What devices or equipment you own or had that doesn't have much use in the modern world anymore?
What devices or equipment you own or had that doesn't have much use in the modern world anymore?
When I was a kid my family owned a device whose sole purpose was to rewind vhs tapes.
I have an old 6 volt lantern that uses a battery that is 6 inches wide, 4 inches tall, and 3 inches deep.
If I turn it on it gives you almost enough light to actually see where you are going and the battery lasts for about 2 hours.
With two 18650s I could replace that battery for a package 2/3 the size of a pack of cigarettes and run that light for a day or so.
If I replace the bulb in it with an LED equivalent I could probably stretch that out to nearly a week.
Sliding ruler for doing multiplications (1). Still have it for nostalgia or post-apocalyptic scenarios.
A coat with a phone pocket. If you have something shaped like a Nokia 3210, you can actually use that pocket. Modern phones are the exact wrong shape to fit in there.
A Minidisc player. First, music went to mp3 players and then it went completely online. Fortunately I sold that thing while it still had some value.
A battery powered GPS device. It’s just for navigating in the forest, and nothing else. It doesn’t even have a map, so it’s pretty useless while driving.
I have an old dial telephone from the 1940s. A couple years ago I saw an Arduino project to make them dial digitally, but it's not the top item on my bucket list.
Film canisters. People saved the plastic canisters photo film came in because they were so well made, waterproof, airtight, and ubiquitous. They were used in all kinds of DIY designs. I've heard some companies still make them, without the film, for people who need them for crafts. I still have some in the junk drawer.
I have a sony mini cassette video camera. Got a new battery for it and works like a dream. Really fun to record modern events in that format.
I also have a Sears VHS video camera. Working on getting a battery for that.
A functional electric Smith Corona typewriter
8mm slide projector
Too many CRTS
It's a good time being a Junkman
Scientific calculator.
I got a graphing one from TI. It was really expensive and was marginally useful during college. Then I had a cheap one that just did numbers.
And those were way better than sliding rulers.
I have a stereoscopic viewer. Like a desk version of Google Cardboard. You tape down two photos taken from different angles and view them in 3d. It has an adjustment knob like binoculars for your pupil distance, and some legs to hold it parallel to the desk. It’s made for aerial photographs. Maybe I could turn it into a VR viewer.
I've got a film negative scanner. I've also got a big pile of old negatives. I keep telling myself that someday I'm going to scan all those old negatives. We'll see.
My modular synthesizer.
I love it and I've poured far to much money into it for something that doesn't come close to the power of making music in a DAW. But I do love it, and it can do some cool stuff that I've not been able to reproduce in a DAW - like random triggers and probability. It's also nice to get away from my computer.
A tone dialer. Like this
https://images.app.goo.gl/fbdmckv44BY7fdWw9
Not for phone phreaking, just for speed-dialling.
I would make international calls frequently. I would buy calling cards. The process was: dial the 800 number on the card. Enter the id number on the card to use some of its credit. Dial the number to call. Their service would then connect me at a low rate to another country(probably making a voip call).
So I'd set up the 3 speed dial buttons with those. For each new card I'd only have to change the card's unique number.
I found my old TomTom GPS in a box last year. I struggled to find a reason it might be worth keeping. In the end it got recycled.
We still have a landline (technically VoIP) phone. There's also a list of important phone numbers written on the fridge. Good for emergencies.
There are few things more nerve wracking than frantically trying to find your cell phone and the number for poison control after your kid just swallowed something they shouldn't have.
Audio modem. I think I have one in the bottom of my spare cables box.
I have a handheld analog radio scanner. Once upon a time it was fun to listen to local police frequencies, air traffic control, cell phones and cordless phones and so on.
Everything is digital now, except for the air traffic control so once in a blue moon I might listen to that.
I can do one better than that, I have a battery powered handheld TV that only works with analog NTSC broadcasts and does not have a composite input on it. It's therefore damn difficult to get it to display any kind of picture at all these days. The only way is to broadcast at it with one of those short range toy transmitters, or hack up your own.
Echo detector. Piece of shit only picks up the weakest artifacts.
I have a few PDAs from between 2001 and 2006 lol
I have an old PCI TV tuner card. It predates the digital TV switchover so I have a card that can't be plugged into modern motherboards for which no signals are broadcast. Plus I'm sure there are no 64-bit drivers ever made for the damn thing. At this point it's ewaste.
2 Garmin GPS, one handheld and one for the car. I've been using my phone for directions now for years, but I suppose I'll hang on to both units for a bit longer.
I still have a modded WD TV Live Plus media box in the back of a drawer somewhere.
Tape device so you can plug your phone into car stereos that don't have Bluetooth. Some cars just have cd deck/player and no aux input, no Bluetooth. Really new cars will have Bluetooth for phone control. Really old ones with cassette players you could use the tape gadget. Not so much in between.
Old flash drives, that were only like 1gb when that was supposedly sufficient back then.
Headphones with audio jack because most new phones have usb-c ports only now. Although I bought an adapter for only 10 bucks.
A/V cord consoles and devices.
I had a VHS rewinder too. Also that reminds me I had a mechanical "crank" playing card shuffler which would probably be an antique now. Lol.
Radio w/ cassette player, still use the radio tho
I have a Blackberry Playbook on my desk that I am trying to figure out how to crack. I also keep my Sharp EL-50 scientific calculator around. We had to buy that specific model because it didn't have a persistent memory. We could turn it off and on in front of the invigilator and they would know there was nothing stored in it.
I have a 2RU HP DL380 Gen8 server. Which is under powered and uses too much power for modern compute purposes.
If I dig down into the drawer with several layers of old iPhones I can find my palm pilot at the bottom right next to the Treo that replaced it.
We've got at least 7 or 8 old remotes for items we don't even have anymore.
I am going different on this one.
An awl on a utility knife.
Nowadays, 99% of camping, hiking, and "survival" equipment is light weight composites that can be better fixed with glue, tape, small needle and thread, or a patch with one of the above. There are very few alternative uses for it that aren't better with a different standard tool.
I have my old laserdisk player and a few LDs.
