Vintage analogue vs digital

Had a thought while reading some of the threads here. I will only put two thoughts here, please discuss.

Vintage digital, computers mainly, great fun to get working but not really of much use today.

Vintage analogue, still works (maybe with a modulator for radios) and probably better than a new one.

[Radio Wrangler]

True.

Expectations have changed. I remember some rather high ranking people who whiled away many evenings trying to get an Acorn Atom or a ZX81 to do something, or typing in the code of a game from a magazine into a BBC micro.

They wouldn't do it today, but they were happy to do so then.

However, whether you want Madonna or Mahler, expectations of sound haven't changed so much.

DAvid

[WaveyDipole]

I remember getting my ZX80 kit and building it and was quite chuffed when it actually worked! Then, only a few months later, the ZX81 came out..... Spent quite a bit of time learning to program both of them. The ZX80 was supposed to be powerful enough to run an power station.... but about as reliable as a plumber performing brain surgery. Those wobbly memory packs were awful. As you say, not a lot of use today other than of vintage interest.

Whether analogue is better, I suppose perhaps depends on how you define 'better'. Most older analogue equipment was well built, made to last and was serviceable. Digital technology can make some tasks easier and solve problems that analogue technology either could not or could only at a very high price point, but is often not serviceable, requires frequent upgrades and is poorly made, often falling apart after only a few months usage.

I think each has its fors and againsts, which is probably why I use my tablet and smartphone as well as a turntable, transistor radio and valve radio. They all have qualities peculiarly their own that make them the most suitable or perhaps enjoyable to use in a specific setting.

[kalee20]

I can't argue that vintage digital is not much use. I bought my Casio FX501P programmable calculator in 1980, and I use it almost every day. It's great machine.

[G6Tanuki]

And my late-1970s Hewlett-Packard HP-33c (bought when I was in my first year at university) gets regular use too!

[cmjones01]

Hear hear for vintage digital - I've got a 30+ year old BBC Micro in the office which does real work, running an automated test system. Simple and reliable.

Chris

[Andrew2]

Originally Posted by WaveyDipole

I remember getting my ZX80 kit and building it and was quite chuffed when it actually worked! Then, only a few months later, the ZX81 came out..... Spent quite a bit of time learning to program both of them. The ZX80 was supposed to be powerful enough to run an power station.... but about as reliable as a plumber performing brain surgery. Those wobbly memory packs were awful. As you say, not a lot of use today other than of vintage interest.

Indeed. I bought a ZX81 from WH Smith and was gobsmacked at the things I could do after a bit of familiarisation with Basic. I even wrote some (very) simple games for it, all in Basic. I avoided the Sinclair 16k memory pack and used a third-party one which didn't suffer the same wobble.
Then came the BBC model B, what a cracking machine - 32k ram and clocked at a trouser-shredding 2 MHz! I still have it, along with the 100k disk drive.

[Radio Wrangler]

If we take a typical cross section of analogue equipment:

A consumer radio receiver
A CRT TV set
An HF comms receiver
A cheap music centre
A serious hifi setup

Over the last 30-40 years:

There was no discernible change in the radio
CRT TVs got bigger and screen shape changed. Reliability improved and cost fell
There was little real change in HF receivers.
Cheap music centres changed in style a little.
Posh hifi got more expensive and became a more minority interest, but no real change.

All these are typical in an area of mature technology. The real changes in these areas happened in previous decades.

In the period, what has happened to computers has been far more dramatic because this is it's period of rapid change, and the machinery developed got embedded in all sorts of things, often invisibly. At the start of the period the biggest digital things around were PCM phone systems and mainframe computers. DARPANET and JANET were new.

Some of the switch to digital techniques has been very much in people's faces, a lot more is hardly seen. Few motorists know of engine management systems and most still think they have carburettors. On the other hand, cellphone users think they're all-digital and are completely unaware that they are talking into radio transmitters. The media say rockets are powered by computers, and seem blissfully unaware of fuel, oxidiser, turbine pumps and combustion chambers.

Smart devices need smart developers, but they allow their users to 'dumb down'. I think the general population is far less aware now about what is going on in the things they are using. This could be because the things are more complex, but they are also less aware of how the simpler technologies worked. I think there is increased isolation now in devices between their modus operandi and the 'user experience'.

