linuxmemes @lemmy.world yesman @lemmy.world 6mo ago

Old Head

Kid told me that he just watched "some crazy old movie" about how a kid hacked into NORAD.

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My 10 year old niece asked me what my RJ45 wall socket was while I was fixing her mom's computer.

"It's for old telephones"

She then asked me if I had an adapter for it so she could charge her phone.

I almost died.
- Rj11/12 are for telephones, rj45 is for ethernet
  
  Oops, yes. Thats what I meant. STILL died.
  
  VoIP phone
- Some mad lads actually did this:
  
  Won't work anymore. Our phone line is completely replaced with fiber. On the other hand i can't remember any unwarned outages in the last 20 years.
- Technically, if it's a land line port and still connected to an exchange that hasn't gone completely VoIP (that's a thing where I am), it might actually be possible to build a charger module that plugs into that port.
  
  Would it be worth it, though? ... No.
  
  Low power is supplied over old land-lines for the purposes of making telephones ring and powering other handset bits and pieces, within reason of course. Using it for anything else is undoubtedly illegal as phone lines aren't rated for huge power draws.
  
  (If you're interested, there are videos online where people have hooked up LED lamps etc.)
  
  But, let's say that module existed and was legal. Your niece still wouldn't be happy with it.
  
  To avoid burning out to the telephone line, any such device would have to be a r e a l l y s l o w trickle charge.
  
  I wouldn't even think about it for emergency power outages. A battery backup is a better option.
  
  There's even an instructables on how to do it.
- Would it make you feel better that literally today I had to troubleshoot a RS-232 at work?
  
  RS232 is functionally immortal. Its market share in the niches it fills has never -- and I'd argue will never -- go away, or even shrink all that much. It's like those lobsters that don't age at all but if we splice the genes that do that into humans it gives us cancer.
- Could work in theory. Back then there it had sonething like 40 volts going through the line and you needed some decent power to make the bell in the phone ring.
  
  But I don't know if that's still in use these days.
- Those old POTS phone lines did carry a few volts.
I swear my kid thinks we were all hand starting our Ford Model-Ts before 2012 (his birthday).

Kinda like I perceive the 70s I guess. The dark ages, the before time before I existed.
- I was born in the 70s. :(
  
  "Time is running out!! 🤣" - Brought to you by the 80s babies gang.
  
  It's not your fault pal. hugs
  
  That’s not old you’re good.
- Completely off topic to the thread, but you just reminded me of a time I snuck onto a movie set and got to actually do that. I posed as a driver for the car company and got to start/drive one of those bad boys with the hand crank. Inside was all switches too which was wild. The most uncomfortable ride of my life.
- My kids are convinced that we didn't have cars when I was a kid. I was explaining to them what the before GPS times were like.
- I remember time before time existed, on cold winter mornings we'd gather around in front of our Model T and turned that crank just below the grill.
  Back then we also had to crank-watch television in black and white, uphill, backwards both ways, during snowstorms... just to get to bed.
- The dark time before time existed.
That movie is WarGames (1983)
- The kid was blown away by the modem. For those who don't know it's a cradle type dial up modem where you place the (land line) phone on a receiver instead of plugging the computer into the cat4. You could get up to 150 bits per second on one of those bad boys.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
  
  That's about the speed you can read text...it's why pre-internet sites like BBSes weren't all flashy, you had to keep it loadable. Actual downloads you would plan overnight and hope you didn't lose connection. The first big breakthrough was resumable downloading where you left off. Huge.
  
  You misspelled "RJ11"
  
  phreakmonkey connects to Wikipedia with a 1964 Livermore Labs acoustic modem
  
  Oh God am I old now? I never had to use one but know of their existence from said movie.
  
  I've not seen some of these words in decades.
There was a time computers had no text but instead had punch cards
- There was a time computers had no punch cards, but switches.
  
  There was a time when computers used to be African American
  
  First actual case of bug being found
PFY: "Hey, computers used to be all text just like that with no graphics, did ya know?"

BOFH: "No shit" uninstalls X/Wayland from PFY's computer remotely
- Ah memories from BOFH! I used to read that on the 90s
  
  Still sround
Don’t know what the equivalent is today. But that one solidarity Commodore Pet, green screen glowing in the corner of the classroom, will always have a special 32kb space in my heart.
Terminals I played with had no screen just a dot matrix printer. My God, the sound...
- I only used one of those once, it was atrocious. People must have shed tears of joys when screens took over.
  
  I'm pretty sure the trees get a little dance. You'd have an entire ream of paper on the floor after playing a game of star trek.
  
  But playing Oregon Trail was never the same again......
And before that they was just paper and holes...
Ah, the way god intended. GUIs were a mistake lol
- Which console UI are you using for Lemmy?
I was taught Lotus 1-2-3 on MS-DOS in college. Do with that information what you will.
- Ahhh, Lotus 1-2-3... I remember it well. But first I had to master AutoCAD Release 9 in DOS.
  
  I was so sure MicroSoft could NEVER replace Lotus Notes.
You young whipper snappers and your fancy DOS terminals.....10,000 years ago I sat at a teletype terminal and tried to learn to program in BASIC. Oregon Trail and Missile Attack are a whole 'nother experience when done by printed media only.

I can still hear the sound of the teletype clacking.....

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