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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 4:08 pm   #121
Dave Moll
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Thinking of document/data-capture, another 'thing' which never caught on was the Microwriter: a 'chorded' keyboard where you pressed different groups of keys at the same time to represent the different letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter
Also available as the Quinkey:
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 4:53 pm   #122
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Jazz drives? the next step after the zip drive.
Larger capacity I think but never really took off big time.
Sinclair microdrives, wafadrives .
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 5:11 pm   #123
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N-rays

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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 7:19 pm   #124
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My DVD recorder even had video plus, luckily it knew to use the digital channels, but none of the listings magazines print the codes now. An earlier version used actual bar codes, my aunt & uncle had VCR with this feature.

My VCR has Programme Delivery Control, which would normally make sure a recording started & ended when the programme actually was on air. Obviously this only worked on some analogue channels, BBC 1, 2 & Channel 4 IIRC.

I read that the Cuecat was used for market research by letting the makers know what you were scanning.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 7:25 pm   #125
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We had a VCR with PDC, but never found it to be reliable.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 7:45 pm   #126
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Jazz drives? the next step after the zip drive.
Larger capacity I think but never really took off big time.
Sinclair microdrives, wafadrives .
The horror-of-horrors backup-device for small computers/workstations a couple of decades back was a thing called an Exabyte cartridge: based on the "Data8" 8mm videotape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data8

These were gruesomely sensitive to head-alignment issues: you could (usually) read a tape on the drive which wrote it, but trying to read a tape on a different drive to its 'home' one was fraught with errors.

As a mechanism for disaster-recovery they were a nightmare! I used to refer to them as WORN cartridges: Write Once Read Never.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 7:54 pm   #127
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A bit of a niche item, this, but how about this: A hardware attachment / accessory for Kenwood amateur handheld radios which allowed you to (gasp) capture images and send them to other people almost in real time (via 'SSTV').

http://www.kenwood.com/i/products/in...teur/vch1.html

A novel, interesting and expensive device which was killed stone dead by the arrival of the camera-equipped mobile phone.

Although SSTV means the same in this context as it does anywhere else, on amateur radio it was used much more often for sending single still images (more like fax by radio) than it was for sending a continuous stream of images.

The mode is probably still used, but using software running on more general purpose devices like PCs connected to radio transceivers.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 8:02 pm   #128
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Sinclair microdrives, wafadrives .
The Microdrives were actually used commercially by at least one outfit contemporary with Sinclair, maybe ICL.

When Sinclair opted to use them in the QL as well, that was when my previously unbroken loyalty to Sinclair finally cracked under the strain: They had already given me more than enough grief during my years as a 'serious' Spectrum user.

The QL was the first Sinclair machine that I declined to buy, instead opting for the Atari ST which had a 'real' floppy drive.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 8:17 pm   #129
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Sinclair microdrives, wafadrives .
The Microdrives were actually used commercially by at least one outfit contemporary with Sinclair, maybe ICL.
ICL produced a QL-derivative as the "One-per-Desk". BT sold a similar version as the "Merlin Tonto" adjunct to certain of their PABXes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Per_Desk

Both failed to make a significant impression.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 8:39 pm   #130
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Whereas Polaroid cameras really are useless without a supply of the consumable film! To make this at home you would need a particularly well-equipped laboratory.
Secondary to this, the battery inside the film cartridge was usable in the Sinclair TV80/FTV1 with a minor mod.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 8:43 pm   #131
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Whereas Polaroid cameras really are useless without a supply of the consumable film! To make this at home you would need a particularly well-equipped laboratory.
Secondary to this, the battery inside the film cartridge was usable in the Sinclair TV80/FTV1 with a minor mod.
I gather that a few decades back the "Polapulse" film cartridge flat batteries were the battery-of-choice to power the detonator in letter-bombs!
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 9:03 pm   #132
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Another data backup device, the 'Backer' card, which converted the data into a video-compatible signal, so that backups could be made on a VHS recirder. I still have one somewhere.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:07 pm   #133
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Don't recall seeing one, but the "Qwertyphone" anyone? I refer to an early 90s bt item.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:10 pm   #134
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Sony PCM-F1

Digital audio onto betamax converter/recorder duo.

