Museum of failure.

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

I had totally forgotten the Versatec. I used to have to service one used for printing out radiotherapy treatment plans.It was attached to a Data General Eclipse Computer. When working the quality was very good but ,as said, cleaning the pump and piping was not a job I relished.
I have still got a box of paper that they used around somewhere. It had a 'chalky' finish to it

[Refugee]

That chalky paper reminds me of those "wet" copiers and print room police making sure that you did all you could to avoid black borders due to it wasting toner.

[G4YVM David]

Waitrose free coffee...once it was quite free, then you had to queue up for a cup, then you had to agree to buy something, now you have to buy something FIRST, before getting a cup. It is clearly too good a deal because the coffee is delicious!

[Maarten]

Tektronix also invented wax printing. Not quite a failure but mostly abandoned by users due to the per page cost, especially when printing only a few pages at a time.

[Gulliver]

Phone cards....They served a purpose in a time when debit cards were not so common and nobody had developed a system of card readers for "out and about" devices such as phone boxes. If memory serves the phone cards came out in the late 80s while debit cards didn't exist until 1992...and many people didn't actually get a debit card until 1994/5. And even then it took a while before there was the kind of communications system to make fitting payphones with debit/credit card readers viable. That's easy to forget in this age when wireless card readers are everywhere.

There was a wacky rumour going round at the time that if you ironed your phone card, you could get the units back. I never saw how this could possibly be true as you could hear something physically striking the card inside the payphone. I wonder how many people ruined cards and irons trying that one....

Thinking of modern thermal receipts, when you get one at a restaurant and tehn rest your coffee on it....the receipt becomes quite useless

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

'...while debit cards didn't exist until 1992...'

Are you sure about that? I was in (what was) the Midland Bank then and I had a 'Switch' card. It was different to (and incompatible with) the cheque guarantee cards/machines of other banks but I'm pretty sure I used it late 1980s / early 1990s.

Marks and Spencer didn't take credit OR debit cards back then and that was nearly a financial failure. They came around to it eventually, but were way behind other stores in doing so.

[Tractionist]

Originally Posted by Refugee

The Bendix LT dryer we had in the 1960s after my dad got a well paid job while my mother was pregnant with my little sister plus a still born.
It was in all the anticipation that we got this huge posh washer dryer with a full service contract and we needed it.
It got the belt slipping off mod and then the sock eating mod.
That service contract must have cost them an absolute fortune.
As a 5 year old I could see that the pulley had no flange on it for a reason unknown.
When I got old enough it had two two-speed semiautomatic gearbox rebuilds by me plus what it had on contract and lots of other repairs following all the usual pops and bangs. I got good at reading the microfish screens in short order down at the parts department in Wembley.
It used to warn you when it was about to go for a walk by throwing open the top loading soap dispenser before leaping into action.
My mother only got rid of it after I left home in the mid 1980s.
The Bosch 6 series machine we now have weighs in almost as heavy as the Bendix LT drier but it is the first machine we have ever seen that has never walked when off balance.

Ho! Sounds like an Indesit 2103B that I once had ..... it went for and cornered the cat a couple of times, and flooded the kitchen on countless occasions!

[Radio Wrangler]

Iridium

This was a biggie. Motorola spawned a company which put up a globe covering satellite constellation for unique mobile satphones. It cost billions to put up and so expensive not enough people signed up. The whole thing went bust. There was a plan to bring about 60 satellites back down, but they were left, still active iif unused and are now revived.

Difficult to fit in a museum, it's bigger than the entire planet!

David

[turretslug]

It gives geeks an excuse to stare at the sky from time to time though;

http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx

[crusher19860138]

Hunts capacitors should be in the museum!

[Station X]

They lasted as long as the equipment they were fitted in was expected to last. It's unreasonable to expect things to last for ever.

[HamishBoxer]

Completely agree,as I stated earlier what we are changing now are 50 or more years old.I would say that is not bad going compared to modern throw away junk.

[Andrew2]

What about those awful surface-mount electrolytics that failed after just a couple of years? Was it just poor manufacturing or a fundamental flaw? Either way, I ended up repairing and cleaning lots of boards!

Hunts capacitors lived much longer than any i-anything will or did. So I put the mobile 'phone in here. They all fail to do what you want after a couple of years (so I have been told, I don't have one).

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

Phones ,as such, don't usually fail. All the happens is the they can't keep up with the latest software so are deemed useless.

so are deemed useless.

Just like a failed Hunts capacitor?

[Hartley118]

Originally Posted by crusher19860138

Hunts capacitors should be in the museum!

I do remember that in the 1950s we lived in a world of leaky wax paper capacitors, few of which were any good for interstage coupling. Even top quality relatively new ex-WD examples were really only good for decoupling. In that world, the Hunts Moldseal was one of the first capacitor types to effectively exclude moisture at an affordable price. Its negligible leakage was a revelation.

Of course, as we now know, after several years, depending on the environment, the 'Mold' will tend to crack so that the 'Seal' is no longer effective and leakage may begin to set in. However, the Moldseal was in its time a massive advance on similarly priced wax capacitors. Its sheer commercial success is the main reason why we encounter so many today that have perhaps now exceeded their service life.

It was a technical success, not a failure.

Martin

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

A Hunts capacitor that has failed no longer does the job that it was meant to do. An old phone will still do the job it was intended to do it's just that what is required has moved on. Not the fault of the phone

[greg_simons]

Originally Posted by Andrew2

What about those awful surface-mount electrolytics that failed after just a couple of years? Was it just poor manufacturing or a fundamental flaw? Either way, I ended up repairing and cleaning lots of boards!

As an ex camera engineer I've changed a few thousand of those!, I'm unsure of the chemistry involved but perversely cameras that were in frequent use suffered less from electrolyte leakage that those that saw only infrequent use, say just for the summer package holiday, perhaps someone here with more knowledge could shed light on this.

Greg.

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Andrew2

What about those awful surface-mount electrolytics that failed after just a couple of years? Was it just poor manufacturing or a fundamental flaw?

Like the ones used in the Sony ICF SW7600 receivers, you mean? Been there; done that... I'm told they were float-soldered to the PCB at too high a temperature leading to premature failure.