David

[dave walsh]

The last two sentences sum it up very well. It's a "real time" future in which the ubiquitous use of cell phones and social media has created an altered state via digital technology with an on-demand and yet compliant mind set. The modern phone and/or computer is not just a communication device any more but a vital social dependency aid for most, hence the panic and helplessness when the system goes down! They don't really think about anything generally and take it for granted that it's all just there-like small children in fact but without the sense of wonder. Some people felt like this when their [only] telly broke down decades ago!

The pace of change through digital development could not have been matched in the analogue period of course and it is now our future and the new "revolution". We are not flying about using Dan Dare rocket packs and living in plastic houses but everything has accelerated beyond comprehension and continues to do so. Hard to say whether it's just dumbing down as not many people really understood analogue systems previously but there is a disdain for anything not seen as"immediate", relevant or that is too hard. I don't complain about this as it's really an inevitable consequence that was well identified in Science Fiction from the forties onward. Not the Space Suit stuff, more Philip K Dick or Ray Bradbury that focusses on the human psychological aspects mentioned in this thread. The Pinnochio film [re-made as AI] covers this beautifully-ie truth and the nature of reality expressed through our hard or software.
"Someone " wanting to be "real".
Dave W


"Everything changes. everything passes, just do what you think you should do" B Dylan "To Ramona"

[Mike Phelan]

Still got quite a few radios in regular use (of course); a 1960s Saba radiogram which cost more than a small car then; it's only had one owner and I still have the original invoice and instruction book.

Of course many of our domestic appliances have digital clocks, we still have some of the "analogue" sort in running use. The oldest one dates from about 1720. What else could you get which never got serviced and ran continuously for several centuries?

Next Sunday morning will be taken up!

[mark pirate]

Vintage digital, computers mainly, great fun to get working but not really of much use today.

I would certainly agree, my first computer was a Commodore C16. This was replaced with an Amstrad CPC 464, complete with colour monitor!

I progressed through an Amiga A500 and Atari until I purchased a 386 PC.
All of which are long gone except for the Atari, as it is useful for it's Midi capabilities with my vintage synths.

Looking back they were all very limited, but were cutting edge in their day.
Computers have come a long way in the last two decades, unlike analogue equipment which progressed much more slowly.

Think about how long CRT television has been around, a good 60 years!
From small screen monochrome sets to the last of the widescreen colour sets.

Records have been around even longer and are still in use today.
Analogue is the clear winner for me, simple in design and easy to repair or restore. I still use a 70 year old radio daily, and it certainly sounds a whole lot better than any modern set.

Mark

[dave walsh]

That's a good point about clocks Mike [especially mechanical ones]. I suppose it applies to books as well, re instructions and illustrations on how to build them and everything else mechanical or electrical. Overall we needed to get to the point of post war development before we could start to supercede everything so quickly especially via the digital versions.

On the electrical product front though, vinyl records are a great analogue winner because a simple deck can be constructed [and may be superior] plus [unlike say retro radios] vinyl is still in use on a worldwide scale by general populations. My son is a DJ and has down load/CD etc capability but will play vinyl at home 9 out of 10 times. This is nothing to do with me. He has no time for people who "DJ" with an I-Pod or Laptop. He is in his late thirties though

Since I wrote post 9* I've seen an article in the Guardian today re a very rich Brazillian business man who can support a Vinyl collection of 6 million items and growing. "Meet The Record Hoarder Who Has Spent A Lifetime Wearing His Heart On his Sleeve" He's building a special centre to house them all. Interestingly, he doesn't actually seem to be an out of control hoarder/collector, is very knowledgeable about the records and says his wealth means he just does what he has always been interested in. I think he has a definite analogue bias

Re the point about digital computers not being much fun today, I think that is enthusiasts only but I do recall meeting people in the nineties who were doing things with 486's etc more generally that were not supposed to be achievable [even though I didn't understand it]. The speed of advancement, availability and lowered cost perhaps rules this all out now. The Rasp Pi device is digital and retro [but not analogue] in a way I suppose! I'm still broadly analogue myself and it is quite satisfying to enjoy those products even if the source material being reproduced is sometimes digital.
Dave W

[russell_w_b]

I can't see the advantage of a VoIP telephone exchange (used for the core activity of speaking to someone) with its eight wire connection and computer terminal instruments compared to the simplicity of a POTS exchange and telephone with a two-wire connection (or one plus earth).