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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:11 pm   #135
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by electronicskip View Post
Jazz drives? the next step after the zip drive.
Larger capacity I think but never really took off big time.
Sinclair microdrives, wafadrives .
The horror-of-horrors backup-device for small computers/workstations a couple of decades back was a thing called an Exabyte cartridge: based on the "Data8" 8mm videotape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data8

These were gruesomely sensitive to head-alignment issues: you could (usually) read a tape on the drive which wrote it, but trying to read a tape on a different drive to its 'home' one was fraught with errors.

As a mechanism for disaster-recovery they were a nightmare! I used to refer to them as WORN cartridges: Write Once Read Never.
I heard that Zip drives could be like that, due to the read head lacking dampers that meant any vibration while reading or writing would render a cartridge useless.

Rim drive tape recorders often wouldn't properly play back tapes recorded on another machine, as did Shibaden open reel video machines, which makes their use for offline editing at the BBC intriguing.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:57 pm   #136
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8 inch floppy disks.
The plastic housed 720K ones soon followed and then 1.4 meg ones later.
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Old 24th Mar 2018, 12:14 am   #137
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Punched paper tape and cards for loading programs.
I remember getting quite adept at holding some of the smaller bootstrap programs on paper tape between finger and thumb as the reader pulled them in. You could get sticky patches with pre-punched holes for repairing tears in the tape.
The punched cards had to be loaded into the readers in order, and when things went wrong the cards would be thrown in the air. Great fun putting a couple of hundred cards back in order!
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Old 24th Mar 2018, 12:17 am   #138
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Those Amstrad video phones. I think Panasonic had a go too. Never knew anyone that had one and now we have skype etc.and webcams to make 'em obsolete.

In Europe: Canal Plus analogue decoders. These used Nagravision to descramble UHF analogue film channel (pictured below). Died when they transferred to digital via satellite and cable about 10 years back but the boxes have a nice PSU in 'em!

Tape reader strips for the blind/education. There was also a sort of cartridge machine for talking books -Fidelipac? Not Nab or 8 track but similar.

I have a Dictafone answer machine which uses mini loop carts, like a missing link between a Zx spectrum microdrive and an 8 track cartridge. Never seen 'em elsewhere. Long obsolete.

I have a review of that quinkey writer thing in an old copy of Practical electronics! Might dig it out next week.
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Old 24th Mar 2018, 12:50 am   #139
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BT also sold a videophone circa 1990. A GEC company made them. I have the case of one that had been used by the GEC Patent Department to prepare a registered design application for it. When they binned it I took it home for the kids to play with.

I remember watching scrambled Canal Plus TV at my late brother-in-law's house in France. It seemed that the line order was jumbled. We found that if you screwed up your eyes, you could just about make out a fuzzy image, but of course no sound. I always wondered what was used to descramble it: he never bothered getting a descrambler as he didn't watch TV much.

Palm PDA's. I have never seen one, but I was reminded of them at my evening class last night, where the BBC "Talk Italian" course textbook (evidently in need of an update) includes a dialogue where someone has lost their "palmare" that contained all their telephone numbers and appointments etc., and needs to report it to the police station. The drawing accompanying the dialogue shows what appears to be a Palm Pilot PDA, complete with its stylus. I was the only one who realised what it was that was being referred to.

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Old 24th Mar 2018, 6:21 am   #140
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

A lot of the (computer) things mentioned are obsolete, are no longer mainstream, etc, but are certainly no more 'useless' than valve radios, 405 line TVs, clockwork gramophones, and many other things that are commonly used on this list.

I still use (and need to use) paper tape, floppy disks (8", 5.25", 3.5", 3"), various tape cartridges, etc for my collection of classic computers. To suggest I should replace them (the machines, or the storage devices) with emulators is similar to pointing out that I can listen to the same radio station on a pre-war valve set and a modern IC-based one.

Incidentally, I still have (and can just about use) a Microwriter and a Microwriter Agenda (a later, smaller unit with the 5 key chording keyboard). I also have a QWERTYphone.

As for Polapulse batteries, some years ago I bought the Polaroid ultrasonic ranging
development kit (long story). It came with a couple of the batteries and a holder to
power it. I _think_ they were the ones with the contacts positioned as for the Sinclair
TV, not the camera.
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