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I still have mine I bought new in 1986.
Not a Honda, but a Yamaha. Need to get it running again…
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Buggy whips anyone?
- Thread starter Rex R
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I still have mine I bought new in 1986.
Not a Honda, but a Yamaha. Need to get it running again…
I sold a few BASIC games (on cassette) for the 99/4 when I was in high school. Good times indeed.
Bottle openers, Church Keys.
I read an article just recently about purchase and use of paper maps being on the rise! For getting around town to houses for jobs, I use my phone if the house isn't on our grid system but for long distance overland travel, you just can't beat a real map, or atlas!
I miss my old Pentax ME Super. I was always taking selfies with the tripod and spring wound timer. Zzzzzzzz click!
Ken
I miss my old Pentax ME Super. I was always taking selfies with the tripod and spring wound timer. Zzzzzzzz click!
Ken
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From the audio hobby, specific JFETs are worth their weight in. . .maybe not gold, but I bought a bunch as $0.35 ea that measured well and today they go for about $30 regardless of quality. I got lucky, as I was building a project, but in hindsight I should have bought 10,000 more. . .
Sandy.
Sandy.
This was also my first computer. The company was upgrading, and if the employees wanted, could purchase a wiped unit.
It was first come first serve, you don’t know what you get. I got lucky. I got one of the few with a 20 Mg hard drive and expanded memory for a whopping 1280kb. Cost….$25.00
Oddly, fountain pens have a sense of prestige associated with them. They can be very expensive, and they can be very cheap.
I have a lot of cheap one's with different colored inks and find it enjoying to write with.
It takes a bit of talent and practice to not soak the paper with ink. Good penmanship is a must however, unless it's your signature.
What I don't like about them is that the affordable ink to me will all run with just a drop of water.
For things that I've noticed that are gone in my small rural town is parking meters (not missed), phone booths and public drinking fountains.
Everybody seams to choose to carry a bag with a cell phone and bottled water these days for some reason...
And people just don't seam to bother with change anymore.
I can't count the number of times I've seen people take the bills and leave the change on the counter after a purchase.
That is, when they aren't using the plastic...
And sending your little round film discs off to Estes for development!
Fotomat couldn't handle those.
I was thinking that last night. Others and I have mentioned 8 track, and no one had mentioned (Phillips) cassettes. Superior in every way, and hung in a lot longer, equally gone today.
Come to think of it, all magnetic tape in general, except that little stripe on the back of your credit card. Again, except for nostalgia and luddite use.
Paper tape, they teletype kind.
Computer terminals. Even if you're using a mainframe, PCs have replaced dedicated terminals.
Sounds like a
Really?
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1983: Commodore 64, monochrome monitor, 170KB floppy drive, Brother dot-matrix printer. Around $1200.
1989: 386SX "IBM compatible" w/1.4 MB floppy, 20 MB HDD, mono monitor w/Hercules graphics. Around $1200.
1994: Pentium computer, 500 MB HDD, VGA color monitor, CD-ROM. Around $1100.
2000: HP laptop, laser printer. Around $1300
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<other computers>
.
.
.
2019: Thinkpad, 16 GB memory, 500 GB SSD. Around $1300.
That $1200 in 1983 would be about $3000+ today; it was a bit more than one month's salary (for me) back then.
COSMAC Microtutor.
Every waking minute of every day... (left it behind in Greece when I received orders to Hawaii)
1989 TZR-250 (3MA). Street-going version of a 1988 Yamaha TZ-250U.
Please take this elsewhere.
Oh I had a dynamite system in the 90's early 2000's with a Carver 4000t preamp, two bridged NAD 2200 amps feeding two Dahlquist DQ-20 speakers. I had no-name outboard front speakers for effects sound from the Yamaha DSP-1 effects processor and two back room effects speakers for more ambiance along with a subwoofer. Used an old Marantz 2285B for a back speaker amp and had a no-name amp running the side effects speakers in the front. I think the 2285B still works as I got it when I was 19 in college! Man that DSP-1 was a game changer! Listening to rock 'n roll I could tell it was multi-layered and remixed to a "T" messing with the settings. I could tell a great mixed album from a so-so one. Used a couple of Teac cassette recorders that could do DBX, Dolby B and C noise reduction for transcriptions for car use.
