Obscure / Rare Technology you used.

Edaw · Dec 10, 2023

yaph said:
View attachment 503749

We had one of these when I was in 7th grade or so. Only thing I remember about it was it was some kind of PDA but all we did was use the battle mode. I think some other company also made one that was compatible.

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My dad had a couple of bag phones way back when. They had like 15 minutes a month of air time or so.

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My dad upgraded to these when my siblings and I started driving. Pretty cool looking back being probably the only kid in my high school with a cell phone other than the drug dealers with pagers.

I owned both of those phones.

RobXIII · Dec 10, 2023

Lanx said:
jesus christ, looking at the palm pilot again, i realized they still have their hooks in me, pretty sure i had the palm pro, palm 3, either a palm 3c or e, a palm v... and get this

i even had the palmv fucking modem

anyway i realized i still subconsciously have my smartphone task buttons like a palm pilot, calendar/phone/task/memo

jesus, it literally took me 2 adult hand writing books to stop writing in grafiti

my "e"s are still fucked

I used to load up and update every news app, then go out to lunch somewhere while reading the daily news with my Palm pilot (no internet obv). Ahh simple times.

I pirated the hell out of those apps, and thought Worldclock with it's sun graphic was mindblowing

Kaines · Dec 10, 2023

I owned a few of these as a kid.

Roddsgto · Dec 10, 2023

rhinohelix · Dec 10, 2023

yaph said:
View attachment 503749

We had one of these when I was in 7th grade or so. Only thing I remember about it was it was some kind of PDA but all we did was use the battle mode. I think some other company also made one that was compatible.

View attachment 503751
My dad had a couple of bag phones way back when. They had like 15 minutes a month of air time or so.

View attachment 503752
My dad upgraded to these when my siblings and I started driving. Pretty cool looking back being probably the only kid in my high school with a cell phone other than the drug dealers with pagers.

Ugh, I sold cars for a while and got a car phone to enable me to call customers on the way home to "follow up". I thought it would impress them and probably did sell a car or two in 1994. Any money it made me was wiped out when my first wife treated it like a mobile phone and talked for like 200 minutes to her mother one day and rang up like a $500 phone bill. I canceled the service and didn't get another mobile phone until 2002.

Siliconemelons · Dec 10, 2023

Kharzette said:
A Crusoe! I worked at transmeta (the cpu maker) back then and there were some nice little machines made with our chip. That company had some gigabrains, but originally they thought it was going to be this performance beast. I guess none of them had ever used an emulator.

that little thing performed as well as a desktop p3, I played EQ on the thing and it served me well for many years. The main issue with my little laptop was it was windows ME haha. I got to use the nub mouse very well because of that thing and still to this day can navigate with it just as well as a trackpad

BrutulTM · Dec 10, 2023

rhinohelix said:
Ugh, I sold cars for a while and got a car phone to enable me to call customers on the way home to "follow up". I thought it would impress them and probably did sell a car or two in 1994. Any money it made me was wiped out when my first wife treated it like a mobile phone and talked for like 200 minutes to her mother one day and rang up like a $500 phone bill. I canceled the service and didn't get another mobile phone until 2002.

Long distance is probably the #1 thing I remember my parents fighting about as a kid. My mom was a telephone addict and it really added up for a while there.

TJR · Dec 11, 2023

Kaige · Dec 11, 2023

Control · Dec 11, 2023

Roddsgto said:
View attachment 503788

It's a little weird when you see something that you had but you for some reason completely forgot that type of thing ever existed.

Another example: pull out head units

Jackie Treehorn · Dec 11, 2023

Zip drives weren’t particularly rare, everyone I knew had them for a minute there.

So my old company was still using a blueprint machine as late as 2015-2016. Which these were decidedly NOT rare….40 years ago. It was getting harder and harder to find supplies for it.

This was the old school ammonia-using blueprint machine, and the room it was in wasn’t vented. You could only make so many copies before you had to leave because of the ammonia.

Similar-ish to this:

Control · Dec 11, 2023

oh, also worked at place that printed these stupid things:

Edaw · Dec 11, 2023

Hoss · Dec 11, 2023

I used to have this awesome calculator that calculated your biorhythms. My dad was pissed at me for no reason one day so I calculated his biorhythm and showed it to him to prove it had nothing to do with me, it was just biorhythms! He smashed the calculator against the wall and I was still grounded.

Closest pic I can find to what I remember.

my-1977-kosmos-1-pocket-sized-biorhythm-calculator-46-years-v0-0tsrt1m9uu2b1.jpg

Captain Suave · Dec 11, 2023

Edaw said:
View attachment 503884

I have one of those in a drawer. Still works great. I always found those buttons super satisfying to press.

BrutulTM said:
Long distance is probably the #1 thing I remember my parents fighting about as a kid. My mom was a telephone addict and it really added up for a while there.

My mother's family is in Brazil. I remember calls being almost $2/min. We had a lot of, "HappybirthdayitsgreattalkingtoyouweloveyouallGOODBYE!"

Lanx · Dec 11, 2023

rhinohelix said:
Ugh, I sold cars for a while and got a car phone to enable me to call customers on the way home to "follow up". I thought it would impress them and probably did sell a car or two in 1994. Any money it made me was wiped out when my first wife treated it like a mobile phone and talked for like 200 minutes to her mother one day and rang up like a $500 phone bill. I canceled the service and didn't get another mobile phone until 2002.

in my college years (late 90s/2000s) cell phones were still being charged by the minute. i honestly don't know how we functioned w/ 200minutes a month free nights and weekends.

i'd have a cellphone for myself and my gf/wife and a beeper too, i got tired of having a phone around after college and decided not to have one for a few years, i missed out on blackberry, and i think i went to the shitty droid as my first come back phone

Siliconemelons · Dec 11, 2023

Edaw said:
View attachment 503884

I was going to add this, I used this after my brother, my bro used this for HS and college then I got it and had no idea how to use it … ti83 for me!

BrutulTM · Dec 11, 2023

My HP48G is still working I'm pretty sure. Nobody knows how to do reverse polish notation but once you get the hang of it you can't go back plus it has the added bonus that normies can't use your calculator.

Cad · Dec 11, 2023

BrutulTM said:
My HP48G is still working I'm pretty sure. Nobody knows how to do reverse polish notation but once you get the hang of it you can't go back plus it has the added bonus that normies can't use your calculator.

You mean you guys weren't on your high school calculator team which basically required HP 32S2's?

BrutulTM · Dec 11, 2023

Cad said:
You mean you guys weren't on your high school calculator team which basically required HP 32S2's?

I guess I missed out on the calculator team hehe. It was all about TI-81s in high school and then we got into the HPs in college which was a whole new world.

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