The very best in obsolete and failed technology...

gugleguy

Atari Jaguar. Smoke and mirrors type of marketing. Has it been mentioned so far? Too sacred as a boards.ie symbol?

5uspect

Dempsey wrote: »

No, its not. If you want to get pedantic, Jet engines exhaust provides enough thrust for propulsion. The exhaust of a turbo prop doesnt produce anywhere near enough.

Then by that logic, ignoring that jet engines are actually gas turbines, a turbo fan powered airliner isn't a jet either since the fan provides most of the thrust while the turbojet core just provides power.

Jet engines come in many variants all build around a turbojet core. Only turbojets rely on high speed air expelled from nozzles, most modern jets actually use turbofans since you can get considerably more thrust by moving a lot of air relatively slowly rather than a small high speed jet. Bypass ratios have been increasing massively in recent decades. There are very few, if any, aircraft using turbojets today

Turboprop engines are the same as turbofans but without the bypass ducting for the front fan/prop. This reduces weight and is ideal for lower speeds and altitudes were a prop is more suitable.

It's the same technology. To claim that the TU95 is merely a prop aircraft and better than jets is incorrect since it uses a varient of the same engine technology as these other jets.

On Concorde, the reason so it hasn't been replaced is purely economic. You burn far less fuel cruising at high speed subsonic speeds than insuring the significant pressure drag of supersonic flight.

Dempsey

I never said it was better than jets and to say it was so was just as bad as your the props are there for aesthetics comment. The difference I stated between turboprop and jet engines is correct.

Tokyo

Not a failure by any means, but very much obsolete now in the age of touchscreens, and android, and iPhones...

I give you... the Nokia 5110



This was my first phone - while every other kid had the sleeker 3310, I inherited this monolith from my dad. These old Nokias were the dog's wotzits - no phone memory to speak of, so your contacts were stored on your SIM, it could store ten whole text messages, and of course, it had Snake. Their main selling point though, is that they are pretty much bulletproof. Mine has been dropped repeatedly, stood on, soaked in the rain, left on a mountain for a week, ejected from a car window at 50kph as I took a curve in the road.... it simply couldn't be killed. I dug mine out of a drawer this morning out of idle curiosity, pushed the power button, and it started up.... after 12 years.... When the cockroaches are crawling into the ruins of a post-nuclear holocaust Earth, all that will be left is AK-47s and old Nokia 5110's, and they'll use them to coordinate the takeover.

imitation

My crowing achivement fot obsolete tech was to get the 20 year old 120mb hard drive in my amiga to work and to be able to copy it onto Pc. Then I got a sd to ide adapter and sooped up the amiga with a 4gb sd card, instant bootups !

Czarcasm

imitation wrote: »

My crowing achivement fot obsolete tech was to get the 20 year old 120mb hard drive in my amiga to work and to be able to copy it onto Pc. Then I got a sd to ide adapter and sooped up the amiga with a 4gb sd card, instant bootups !

You're after reminding me now of the ORIGINAL XBOX, not the 360 but the first generation, that people are modifying into media centres by slapping XBMC on there. Anyone should be able to pick one up in a cash converters shop for about €20, or even online of course

Tokyo

Czarcasm wrote: »

You're after reminding me now of the ORIGINAL XBOX, not the 360 but the first generation, that people are modifying into media centres by slapping XBMC on there. Anyone should be able to pick one up in a cash converters shop for about €20, or even online of course

We had one of these sitting beside the TV, long before you could get smart TVs or DVD players that could take a USB key, or play .avi's or .mp4's. For a 'hack', they were awesome - not only could you play media files, but you could also load game emulators and ROMs on them - many's the night we sat in playing mario kart or the like......

e_e

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm amazed that the humble audio cassette tape hasn't been mentioned, it revolutionised our lives in the 70s. We could just tape the songs rather than have to buy the records (another obsolete) media.

Neither cassette nor records (vinyl) are obsolete. You still get bands releasing on tape and vinyl is at its highest number of sales since the 90s.

e_e

Also I owned a GameGear as well as a Game Boy Camera and Printer. Anyone remember those? :P

e_e

e_e wrote: »

Neither cassette nor records (vinyl) are obsolete. You still get bands releasing on tape and vinyl is at its highest number of sales since the 90s.

