Buggy whips anyone?

[Steven]

Critical thinking skills.

 

[Mushtang]

How about paper maps?

I found an old road atlas a few weeks ago and showed it to my son, explaining that back in the day before Waze or smart phones we had to keep things like that in our cars if we wanted to go on trips to places we'd never been before. He was shocked.

 

[Steven]

Bill Lear of Learjet developed the 8-track.

 

[neil_w]

I found an old road atlas a few weeks ago and showed it to my son, explaining that back in the day before Waze or smart phones we had to keep things like that in our cars if we wanted to go on trips to places we'd never been before. He was shocked.

The other day I was driving to a local park for a hike. Although it's in the area, it's kind of out of the way and it was a bit of a backroad adventure to get there. I was having a hard time imagining how I would have gotten there in the days before GPS navigation. I guess I would have studied the maps beforehand and tried to remember all the turns? Or gone halfway and then pulled over and refreshed my memory on the rest of the route? How the heck did we survive?

 

[jqavins]

We had people in the passenger navigator seat holding the map (when we could).

 

[BigMacDaddy]

Did anyone ever go to AAA to get a Trip Tiks? You used to be able to request a route map and they would pull down individual pages from thousands to make you up a custom flip book with highlights of all the routes you would need to drive on throughout your trip. My buddy and I once did a several-thousand-mile mile trip from NJ to Canada to California to Mexico to Virginia and back to NJ. They made up Trip Tiks for the entire route (I still have them somewhere -- 3 or 4 books -- but the picture below is one I found online since my relics are packed away in some remembrance box).

 

[Joekeyo]

Soon to be: Coal. The sooner the better.

 

[neil_w]

Did anyone ever go to AAA to get a Trip Tiks?

Always used these for long trips. As with any other form of paper map, though, best handled by a co-pilot.

 

[jqavins]

We never used those. We just had a collection of the folded big sheet maps state by state in the glove compartment. Drive into a state haven't been before, stop at the first gas station and buy the map.

 

[Cape Byron]

Anyone else remember these?View attachment 490557

The Fiat 850 Spider? Yeah, I remember those.

 

[Grog6]

Oh, yeah, cameras and similer tech. I've got an HP digital camera from the mid '90's. It uses Compact Flash. I made sure to get plenty of "carts". Now they're useless because I have no interface to read them with. And I don't miss using the POS camera - you press the shutter button, and IT decides when to take the picture on its own schedule.

Speaking of tech, computer drives, both hard and floppy. I've got an old boat anchor, a Seagate 25MB full height RLL hard drive that's actually worth something. It's huge and heavy, and came from a time when computers also did double duty in winter as space heaters. At the other end of the spectrum, I have a 20MB HP "Kittyhawk" microdrive.

View attachment 490549

I've got 8", 5 1/4", 3.5" floppy drives, Iomega Zip and Jazz drives, and a cute little "floppy" drive that is IDE-based and can read/write normal 3.5 floppies as well as the 120MB "super disks".

All worthless junk - until you find it's critical to have one! (and, nope! not win11 compatable!)

The drive in the picture is a mini ide hard drive connector, line laptops before sata.

A simple size adapter will make it an ide connector.
I have a media reader in my hp printer that includes cf, so I can read laptop drives.

 

[Grog6]

Bill Lear of Learjet developed the 8-track.

I had an 8 track Recorder; that was rare.

 

[Cape Byron]

What about things that are obsolete, gone and you'll never miss them? Like Iomega Zip drives.

 

[Marc_G]

AM Stereo. I had a radio with that feature. Not sure if there was ever a station near me that broadcast in that format.

 

[jqavins]

The rear-facing seat in the station wagon.

What about things that are obsolete, gone and you'll never miss them? Like Iomega Zip drives.

Again, 8-track tapes.
Leaded gas.

 

[Funkworks]

Answering machines, walkmans, and micrcassette recorders. Cassettes in general.

 

[BigMacDaddy]

I recently had an undergraduate photography student proposing innovative ideas -- some that jumped out to me...