Classical chamber music was like I was sitting there with the musicians while they were playing! It was unbelievable to me.
Orchestral organ music could be reproduced like it was played in the church it was recorded in. The Toccata and Fugue in D minor is simply unbelievable with the recording "Bach on the Biggest" when the amps are set up right. Really shakes one's guts with all the watts and speakers doing what they are supposed to do. I didn't do that very often as I didn't want to end up deaf but crisp, clear sound is really a pleasure.
Unfortunately, I had to pull everything out when we had a little flood in the basement. The wiring was the deal and had to disconnect all of it and take the stuff upstairs. The electronics survived as they and the speakers were up off the floor. I haven't had the chance to wire it all up again. The wires and interconnects are in a box and the components are back on their shelves on the downstairs entertainment center awaiting to be wired up again. Man I recall it was a PITA but it was done in a step wise fashion in the old days as I added speakers and amps so not as hard when I started out. Seems so simple back then but now I'd have to think about it to get it going again.
I used a Signet cartridge on my Yamaha YP-D6 turntable to port my albums to cassette using Dolby B or C noise reduction and if I wanted to preserve a popular album, I'd do DBX noise reduction and just play the cassette to preserve the album. My record albums are pretty pristine because of this habit. I'd play them once or twice with an immaculately setup turntable direct line recording to a cassette without the speakers blasting and man I'd get a great image off the disc. I wasn't a pirate and just used my cassette images for my own use. If I was serious, I'd buy an album, end up paying the artist indirectly or whatever and just use the music for my personal entertainment and no one else. I never gave a cassette to anyone.
The DBX encoding on a cassette was really impressive but unfortunately no car players could play them. Only my home player could do playback. Once CD players came out for cars, that was the end of that. I did do some Dolby C tapes and had a car player that could play them but compared to a DBX cassette player playing back a cassette, it was no comparison. The Dolby C in a car was o.k. but DBX was better on the home system. If DBX made it to a car cassette system, I think one would have had a great transcription mode to take ones early CD's record them in DBX and play them in their car with incredible fidelity. I did some Dolby B and C transcriptions and they played o.k. in the Audi's but nothing like the transcriptions I made on DBX cassette I played on my home system. Yeah, the home system was impressive but I think a DBX cassette would have done well in a car if the cassette players of the time had the electronics to decode the format! I think some of my transcriptions of CD's to DBX cassettes are really close in clarity when I used a top of the line Teac V-850X cassette recorder and top of the line metal tapes that were available back then. Now, best of luck finding a good cassette player as I think they went out of production years ago. I have an early VX-3R that I think still works that did Dolby-B and Dbx and got me hooked on Dbx back in the day. The salesman said it, "Has this new noise reduction called Dbx that is supposed to be really good." I was 19, bought it and was satisfied for years.
Ahhhhhh, Doesn't matter now as one just has to plop a CD into their car player and can have crisp, clean sound as long as it is not a cheap s#!t system.
But! I could record some of the effects of the digital sound processing system (DSP) directly to a cassette tape with Dolby B or C encoding and it sounded half way decent on my car deck back in the day. Still have some of my tapes but not a car to play them in!
I gotta get my s#!t together and set the system in the basement back up before I die. The water problem has been solved and I don't have to worry about it in the anymore.
To show you how "hardcore" I was, I was an early subscriber to "Mix" magazine that was a monthly recording industry tome back in the day. Most of the stuff I didn't understand but some of it was helpful to me.
Kurt Savegnago
Yup,
I think the small three wheelers were outlawed due to accidents.
When I was on a trauma service in the early to mid 80's, we'd have a money pool to predict when the first "dead" heads would come in on the calendar when the motorcycle riders started riding in the spring.
Always tried to get the families to allow organ donation in that case if the decedent wasn't that old and not likely to harbor a bad infectious disease. (Yeah, I know "graveyard ponies" are different than 3-wheelers but still in the same vein. That's what we young docs called "murdercycles".
)That said, my amateur rocketry prefect let me take his four wheeler across a corn field to recover my rocket and I felt quite safe. Yeah, I could run it faster running between rows but if I had to go across rows, I cut my speed immensely. Got my rocket back. Was fun to ride and sure beat walking !
