similar to the way image orthicons worked).  Access times in the milliseconds.  All of the reliability of a vacuum tube .  And free room heating thrown in.  The same machine had an experimental ink spraying printer.  I've forgotten how it generated ink drops, but it generated a continuous stream of the them.  They were charged and launch toward the paper.  A pair of charged plates then selected which drops made it through an aperture.  That whole thing then scanned row by row to created the output. 

The whole system couldn't out compute a low end cell phone when it was working, and up time was not assured in any way.

[nanofrog]

I'm with the others on not wanting to go back.  The reason those technologies have been abandoned is because they were replaced by something that not only worked better, it was cheaper.  In the rare cases where there is an advantage to the older tech (non-volatility in core memories for example), the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

An example of how clunky some of those technologies were.  At university there was a research computer that used a custom crt for it's fast local memory.  Quite the thing in its time it stored maybe a thousand bits per tube by charging spots on the screen with current pulses as it scanned a rectangular array of bit locations, and sensed the state of the bits by sensing the current deflected by the charge on those spots.  (Somewhat similar to the way image orthicons worked).  Access times in the milliseconds.  All of the reliability of a vacuum tube .  And free room heating thrown in.  The same machine had an experimental ink spraying printer.  I've forgotten how it generated ink drops, but it generated a continuous stream of the them.  They were charged and launch toward the paper.  A pair of charged plates then selected which drops made it through an aperture.  That whole thing then scanned row by row to created the output. 

The whole system couldn't out compute a low end cell phone when it was working, and up time was not assured in any way.

Interesting.

Did it require a swift kick in the right spot to get it to start up? Or did it go further, such as chicken sacrifices, wait for the right celestial event and so on?   

[Lightages]

I am not saying that I would want to live with the old technology, but the principle of operation and physics of these things were very interesting.

[Tandy]

What happened to the doomsday project, which used the large laser disks and BBC Micro?  I remember hearing there was a project to try and recover the data, as despite many schools having the disks and equipment no one seemed to have a working system any more.

The community part of the domesday project is on-line at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday
If you go to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley you will find a version including the video clips on a interactive touchscreen.

Funnily enough being involved in the project to convert the data is the reason I found myself at the BBC and taking an interest in all that old kit, just before they moved.

[free_electron]

i love old tech
i can watch it for hours being hammered to bits, sent through the shredder, being melted down. Cause it makes way for newer, faster, better.

 

[firehopper]

Who loves old tech?  No I, said the duck.

We had to use those old fiddly electromagnetostrictive delay-line "memories" when we were attempting some of the first practical graphics terminals back in the 1970s.  Give me a nice solid-state RAM any day. 

Most people who admire those old nostalgic times wouldn't want to actually live there.

Agreed.  Old memories (the kind inside your brain) are good, and reminiscing is often a constructive thing to do.  Aside from a few video games and other nostalgic things, I am glad we are away from those old, very limited and ultimately very unacceptable by comparison, technologies.  They are sometimes EXTREMELY fascinating to see and play with, though.

There are some old technologies that should have been developed further.  For example, where'd the propane-fueled refrigerator go?  In the 50s they were far more efficient than the electric variety of the day, and they didn't let all of your food rot during a power outage, which are still quite common in some areas of the US, and, of course, the world.

There are some old technologies that could have made things better had they not been killed by the free market, but like Richard, I'm very glad that most of them are gone.

those propane fridges are still around, used in campers now adays. theres one in my camper, runs of AC or propane.

[Rick Law]

Loving old tech is not the same with living with it however.

I like some of the old technologies' innovation.  But would I want to live with it?  Probably not - with the exception of SmartPhone, PC, Web and similar.  Too many "changes" with PC/Laptop/Windows/etc are not improvements but changes merely to create new market - to make people re-buy the things they already got with limited improvement.  That part I hate.

When Microsoft moved from Windows 3.x over to Windows 95, they were imitating the car industry.  That was the symptom of the trend.  Gee, you had a 2011 car?  It is too old, time to get a new one...    Similar to household appliances changing color scheme just so (and this is a quote, if only I can find the article) "the customer can 'date' their kitchen".  That kind of a mindset - so everyone dump their "stainless steel look" and go for the "cool white" to look up-to-date.  That kind of mindset I don't care for.

I actually quite miss the web as it was in 2000-2010.  It was far more user-friendly then with by-and-large the same reach as today.  But today it is now too loaded with junk.  You need to purchase a lot more horse power just so they can show you their animated advertisements or video advertisements.  Web browsing is becoming more and more a pain.

[Richard Crowley]

Loving old tech is not the same with living with it however.
I like some of the old technologies' innovation.  But would I want to live with it?  Probably not...

Well, actually I have a "virtual museum" with a couple of "primary exhibits". 

First, the Mergenthaler Linotype machine which was an amazing giant behemoth with a cauldron of molten lead and thousands of moving parts. Developed in the 1880s and in use for nearly 100 years, until replaced by phototypesetting in the early computer age.

And then my other "main attraction" would be an Ampex VR-1000, the first commercial video recorder. Developed in the 1950s, and with a useful life-cycle of a bit over 50 years. With a mechanical transport deck somewhat bigger than your washer and dryer, and electronic circuits in two 3 m tall racks bristling with 100s of firebottles.  In order to get the very high tape-head speed, they had to put the heads on a wheel spinning at 15000 RPM (for PAL).

[mikeselectricstuff]

Just been watching this


A few other vids on obsolete audio tech on that channel as well.