• A place where you could bring film and get it developed in 1 hour...
• A roll of film with more exposures...

I am not sure if she was messing with me or if she legitimately never saw these things...

 

[Cape Byron]

I really, really miss two-stroke motorcycles. Especially modified ones with expansion chambers and clip-ons and rearset pegs and solo seats and fork braces and cut-down guards...

 

[Funkworks]

Three-wheelers. They dissapeared suddenly. Probably lots of accidents.

 

[Donnager]

Three-wheelers. They dissapeared suddenly. Probably lots of accidents.

View attachment 490675

I wrecked mine a few times. If you ever try to put your foot down when you are about to turn over, the back tire will drag you off, and you'll have a tire track up your leg and back, along with a sprain or two.

At least I learned not to do that, it was just better to crash.

 

[heada]

In the 80s there were dot-matrix printers---which still exist in concept, except we call them "inkjet".

Okidata 320 (standard width) and 321 (extra wide) are still in use today for multi-part printing such as checks, loan papers, etc. They'll continue to work near forever as long as there is a supply of the stupid nylon gear that gets stripped every 5 years or so.

I was getting 9-track reel to reel tapes from the state for data loads until about 10 years ago. Ya know, the tape machines in every sci-fi movie from the 60's until the late 90's. Luckily I haven't had to deal with tape in years. I just replicate everything offsite now. I'd hate to imagine trying to write 50 PB to any kind of tape.

 

[Cape Byron]

Three-wheelers. They dissapeared suddenly. Probably lots of accidents.

View attachment 490675

High speed cornering was politely described as 'interesting'.

 

[GlueckAuf]

My very first PC, an IBM Model 30 286 that cost me around $2500. Twelve inch or so VGA monitor and a whopping 20 megabyte hard drive (that was, like, a DOZEN floppies!).



The PS/2 keyboard is still in service on a modern PC. I still very much love the tactile, clickity-clack of that genuine, made-in-Armonk, NY mechanical keyboard.

 

[jderimig]

Journalism

 

[tsmith1315]

My very first PC

Mine too!

an IBM Model 30 286 that cost me around $2500

Same here, through the school bookstore. Math co-processor upgrade with dot-matrix printer and 1200 baud modem. Word, Excel and Autosketch...

Twelve inch or so VGA monitor

It was small, but it was color!

 

[heada]

My first computer was a TI 99/4A in the early 80s. Loaded everything from either cartridge or from audio tape. We later upgraded to 5 1/4 120KB floppy and added 32KB of RAM. Wrote my first programs in BASIC on that thing. Ah....fun times.

 

[Rob Campbell]

Here's a blast from the past.

 

[NateB]

... Cassettes in general.

Cassettes have been making an odd comeback lately, especially as vinyl records have become mainstream again, the pressing plants have a huge backlog. There is still a demand for physical media among the more underground and independent music fans.

 

[NateB]

There's another one. My sister in law's husband is an EMT, and I've learned that ambulance drivers all keep paper maps, because they can mark the maps up. "Use the service entrance on the east side of the building", for example.

We still have some paper map books in the helicopter with overhead views of hospital helipad marked up known obstructions, preferred routes in and out, and the necessary com channels. We can also make sure NOTAMs that get faxed or emailed are in the same book.

Of course, we use GPS and computer navigation aides on the trucks and ship too. With e911 and modern CAD systems, residents or us can place notes for certain addresses or phone numbers that come up on our terminals when the run is assigned. Dispatch can send ambulance crews door codes without broadcasting them over the air so we can get in buildings too.

Paper maps have their place,but technology is often better. (As long as you have a backup for when tech fails.) We also cannot replace general knowledge about your response area.

 

[Sandy H.]

[snip]

[edit]Paper maps Darn near all old methods [/edit] have their place,but technology is often better. (As long as you have a backup for when tech fails.) We also cannot replace general knowledge about your response area.

Very true with your original post for sure, but I think my edit is somewhat true as well. You cannot replace general knowledge and expertise with technology for sure.

Sandy.