Yeah, I know a lot of folks ride motorcycles very responsibly and safely. I saw them all the time on the interstate when I was driving home to visit my family. I'm not slamming folks who ride to the best of their ability, not drunk or intoxicated by drugs. I was one of the medical folks at one time that had to pick up the pieces by the "stupidheads" out there who got into accidents on bikes.
Yeah, there was the kid who was doing motocross that wiped out and got hurt, but because he was wearing prescribed safety equipment wasn't that bad off. Maybe for the worst they had a broken bone but no abrasions or road rash from the suit they wore. Heaven forbid no head injury because they were wearing a "dastardly" helmet that protected their "squash" (medicalese slang for brain) so made our job so much easier. In over night then home the next day!
Kurt
MClark
Well-Known Member
People I knew that had three wheelers sold them when quads came out.
I had heard around here most were taken to Mexico.
I had heard around here most were taken to Mexico.
Better they be sent down there as they could clog the Mexican hospitals with the brain dead. Not a problem for us in the U.S. then. Being on a trauma service really opened my eyes to stupid ways of transportation. But then again, I think in every motorcycle shop ought to have organ donation cards front and center. As long as a person rides responsibly their risk is lower for death.
Then again, I remember struggling as a young resident doctor trying to get permits for organ harvesting from "deadheads" from motorcycle wrecks as we called them as there were poor folks in the hospital I worked at who needed them. Yeah, most of the time the organs weren't a tissue match but they always stuck the recovered organs into a private jet and flew them ASAP to wherever they were needed to help someone. Great use for a Learjet. I think maybe they got a "lifeguard" callsign on the air band radio so they got priority to get to where they needed to go fast as far as air traffic control (ATC) was concerned.
Hearts, livers and kidneys. Kidneys were always in great demand. Hearts, I think they still do transplants in some centers but I don't think livers (or parts of them) are not transplanted that much anymore although anyone can correct me here.
Yeah, corneas can be taken from anyone without anyone knowing a tissue match but with modern treatment of corneal diseases, don't have to do a transplant that often. Incidentally, the eye cornea was the first organ transplanted as the eye in humans is immunologically isolated! They did it in the 50's with folks who had corneal cataracts/clouding in the cornea. Was a big deal back then but not as much now. As is like getting lens cataracts addressed now. I had my cataracts out and was a piece o'cake. Actually, it would have been nice to have my eye lenses removed when I was a kid (as long as they could do a redo later when I was older!) Would have made my life easier and less expensive when my parents paid for broken glasses!!
Kurt
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Imagine a society built on freedom, personal sovereignty, and personal choice, and the concept that your body belongs to you and you alone, even in death.
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The first time that I hunted Wyoming, working on public land, I was shocked to find just how many 'roads' and 'towns' that were on up-to-date Rand McNally road atlas but were actually non-existent! Same thing last year, but the media was Google Maps.....went down 2 different 'roads' that were not really anything one would recognize as anything other than a game trail, and tried to get gas at one town that had been abandoned at least a decade ago!
Pem Tech
Notorious Member
Pem Tech
Notorious Member
I remember my grandmothers party line. Never knew what you were going to hear when you picked up the receiver.
Yeah, but one needs to tell their family "what to do" after they die. I've done that so all ready to go when I croak. My daughter knows what to do as my lovely spouse died before me. I didn't expect that as she was 5 years younger than me. I thought she would outlast me and I wouldn't have to worry about it but it was a "beech" when she got sick and died January 25th, 2019. Obit is here: http://cantonobits.blogspot.com/2019/01/sally-savegnago.html
Expired from Radon induced lung cancer and I have the appropriate evacuation fan installed now. Levels hardly detectable. Ahhhh, she never smoked a cigarette in her life which made it that much so harder when she passed. If you looked at the obit, she was incredibly beautiful and I'm amazed she married me to this day. 31 happy (generally) years together.
Retired from work last year after she died. She always ranted to me that she didn't want me to retire and pester her at home. I got tired of her pestering and said, "Without the stress of work, you can ask me to do anything you want! I can't play with rockets out in the garage all the time!!" That shut her up. I was looking forward to her "bossing" me around but she died before that could happen. Still sad but am functioning o.k.
