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| Our favourite 'forgotten tech' - from BeOS to Zip Drives |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-08-23 12:48:20 |
| "We all know about the gadgets that get showered with constant praise - the icons, the segment leaders, and the game changers. Tech history will never forget the Altair 8800, the Walkman, the BlackBerry, and the iPhone. But people do forget - and quickly - about the devices that failed to change the world: the great ideas doomed by mediocre execution, the gadgets that arrived before the market was really ready, or the technologies that found their stride just as the world was pivoting to something else." I was a heavy user of BeOS, Zip drives, and MiniDisc (I was an MD user up until about 2 years ago). I'm starting to see a pattern here. |
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| Zip drives are the devil! |
| By Bill Shooter of Bul on 2012-08-23 13:35:07 |
| Seriously! The first and, to my knowledge, only system to have a self-perpetuating hardware bug. They were used as update devices for embedded systems. You had one bad disk or drive and shortly they'd all be dead in the office. I kept mine under lock and key, let no one borrow a disk or a drive. Then I got sick of it and hacked together an ethernet driver for my dev device. |
 - Score: 5 |
| Amstrad PCW |
| By chemical_scum on 2012-08-23 13:46:01 |
|
The Amstrad PCW was my first home computer. It was a great word processing system with a dedicated printer. It was also a useful little general purpose computer, as it could also run the full CP/M OS as well as the word processing software Locoscript that ran in a dedicated cut down CP/M. This was great for me as CP/M was based on the DEC operating systems as Garry Kildall had also worked on the DEC operating systems before he left DEC and started Digital Research. My first computer at work was a PDP-11 running RT-11. the OS was so similar especially the useful and versatile PIP (Peripheral Interchange Program). It was actually quite successful in Britain at the time but then IBM introduced the first PC and the market moved on. Edited 2012-08-23 13:49 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Amstrad PCW |
| By orfanum on 2012-08-23 14:00:43 |
|
Yes, I wrote my MA stuff on one of those babies in 1993-1994; I recall that it had a fantastic clipboard that you could programme with up to 10 frequently used snippets, which I have never found bog standard anywhere since (and if someone wants to point out my tech myopia there, please let me know if this does exist somewhere else now!). I still have the disks somewhere and was tempted to hack a PCW 3" drive on a PC a la http://www.fvempel.nl/3pc.html even a little while back, just to retrieve all those hours of work. For sheer productivity it did better than the PC Windows 3.11 machine I moved to for the start of my doctorate. Talk about no distractions! |
| - Score: 2 |
| OS/2 |
| By fretinator on 2012-08-23 14:08:37 |
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For me, the great disappointment will always be OS/2. I loved the power of OS/2. However, the missteps are legendary: 1. Initially, OS/2 arrived with requirements that far exceeded the PC's that were being sold. It required 16MB of RAM at a time when PC's were being sold with 2-4MB of RAM. Only a select few could run it. 2. Usability - in my mind OS/2 users remind of Linux users today (of which I am one). They take great pride in tweaking their OS, and don't mind hand-editting config files, etc. However, this often leaves the average user helpless. For Linux today, this isn't that much of an issue, but it always was for OS/2. Often, your only choice was to wade through the giant config.sys file hand editing driver settings. The classic example was adding a sound card. The GUI didn't change the sound card when you went through the sound configuration steps - it just added more lines to config.sys. I remember the steps I had to go through to get my CD-Rom working, the sound card, video above vanilla VGA, etc. I know Windows 95 wasn't perfect, but when I popped in the CD, after the install everthing was working. 3. Marketing - oh my! The marketing for OS/2 Warp was astoundingly bad. THe commercials were confusing. The best example was a large banner at LAX that said something like "OS/2 Warp blows your hard drive away". Is that good, is that bad? Is OS/2 a virus. People had no clue. Nevertheless, I still miss the days of having a DOS 5 window, a DOS 6 Window, an OS/2 DOS window, a native OS/2 app and a Windows 3.1 app all open at the same time. It was a remarkable OS with remarkable potential. Such a shame. I know it is still available as EComStation (I assume they had a discount on buzz words at the time), but I have never been able to afford it. Darn! |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE: OS/2 |
| By Vanders on 2012-08-23 14:58:05 |
|
> 3. Marketing - oh my! The marketing for OS/2 Warp was astoundingly bad. THe commercials were confusing. The best example was a large banner at LAX that said something like "OS/2 Warp blows your hard drive away". Is that good, is that bad? Is OS/2 a virus. People had no clue. I was never an OS/2 guy, but that is astonishingly bad. Did IBM hire the Commodore marketing team for OS/2 or something? |
| - Score: 7 |
| Comment by drcouzelis |
| By drcouzelis on 2012-08-23 14:58:29 |
|
I had a minidisc player too. I always thought it was a the perfect blend of "CD quality audio" and "record anything anywhere any time" like an audio casette. Oh well, that was before I realized just how proprietary the format was. :/ I hate hate hate TI graphing calculators. I could easily have a cheap application on a phone do the same thing, but NOOO I have to buy the $100 humongous calculator. I've never used BeOS but I'm an active Haiku user. :D |
| - Score: 3 |
| Comment by broken_symlink |
| By broken_symlink on 2012-08-23 15:44:25 |
|
Had a zip drive once as well. Still have 2 clios, one of them running netbsd. Also own a minidisc player, but I don' use it anymore either. Still use my TI-83 plus though. I came pretty close to buying a flip and n800 too. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Amstrad PCW |
| By rjamorim on 2012-08-23 17:08:27 |
|
> I recall that it had a fantastic clipboard that you could programme with up to 10 frequently used snippets, which I have never found bog standard anywhere since (and if someone wants to point out my tech myopia there, please let me know if this does exist somewhere else now!). CLCL http://www.nakka.com/soft/clcl/i... |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: OS/2 |
| By zima on 2012-08-23 17:15:15 |
|
"Warp" alone also had... issues: http://www.insearchofstupidity.c... Anyway, the talk about OS/2 usually misses probably the most important reason why it failed: deep down, its goal was to return to IBM the control over the PC - duh, of course numerous OEMs didn't go along, Gang of Nine style, and effectively blocked it from the market with less expensive "good enough" Win 3.x machines (and afterwards it was just too late, IIRC OS/2 Warp was essentially given away in some places, as a time-limited demo which could be easily - even accidentally - unlocked; didn't amount much) Edited 2012-08-23 17:23 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| Comment by MOS6510 |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-08-23 18:34:18 |
|
If you liked floppies Zip disks were great. There was a time when all my files would fit on a 1.44 MB floppy, so a 100 MB Zip drive was like an empty room that was so huge that the walls were beyond the horizon. I think I should have at least 2 external Zip drives, maybe even 3. Maybe I should look them up and see what I can do with them. |
| - Score: 2 |
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