Previously useful things

The diskette

I'm too young to have used the 8 inch and punch cards.
The there is the digital watch

 

VCRs

 

I still use VCR here, or at least have enough films (especially older B&W ones) that I would actively seek one out on Ebay or elsewhere if my current one died.

Have to add CRT monitors, no desire to have one of those again. My 15" LCD that cost me $300 years 8? years ago is my testing monitor that sits in a corner until it is typically briefly needed.

 

And you need one of these to go along with it:


And what all of us poor teenagers had who couldn't afford to buy the latest audiotapes by our favorite bands:

Yep, old school music thieves rolled like that.
If you had a bit more money to blow you would be a classy music ripper with one of these:

 

I still have a walkman cd player and it works.

 

Loved the Palm Pilot


And we had a Zip drive at my office. We also used Syquest disks for large graphic files.


When Audio/Video equipment was furniture. My Dad had these kinds of machines right up to his death in the late 90s.

 

One of my first apartments had one of these which was left by a previous tenant. They were definitely a space-hog but truly the sound out of it was pretty good considering how outdated the technology was for the time.

 

Ooooh....we had a stereo like that when I was growing up. It was in my bedroom for a while, and I loved it !

We also had one of these, sitting next to the computer:

 

My grandparents had one of those sitting in an alcove in their living room. I would love to find one of these and gut the electrics and put in some good speakers, an amp, turntable and aux input. Rockin'

 

pardon the plug here, but that brought this type of advertisement to mind. Ads for the 1951 series of RCA Victor "Million Proof" televisions.
Two ads for vintage TV sets.
Available in 14, 15, or 19 inches!

 

I was only about 14 or 15 when palm pilots were big...

I never had one, but I had one of these bad boys:



Man, I thought those would be the next big thing for sure. Unfortunately, I was the only person I knew who had one...

 

Came across a box of my old Handspring Visor stuff! That was quite a setup! Fold up keyboard, 33MHz CPU, 33.6 modem! Hell yea!

 

He's pretty goddamn useless.

...

The military / shooting hobby is full of things that have a limited shelf life.

The saying goes: The technology drives the use while the use drives the technology.

Example: You used to carry rifle magazines ("clips" with "bullets") in a nylon pocket you got from the military. Most basic piece of gear ever. But this old style pocket is a little awkward to use with body armor and can't be used fast enough when you're under pressure and your motor skills retard to the level of a drunken octopus. So some fancy outfit comes out with new pockets that are faster. You buy them. Then some other company decides that the military issue aluminum magazines aren't reliable enough and creates a plastic magazine that beats the pants off most anything. Problem is this new magazine doesn't fit in the new pocket for the old mags you just bought so now you have to get a new-new pocket for the new magazines. You buy all this shit. Now you have a friggin' giant cardboard box filled with old pockets, old magazines and new pockets for old magazines. You spent hundreds of dollars on all of this junk because you wanted a tiny half-second advantage in a gunfight you never had in some desert shithole and now it's basically useless, you can't make a measly $5 off it because anybody that would use it has already moved on to the newest stuff. So you're like me... stuck with that cardboard box full of expensive stuff that serves zero other purpose. Your girlfriend knows about it but doesn't say anything.

$20 if you actually followed any of that.​

GI Joe gear... it's like cell phones. Nothing in use now will be used in two years. Things advance so goddamn rapidly.

 

Never had a wireless remote as a kid, just this wired Jerrold.
Finally got a wireless in '89 when I bought a new tv with my copy of the VHS Keaton Batman movie.