Kurt Savegnago
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Can you still press "0" on your land line and talk to an operator?
Just curious!
Regards,
Rick
caveduck
semi old rocketeer
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[OK this post got big, but it was fun to write]
In Des Moines where I grew up, the public library had a research service. You could call them up, ask a question, and a staff member would make a pretty diligent effort to find information on a topic. They would even generate call cards (remember those?) for relevant books and get them together for you to come pick up.
Mostly-vanished things not yet mentioned, avoiding computer tech:
Newtonian telescopes.
Lace-up wire wheels on cars.
6 volt battery systems in cars. (Curse Lucas 6V positive-common systems for eternity!!)
Wall switches with two push buttons
Single-taillight cars (still legal if your car is old enough)
The mechanical dial above each elevator in the lobby showing its floor level
Large ornate mechanical clocks outside of banks
Hats being universal, men and women
Other haberdashery: Cufflinks, string ties, rubber galoshes, saddle shoes, knickers, leather soled shoes
BYOB restaurants in blue-law states
Contoured breast-pocket flasks in which to BYOB
indestructible black Bakelite phones that hurt like hell if dropped on your foot
Going through three operators to make a long distance call (local, LD operator, far-end local)
Brick streets
Railroad or streetcar tracks running down the middle of brick streets
Actual trains on the tracks running down the middle of brick streets
Traveling with large trunks instead of suitcases
Dirt roads impassable in rain
Routinely carrying boards in the trunk to escape impassable dirt roads
One-lane bridges with impassable dirt road on either side
Going around the long way due to washed out one-lane bridge
Routinely seeing cattle on rural roads. Now there are signs warning you of this, but no more loose cattle.
Tire studs for icy weather. Currently legal in 48 states, but a long ban history means you rarely see them anymore.
Switching window screens for glass storm windows in the spring and fall
Western Union telegram delivery
Door-to-door sales, notably Hoover vacuums and Fuller Brush
Door-to-door sales were not 100% scams
TV repair guy with case of tubes and a portable tester
Milk delivery, glass bottles to an insulated milkbox outside your back door
Getting sick due to milk that sat outside in the milkbox too long
Ice delivery for refrigerator
Coal delivery for furnace (my grandparents' house in DSM had a coal room)
Vacation slide projection in the living room with your aunts and uncles
Small town water towers with the red conical hats
Water outages in small towns with the red-capped water towers
A pump well in the back yard in case of water outages in the small towns with the red-capped water towers
Really bad tasting well water from the pump well in the back yard
Aermotor wind pumps on absolutely every farm in existence
Steers kept their horns
Gaslamps (real ones) along the streets
Trophies with actual cast-metal victory figures on top and marble/wood base plates
Mechanically timed traffic lights on the "loop" streets in downtown areas
Synchronous AC motors like the ones in the ubiquitous old Westclox alarm clocks.
Anything made of nitrocellulose. Ping pong balls were the last major use case for solid celluloid.
Disappearances and near-disappearances on the horizon:
radiators on cars, e-cars will not have them
gas stations. car charging stations already look more like parking lots from old drive-ins.
traffic cops - nothing to do, no more human drivers on most roads
traffic signage as we know it - will shift to autopilot sensor aids
many old crude pharmaceuticals - will be placed by safer and more effective engineered ones
mined diamonds - lab-growns are now indistinguishable and can be made larger in more quantity
Surprisingly not going away anytime soon:
fax machines - still the lowest common denominator for global document transmission
vacuum tubes, thanks to legions of guitar players
manual-focus camera lenses for video work
subtractive manufacturing - additive will not reach needed precision for a while
handheld calculators - mandated by anti-cheat protocols in school
In Des Moines where I grew up, the public library had a research service. You could call them up, ask a question, and a staff member would make a pretty diligent effort to find information on a topic. They would even generate call cards (remember those?) for relevant books and get them together for you to come pick up.
Mostly-vanished things not yet mentioned, avoiding computer tech:
Newtonian telescopes.
Lace-up wire wheels on cars.
