Old and obsolete tech you know how to use - (and that for some reason insist on using)

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I know how to use adventure game studio. I never finished or released any of my projects. Probably for the best.
 
DanteAlighieri dijo:
My grandparents have a big HF antenna on their house and several years back they were using it with their church to do regular emergency preparedness tests. It's something I also want to get into for similar reasons but it hasn't been a priority for me.
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Using an HF radio for plain voice is pretty easy. Things only start to get stupid when you want to send anything digitized/quantized.

heyitsmike dijo:
I remember how big the antennas were on my ship for the HF circuits (which we never used). I can't imagine having one in my backyard.
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I've used ones on my ship, though only ever for training and testing.
Also you can use fans/wires or use a funky shaped antenna for space efficiency over being omni-directional, like one of those fucked up helical things attached to a dish you aim at the moon
 
I still use my Dell Harman Kardon speakers from the early 2000's. They sound incredible also.
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Add me to the list of people who can technically use a manual SLR camera and develop my own film, though I don’t do it very often. I still like film, but I tend to just use a rangefinder or crappy point-and-shoot and get everything developed at a local lab that doesn’t send it out.

Other than that, I can still work a cassette tape recorder and play games on consoles that take cartridges. I also want to own a pinball machine someday, even though I’m really bad at pinball.
 
Sperghetti dijo:
Add me to the list of people who can technically use a manual SLR camera and develop my own film, though I don’t do it very often. I still like film, but I tend to just use a rangefinder or crappy point-and-shoot and get everything developed at a local lab that doesn’t send it out.
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I can probably use medium format cameras to this day. It sounds like a bigger camera, it looks like a boxier camera, but there's more to it. Especially if used outdoors.
 
Spent about 30min today adjusting the points on an old Ford, and replaced the alternator brushes (saving at least $350).

The best part?

Fuck China's EMP, I'll still be able to roll.
 
A standalone MP3 player. Way smaller and lighter than a smartphone. SD cards are cheaper than shit. Doesn't drain the phone battery for mobile calls or Internet.
 
I wear a mechanical wrist watch.
While quartz watches require less attention and are more accurate by an order of magnitude, I like the mechanical ones more because of the craftmanship and tradition behind them. And it's pretty amazing that something so reliable and accurate can be made from springs, gearwheels and small pieces of metal.


Some obsolete skills:
  1. I know how to use a slide rule. They are technically before my time, but my grandpa showed me how to use one when I was little. And being a math nerd I sort of kept having a fascination for them.
  2. I can operate a Commodore 64 computer, including the Commodore 1530 Datasette peripheral. Back in the day, games were stored on the same C60 cassette tapes as was used for music. If you wanted to pirate games, all you needed was a double-decked boombox.
  3. I can make a phone call on a rotary dial phone like I'm fucking Humphery Bogart or something.
 
For me it's vacuum tube radios. I have a bunch of them that I've restored and listen to them almost daily. AM radio mostly sucks though, so I built a short range AM transmitter (also using tubes) so that I can listen to what I want.

I also have a bunch of other extremely obsolete equipment that I use to repair the radios, like tube testers, signal tracers, signal generators, VTVMs, and old CRT oscilloscopes. Nearly all of it required some repair before it was usable, but that's all part of the fun.
 
Lungmos dijo:
I wear a mechanical wrist watch.
While quartz watches require less attention and are more accurate by an order of magnitude, I like the mechanical ones more because of the craftmanship and tradition behind them. And it's pretty amazing that something so reliable and accurate can be made from springs, gearwheels and small pieces of metal.
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Something charming about a mechanical watch. When I'm not wearing my F-91W I go with an automatic Seiko. Certainly it's a mass production item, but still rather nice, and it's incredible to think of how they produced them in the past. Even automatic winders as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. I've often wondered about the reasoning for making automatic watches back then, when they would have been pocket watches that a gentleman would have worn in his vest pocket. I imagine they would have kept better time close to the end of the day, but that was probably more of a point for a friendly wager as to how close one's watch was to the chimes of Big Ben, rather than anything used for practical purposes.
Illegal Opinion dijo:
For me it's vacuum tube radios. I have a bunch of them that I've restored and listen to them almost daily. AM radio mostly sucks though, so I built a short range AM transmitter (also using tubes) so that I can listen to what I want.

I also have a bunch of other extremely obsolete equipment that I use to repair the radios, like tube testers, signal tracers, signal generators, VTVMs, and old CRT oscilloscopes. Nearly all of it required some repair before it was usable, but that's all part of the fun.
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Excellent first post.
 
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