Obsolete in the sense that they have been super-ceded by something else and the vast majority of consumers have ditched them.

Vinyl has developed a cult status and cassettes stayed around longer simply because car radios didn't play CD until the end of the 90s.

Gavin.

mike_ie wrote: »

I saw a post online earlier about technology that was available when I was younger, and it got me thinking about the technology that was thought of as the 'best' at the time, only to disappear off into the ether months later.

For me, it was definitely this - the Somy MZ-R909 Minidisc player:



I remember buying one of these back in the day, from O'Connors of Galway when it was still on Shop St. If I remember correctly, I think I paid £220 for it at the time - not a small sum of money. At the time all of my money was going towards getting me through college, but for some reason I had extra money at the time, and after a LOT of thought, decided to splurge on myself. It was going to solve all of my portable music problems - I'd be able to run and cycle while listening to music, no skipping, even had a nice remote with display that I could control the player with while leaving it in my pocket!

I spent hours copying CD's to minidisc, playing the whole CD with the MD player on record, then going through it afterwards and adding the track breaks. OR creating compilation minidiscs by meticulously recording one mp3 at a time from my computer.

No more than six months later, portable mp3 players hit the marketplace for the first time, and my minidisc player was obsolete... I think it sits in my desk drawer to this day. I often wonder what kids would think of it if given one today.

Anybody else have tech from the past sitting in a drawer or a box somewhere that was the best of the best for a sort time??

Time.

e_e

Deleted User wrote: »

Obsolete in the sense that they have been super-ceded by something else and the vast majority of consumers have ditched them.

Vinyl has developed a cult status and cassettes stayed around longer simply because car radios didn't play CD until the end of the 90s.

I'd argue that vinyl hasn't really been super-ceded at all. Yes initially CD took over but if anything that's the format that is most being usurped by the MP3 because they're the more portable, accessible formats. Vinyl is clearly there for a different audience of music lovers.

CD sales have fallen whereas vinyl is continually rising. I can see a point where vinyl outsells CD imo. Hell I only bought one of my favorite albums on vinyl yesterday.

Michael D Not Higgins

Deleted User wrote: »

Obsolete in the sense that they have been super-ceded by something else and the vast majority of consumers have ditched them.

Vinyl has developed a cult status and cassettes stayed around longer simply because car radios didn't play CD until the end of the 90s.

Again not a failed technology. If we're just listing obsolete technology, it's going to be a very long list.

Cool Mo D

Dempsey wrote: »

Digital Recording fundamentally only capture an approximation of the sound wave. The sampling rate of CD's is 44.1 kHz which is the absolute minimum you should sample a signal if you want to playback for the human ear. Also, the sampling accuracy is only 16 bit which further adds to the fundamental limitations of recordings on CDs

No, that is nonsense.

It is an indisputable fact that CDs are technically capable of capturing sounds more accurately than vinyl. Whether a CD actually sounds better comes down to how well the recordings are mastered.

CDs capture a digital representation of the sound, but as long as the sampling rate of the sound is twice the range of frequencies you are capturing, the sound will be captured completely accurately, with no loss from converting analog sounds to a digital representation. This is the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem

Since most humans can only hear a range of about 16kHz, you would sample at 34kHz to get a perfect (to human ears) representation. CDs sample at 44kHz to give a bit of wiggle room.

rolliepoley

What are people using to play their vinyl on? i thought most, if not all the technology like record players were obsolete.

Tokyo

mike_ie wrote:

Anybody else have tech from the past sitting in a drawer or a box somewhere that was the best of the best for a sort time??

Gavin. wrote: »

Time.

short time.....

e_e

rolliepoley wrote: »

i thought most, if not all the technology like record players were obsolete.

Nope. Plenty of makes of record player still, you just need to know where to look. Sure they wouldn't have 100s of vinyl records in Tower and HMV if there's nothing to play 'em on.

Stanton are a great brand. This is the turntable I use.

rolliepoley

e_e wrote: »

Nope. Plenty of makes of record player still, you just need to know where to look. Sure they wouldn't have 100s of vinyl records in Tower and HMV if there's nothing to play 'em on.