6 volt battery systems in cars. (Curse Lucas 6V positive-common systems for eternity!!)
Wall switches with two push buttons
Single-taillight cars (still legal if your car is old enough)
The mechanical dial above each elevator in the lobby showing its floor level
Large ornate mechanical clocks outside of banks
Hats being universal, men and women
Other haberdashery: Cufflinks, string ties, rubber galoshes, saddle shoes, knickers, leather soled shoes
BYOB restaurants in blue-law states
Contoured breast-pocket flasks in which to BYOB
indestructible black Bakelite phones that hurt like hell if dropped on your foot
Going through three operators to make a long distance call (local, LD operator, far-end local)
Brick streets
Railroad or streetcar tracks running down the middle of brick streets
Actual trains on the tracks running down the middle of brick streets
Traveling with large trunks instead of suitcases
Dirt roads impassable in rain
Routinely carrying boards in the trunk to escape impassable dirt roads
One-lane bridges with impassable dirt road on either side
Going around the long way due to washed out one-lane bridge
Routinely seeing cattle on rural roads. Now there are signs warning you of this, but no more loose cattle.
Tire studs for icy weather. Currently legal in 48 states, but a long ban history means you rarely see them anymore.
Switching window screens for glass storm windows in the spring and fall
Western Union telegram delivery
Door-to-door sales, notably Hoover vacuums and Fuller Brush
Door-to-door sales were not 100% scams
TV repair guy with case of tubes and a portable tester
Milk delivery, glass bottles to an insulated milkbox outside your back door
Getting sick due to milk that sat outside in the milkbox too long
Ice delivery for refrigerator
Coal delivery for furnace (my grandparents' house in DSM had a coal room)
Vacation slide projection in the living room with your aunts and uncles
Small town water towers with the red conical hats
Water outages in small towns with the red-capped water towers
A pump well in the back yard in case of water outages in the small towns with the red-capped water towers
Really bad tasting well water from the pump well in the back yard
Aermotor wind pumps on absolutely every farm in existence
Steers kept their horns
Gaslamps (real ones) along the streets
Trophies with actual cast-metal victory figures on top and marble/wood base plates
Mechanically timed traffic lights on the "loop" streets in downtown areas
Synchronous AC motors like the ones in the ubiquitous old Westclox alarm clocks.
Anything made of nitrocellulose. Ping pong balls were the last major use case for solid celluloid.
Disappearances and near-disappearances on the horizon:
radiators on cars, e-cars will not have them
gas stations. car charging stations already look more like parking lots from old drive-ins.
traffic cops - nothing to do, no more human drivers on most roads
traffic signage as we know it - will shift to autopilot sensor aids
many old crude pharmaceuticals - will be placed by safer and more effective engineered ones
mined diamonds - lab-growns are now indistinguishable and can be made larger in more quantity
Surprisingly not going away anytime soon:
fax machines - still the lowest common denominator for global document transmission
vacuum tubes, thanks to legions of guitar players
manual-focus camera lenses for video work
subtractive manufacturing - additive will not reach needed precision for a while
handheld calculators - mandated by anti-cheat protocols in school
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Two of these had me scratching my head:
Aren't most recreational astronomers still using Newtonians?
Blue laws are about whether things are open on Sundays; BYOB is about whether restaurants require scarce and expensive liquor licenses to serve alcohol. BYOBs are all over NJ, blue laws are only still around in a small number of areas (most notoriously Paramus).
caveduck
semi old rocketeer
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The vast majority of the market for new telescopes is some form of Schmidt-Cassegrain with a corrector plate and an on-axis secondary mirror. I'm restoring my old Newt right now and certain kinds of parts are now quite scarce.
Actually I'm remembering back further to when (in my state) liquor sales licenses did not exist and there was a state imposed monopoly on all liquor sales - this was referred to locally as the blue laws though it's a different situation than you've got in NJ, and the only way to drink outside your home in Iowa was BYOB. The introduction of "liquor-by-the-drink" in Iowa (1963) was a big deal because it was the first time you could buy any liquor at all outside the state liquor stores. There are still laws on the books regulating hours when liquor can be served, but after they started allowing sales on Sunday you don't hear the term "blue laws" anymore.
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