I’m just musing after having seen some vintage documentaries about the “future” and “computers” from the seventies and eighties on youtube and reminiscing.
I tend to hoard old hardware, especially if they still serve a purpose and function well, so I still got my first real hifi speakers, a pair of JBL TLX 7 GI, which have served me well since 1988 and still sound as fresh as then (hint: always operate with a moderate volume, at least a sensible volume, and you can’t break them, though there were sometimes exceptions). They are driven by one of the last analog stereo amps in town, a Denon PMA-1055R I got around 1999 to do those speakers justice. I intend to carry all of that to my grave. They are in steady use.
Then I still got the C64 I got for Christmas 1984 when I was 16. It got stored away for at least 25 years in the attic, but when I first fired it up some two or three years ago, I was instantly greeted with the familiar blue “Ready” prompt. Oh, how many happy and also pathbreaking (I later got into IT for a living) hours I spend with this thing.
I’m absolutely positive that many dopers have much greater treasures that still go strong. So what are yours?
I still have the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo game systems I had when I was a teenager. I still cherish them,
As for other old tech… I have a dot matrix printer sitting at the bottom of my closet I keep meaning to throw out. I was giving that printer alongside my Windows 95 computer.(I don’t have that computer anymore.) I also still have the CRT monitor that came with my Windows 98 computer just sitting in my storage bin. I have no idea if either of them still work.
I have a couple of Radio Shack multi-project kits (I think it’s the 160 in 1 and the 200 in 1) in a closet at my mom’s house. They’re a bunch of components on a big board, with spring connectors, and you could wire them up according to a book of schematics that came with the kit, or design your own. I learned so much from those things, but now I’ve forgotten most of it, and they’re just collecting dust. I’d love to pass them on to another youngster, but it’d have to be someone who’d appreciate them, and that’s hard to find.
I also have my first scientific calculator, a TI 30-something, that I got as a member of the middle school math team, around somewhere (the solar panel wore out on it, so you had to hold it right up next to a light bulb to get it to work). I’d meant to put it in a shadowbox or something.
That reminds me: the TI-30, this later LCD model, was also my first scientific calculator in school, but it got lost in the mists of time. But I still got my first programmable calculator from when I began to study electrical engineering, a Casio fx-7000GA Graphics. It hasn’t been equipped with batteries for at least 20 years, but I’m sure it would still work. I remember that it had a free memory of less than 500 bytes. Enough to store some formulas for the tests ;).
I have a Sherwood S-7100A receiver I bought in 1974 during my college days. I use it daily. But better than that, I also have a Magnavox console record player/radio from 1966. It’s in my living room. Everything works, but I only use the radio. I also have a few rotary dial telephones that are in service. No good for touch-tone services, but entirely good for anything else.
And of lesser note, for you few aficionados out there: I have two General Electric TeleChron analog clocks spread around. For a 1930’s technology, a TeleChron electric mechanism keeps incredibly accurate time.
Still have my Texas Instruments SR50a scientific calculator that my parents helped me buy for school. I used it constantly in my electronics classes and labs. Thank goodness I didn’t have to use a slide rule like students a decade earlier.
I have an HP (35 I think it is), but I don’t use it so much now with a personal computer. The older one I had that was step programmable bit the dust.
You did say electric as well as electronic so I’d really like to go with the our player piano which does have an electric motor so you don’t have to use the foot pumps all the time, We also have a 1940s juke box recreation modified to play CDs rather than 45s.
I have some old CISCO AGS and IGS routers in a box. I have, basically, a bunch of tubs full of old equipment, but that’s the oldest stuff I have. I used to have a complete Arcnet system, and a box of Novel Netware 2.0a and Banyan Vines, but the routers have a special place in my heart. It’s been years since I fired most of it up…I just don’t do the infrastructure stuff anymore. When I was going for my CCIE I had a ton of stuff though to prep for the practical part of the cert, and I’ve kept most of it. My wife is always nagging me to toss the stuff out, but I think I’ll let my kids sort it when I finally shuffle off.
I have a Fender Rhodes electric piano that was manufactured in '78 stashed somewhere in the back of our church. That is a beautiful instrument to hear, though it is cumbersome to move.
And it’s all electric, with hammers and metal tines and individual pickups (like guitar pickups) for each note.
How about one of the first electronic calculators: the Commodore 500E with 10 nifty Nixie tubes, a memory register, and it can add, subtract, multiply, and even divide. It was introduced in 1967 for something like $798, about $3500 in today’s dollars. Within five years, HP had much more capable handheld models for much less. The one I have is a recent acquisition from Goodwill, but it still works.
The one piece of electronics that I own and have used every day since 1977 is a Radio Shack LED clock radio (the second one from the top in the link). It still plays beautiful FM monophonic (!), but the AM stations are buzzy. It was quite an investment of $49 in 1977!
My most beloved piece of old gear is my Radio Shack Realistic portable 5" two-speed tape recorder. Which we don’t use anymore because when I got married we switched to my wife’s Kenwood,* three-speed, 7" stereo *tape deck.
In 1984 I bought a Casio FX-451 calculator for $37. I used it all through high school and college. I still have it and it still works perfectly. Though it’s not programmable, it’s a fantastic calculator.
I still have the Sharp ELSI MATE EL-5806 pocket calculator that I got for HS graduation in 1980. Stuck some new batteries in a year or so ago and it’s going strong.
Down in the basement I have my dad’s old Osborne 1 computer. Every couple of years I pull it out and fire it up and am amazed that it still works. (I still remember the phone call with my mom when she said she was going to throw it out and I said “Noooooo!” and scheduled a trip back home ASAP to retrieve it.)
And on my desk at work I still have the TI 55 III calculator that I used in college 30+ years ago.
I have an old Palm Pilot device from Symbol Technologies that has a barcode scanner built in. It looks like this one: Symbol SPT 1500
But mine is a hundred times cooler: it is a salesman’s sample that was cast in clear acrylic, showing all of its innards, just like this transparent old-school telephone.