Stanton are a great brand. This is the turntable I use.

Is this old stock or new.?

e_e

rolliepoley wrote: »

Is this old stock or new.?

Brand new, got mine delivered. Weighed a tonne too, the thing is built like a tank.

Cedrus

circadian wrote: »

.........................


Betamax. Easily the biggest tech flop of all time.

Only on this side of the world, it became the standard in Oz/NZ and was a better machine VHS was cheaper and the video shops supported it better.

Tokyo

e_e wrote: »

Nope. Plenty of makes of record player still, you just need to know where to look. Sure they wouldn't have 100s of vinyl records in Tower and HMV if there's nothing to play 'em on.

Stanton are a great brand. This is the turntable I use.

Not only that, but you can now buy laser turntables, if you have the money.
Instead of scraping a needle down the groove of your pristine, coddled vinyl, they shine a laser, just like a CD player does, that reads the undulations of the vinyl, and converts it to sound.

e_e

mike_ie wrote: »

Not only that, but you can now buy laser turntables, if you have the money.
Instead of scraping a needle down the groove of your pristine, coddled vinyl, they shine a laser, just like a CD player does, that reads the undulations of the vinyl, and converts it to sound.

*in Mrs Doyle voice* Maybe I like the crackle. :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

jmcc wrote: »

Technically speaking, the security model for the stinking pile of rip-off crap that the Irish government "bought" was designed by pondscum intellects who hadn't a clue about technological security. A paper sticker on a box is not anti-tamper protection. Just to explain it simply for you: there was no security on those over priced technological turds.

Holland used the same machines

They had a furniture lock - so not even the security of a poundshop padlock when it came to lockpicks , also all used the same key so anyone with access to one had access to all. Oh yeah the Dutch researchers were able to just buy a spare key by quoting the number on the lock.

They also were able to reprogram the machines to play chess. ie. anyone with physical access could tamper with the firmware and get it to do anything they wanted. That shouldn't even be possible with the simple use of BIOS/ROM checksums like every computer has had since forever. They weren't secure by the standards of home computer from thirty years ago. In a world where TPM chips exist the evoting machines can't make any claim to realistic hardware security.

Chip and pin machines for credit cards are a lot more secure. Even the silicon inside the chips they used had anti tamp layers , ( which can be bypassed if you are determined , skilled and have access to the right stuff ) but the evoting machines aren't in the same ballpark, league or even postal district. Mobile phones, SKY and UPC cards, Leap cards, even prepay bus tickets have much better security algorithms and tamper resistance.


When you consider the cost of the bank bailout and it's effect on the whole EU and then consider how easy it was to bypass security on the machines ,and complete lack of traceability, there is no way you could trust them not to have been interfered with. Remember that opinion poles are +/- 3% so plenty of scope to fiddle the results in key marginals, just as long as you didn't get greedy enough to be noticed.

Dempsey

Cool Mo D wrote: »

No, that is nonsense.

It is an indisputable fact that CDs are technically capable of capturing sounds more accurately than vinyl. Whether a CD actually sounds better comes down to how well the recordings are mastered.

CDs capture a digital representation of the sound, but as long as the sampling rate of the sound is twice the range of frequencies you are capturing, the sound will be captured completely accurately, with no loss from converting analog sounds to a digital representation. This is the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem

Since most humans can only hear a range of about 16kHz, you would sample at 34kHz to get a perfect (to human ears) representation. CDs sample at 44kHz to give a bit of wiggle room.

I'm well aware of Nyquist rate and whats required to sample signals.

Digital sampling fundamentally has loss, its a physical limitation. Whether you can notice the loss is a different story.

Sampling at nyquist rate is the minimum sampling rate you should use in any bandlimited channel.

CD's sample @ 44.1KHz and DVD audio sample @ 192kHz, care to guess why?

Daveysil15

A lot of people thought these nokia.png phones were going to be the way of the future. They were really small and had a mirror on them. Phones were getting smaller and smaller for a while. Little did we know back then that we'd be using phones the size of bricks in years to come.