VoIP has its uses but much of it is technology for technology's sake. I would argue that Pareto's equation stands: that 80% of people use only 20% of the functionality of a VoIP PAX.

Our office is connected by a fatter link to the outside world than CANTAT 3.

[julie_m]

Originally Posted by russell_w_b

I can't see the advantage of a VoIP telephone exchange (used for the core activity of speaking to someone) with its eight wire connection and computer terminal instruments compared to the simplicity of a POTS exchange and telephone with a two-wire connection (or one plus earth).

Well, my own VoIP exchange has two-wire connection to the analogue telephones; but, being digital internally, I can program it to do various fun and funky things. Like dialling just 4 digits to be put through to a number in my parents' village, my own "dial a disc" implementation, and subjecting anonymous callers to merciless abuse. (It also lets you negotiate voice menus with a rotary dial, which is pretty cool.)

[Pilot Mariner]

A chap I work with, as a side line, repairs the clockwork timer mechanisms used in some of the old Victorian gas lamps in central London. He says that some of the clockwork mechanisms are over 100 years old and still in use today and good for many more years to come.

Mark

[Top Cap]

I was chatting to some school kids on a visit to our factory and they bought with them electronic projects which had been sponsored by our Company. All the real technical ones were operated by the Arduino and it prompted me to explain to them that in a way this was deskilling electronics today. Instead of working out a problem using discrete logic gates, all they had to do was sit at a keyboard and program one device to do it all. A skill in itself, at least they learn about flow charts, but surely not as much fun as populating a board with chips and getting the whole thing up and running? The kids smiled when I told them about the op-amp and how we referred to it as the Analogue Engineers micro-processor, perhaps the first device to get pushed to one side in the race to convert everything to digital before processing it, then turning it back to analogue. Having done the full tour from valves, to Red and White spotted Germanium transistors, Silicon transistors, FET's, DTL,TTL CMOS, LSI and Microprocessors, replacing all this fun with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino is hard to swallow. Argh for progress, must not forget PIC's and FPGA's, but then I have deliberately kept away from all of these later programmable devices. I am a hardware engineer, not a softie, having re-discovered valve amplification well, this is where my current love resides.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Pilot Mariner

A chap I work with, as a side line, repairs the clockwork timer mechanisms used in some of the old Victorian gas lamps in central London. He says that some of the clockwork mechanisms are over 100 years old and still in use today and good for many more years to come.

I suspect the same long service-life is the case with the mechanical analog eddy-current-spinning-disc-motor type electricity-meters [even though they have a 'digital' display of units-used in some cases!]

A house of my acquaintance was struck by lightning last year. The entirely-electronic 'digital' meter feeding the house was catastrophically damaged while the eddy-current-motor meter next to it, metering power for the stables/workshops survived unscathed.

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by ajs_derby

and subjecting anonymous callers to merciless abuse.'

I take back some of what I said. I like that function.

[Okto1984]

Many digital items are productivity items. So although a vintage computer will still do all the perfectly useful things it did in the 1980s, it's just that we usually value the improvements of the new ones. We want our work to be easier and quicker. This is also why typewriters are hardly used today. Many people enjoy playing games on a vintage computer, I do sometimes, but I wouldn't seriously try to do work on my BBC micro or C64 any more (word processing, my main task is so much simple with a new computer that works with all the other ones in common use today). Most the enduring vintage items are leisure items, TVs, record players, or simply little changed from the new ones (kitchen mixers, for example) so no time and effort compromise to use them. So I think it's more a leisure vs. work divide than digital vs. analogue?

[dave walsh]

News Night did a piece on the restoration of the last Grand Piano in Gaza tonight by a young woman and her technical team-definetely analogue! Fascinating and the epitome of a vintage restoration I thought-similar to many electronic [or otherwise] examples on the forum but on a "grand scale". The full Documentary is on news 24 tomorrow night! Otherwise all very sad.

Then Mr "Imitation Game" Cumberbatch read a letter I knew about what would have been the President's address had the Apollo Astronauts been unable to leave the moon in 1969 [literally marooned almost]. This led into a discussion that was part of a celebration re the written "letter" ie that outdated format I still use. Cumberbache was good on the pros and cons of digital v analogue messages.
Dave W.