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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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| RE: Zip drives are the devil! |
| By hollovoid on 2012-08-23 19:03:23 |
| Zip drives were awful, I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when I was the only one who owned one, and didn't yet know of the horrible reliability of the drives and disks. It wasn't until I lost a major project twice, (school computers only allowed saving to zip in graphics lab), with the dreadful 'click click click' that I gave up on them all together. Many of my classmates, all with different computers and drives suffered the same fate at one point or another. How something like that could go unchecked, and sell like it did is beyond me. |
 - Score: 3 |
| I have floppy disks I need to put on CD or DVD |
| By Cool700Toys on 2012-08-23 19:03:32 |
| I have about 50 floppy disks of source code I need to transfer to CD or DVD. I also have an old computer with Windows98, Fedora Linux, and Windows XP installed. I keep it around to run older software like Windows98 Flight Simulator and some older PC games I like to play once in a blue moon! Remember The Journeyman Project Turbo or Myst? I still have an old camera that uses those smart cards and the old computer is the only one with drivers etc. that can read the smart cards. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Omega Game |
| By FunkyELF on 2012-08-23 19:42:31 |
|
I'm sure most readers of this site are aware of a new game coming out similar to Omega called 0x10c. There is a fictional CPU on it that players will have to program to control their ship. The game isn't out yet but because the CPU specs are someone already created an LLVM backend that targets the CPU. Someone created a TETRIS clone using C++, the LLVM backend and it is playable in a Javascript emulator. Emulator loaded with binary code: http://0x10co.de/ua5qu C++ Code: https://github.com/a1k0n/tetris-d... |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: OS/2 |
| By moondevil on 2012-08-23 20:38:01 |
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The first PC my parents bought was a 386SX with 2MB RAM and 40MB hard-disk with DR-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. For the same price I could get a 286 with OS/2 1.1 with similar RAM and disk size. I think I don't need to explain why we got the 386. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Comment by drcouzelis |
| By Doc Pain on 2012-08-23 20:40:50 |
|
> 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. What I did like about Minidiscs was the form factor. They were quite handy. The size was a "good feeling in your hand", and they were easy to store. In daily use, the fact that they came as cartridges (plastic enclosing carrying the media) was a real benefit compared to CDs and DVDs which have an "open surface" toward the environment, usually breadcrumbs on the table or spilled coffee, and all flat surfaces will soon be covered with them. :-) You can also see a certain trend in computer media with a "step backward": tape reels, 8" disks, 5.25" disks, 3.5" disks, minidiscs, but then: CDs and DVDs again at 5.25"-like form factor. Ha, you can even get full-featured computers the size of a DVD drive! Minidiscs are also as handy as CF cards - not too big, not too small (like micro-SD cards where you have to pay attention not to accidentally breathe them in). For a portable medium, they were quite okay. I'd like to see that form factor (and cartridge!) instead of today's CD and DVD formats. But people want cheap, they get cheap. > Oh well, that was before I realized just how proprietary the format was. :/ Proprietary stuff will die, sooner or later. That killed many formats with potential. Anyone remember CDi? I still have lots of CDi gear here, because I'm a living museum. :-) |
| - Score: 6 |
| Plan 9 could be included here too |
| By obsidian on 2012-08-23 21:38:37 |
|
Ok, it is true that Plan 9 has influenced Linux with (for example) the /proc filesystem IIRC. However, it sadly looks destined to remain in a backwater, never having fulfilled its huge potential. If only Lucent/Bell Labs would release it as "public domain", the uptake would rocket. Given that it is already open-source, it's not as if they would lose any revenue, and they would gain great kudos and PR. Such a release could be done as a tribute to the late Dennis Ritchie too. It would be a great way of honouring him, IMO, getting his ideas "out there" as widely as possible. Anyway, that's Plan 9. Another could-have-been technology that didn't quite make the summit of the mountain. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: Amstrad PCW |
| By orfanum on 2012-08-23 22:03:19 |
| Thank you kindly :) |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Zip drives are the devil! |
| By fretinator on 2012-08-23 22:17:07 |
| I always liked the Syquest EZ 135, a competitor to Zip. It was faster that a Zip, but it just never caught on - Zip was already the standard for Mac and PC. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By zima on 2012-08-23 23:09:49 |
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Transfer/salvage largish amounts of data (for whatever reason...) to/from old machines, which don't have USB nor Ethernet, but do have parallel port? (or SCSI) Coincidentally, you supposedly have quite a scrapyard over there. :P I don't really see any other scenario, nowadays. > If you liked floppies Zip disks were great. I don't know... floppies, for all their faults, had one indisputable redeeming quality: they were disposable-inexpensive. Not so with Zip disks, in the times when they could be relevant (plus, apart from size, they took the faults of floppies to new heights - I'm really not sure how a "Here, we celebrate the best products that are sliding slowly into the memory hole" article can open with Zip disks O_o ) |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Plan 9 could be included here too |
| By obsidian on 2012-08-23 23:13:43 |
|
I just wanted to add that Plan 9 **deserves** a better fate than to remain in its backwater. It would be a great shame to see it still gathering dust in 10 or 20 years time. Such a waste. |
| - Score: 2 |
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