Capt'n Midnight

wil wrote: »

that one major exception - we should all be rocking 10Tb portables if it wasn't for a few drops of rain and a near cartelle in the aftermath. HDs were cheaper per Tb over 2 years ago. And on occasion RAM was also commoditised. Remember the great RAM hoist a while back.

I'm looking at a average over the last 30-40 years.

Entry level laptops seemed to have stopped getting better a few years ago. Today's €300 laptops aren't that much better than they were a few years ago.

No surprise that the laptop/desktop market has stagnated a bit newer machines aren't really delivering the bang per buck improvements over old machines they used

But smartphones and tablets are getting better


Back to Turkeys.

And speaking of which, Window CE


And most of the technologies Steve Balmer was associated with


And doublespace - 95% of users think it's the best thing ever , the other 5% have lost all their data.

and RAM doubler


BSB and Squaerials and D2-MAC , and they had to follow the rules.
SKY just broadcast from a different satellite and so wasn't subject to regulation by either the UK or Irish authorities.

Capt'n Midnight

Dempsey wrote: »

CD's sample @ 44.1KHz and DVD audio sample @ 192kHz, care to guess why?

Storage space is so much cheaper nowadays that you can sample at anything you like as there isn't much additional cost.

CD's had a lot less storage space.


Harmonics and beat frequencies ?



LW longwave radio is becoming obsolete

anyone know if the UK nuclear subs are still primed to launch if Radio 4 is off air for more than 4 hours ?

Sofaspud

Dempsey wrote: »

CD's sample @ 44.1KHz and DVD audio sample @ 192kHz, care to guess why?

As Capt'n Midnight said, it's mainly due to storage space, it's sampled at that rate simply because it's possible. Research has shown that very very very select few people can actually hear any difference in 192kHz audio.

And you mentioned earlier about the limitations of 16 bit, the bit depth refers to the dynamic range of the audio. 16 bit allows a 96dB dynamic range, and given that the quietest ambience rooms people would be used to would be 20-30 dB, and the fact that 120dB is the threshold of pain, a 96dB dynamic range is plenty.

Film sound is recorded at 24 bit which allows a 144dB dynamic range, this allows a much lower noise floor since films are played really loud in cinemas, so it allows a lot more head room.

Dempsey

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Storage space is so much cheaper nowadays that you can sample at anything you like as there isn't much additional cost.

CD's had a lot less storage space.


Harmonics and beat frequencies ?

Yep, the storage size is the driving factor. 44.1kHz is the minimum sampling rate when the receiver is the human ear, lower than that and the losses become very noticeable.

Why would DVD Audio want to cover frequencies not detectable by the human ear? Why not stay at 44.1kHz if the audio is 'perfectly fine'?

Because a live performance is actually not limited to whats detected by the human ear & its a continuous signal, not sampled. Capturing more information requires more storage space. What you get on a CD is a trade off between audio quality & capacity and the audio quality is set to a minimum really so more 'minutes' can be fitted onto a CD

CDs capture a digital representation of the sound, but as long as the sampling rate of the sound is twice the range of frequencies you are capturing, the sound will be captured completely accurately, with no loss from converting analog sounds to a digital representation. This is the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem

My question was to debunk this idea about Nyquist rate

Sofaspud wrote: »

As Capt'n Midnight said, it's mainly due to storage space, it's sampled at that rate simply because it's possible. Research has shown that very very very select few people can actually hear any difference in 192kHz audio.

And you mentioned earlier about the limitations of 16 bit, the bit depth refers to the dynamic range of the audio. 16 bit allows a 96dB dynamic range, and given that the quietest ambience rooms people would be used to would be 20-30 dB, and the fact that 120dB is the threshold of pain, a 96dB dynamic range is plenty.

Film sound is recorded at 24 bit which allows a 144dB dynamic range, this allows a much lower noise floor since films are played really loud in cinemas, so it allows a lot more head room.

I knew the answer to the question I was asking

Think of the human ear as a window filter. Not everyone can hear the same frequencies, especially at the upper & lower limits.

Capt'n Midnight

Dempsey wrote: »

My question was to debunk this idea about Nyquist rate

The Nyquist rate is fine.

The only thing that may be happening is the effects of beat frequencies, where an audible frequency may result from the interaction of supersonic ones.