Retro Cool Technology

Artlav

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Is that similar to using a Tesla Coil as a speaker?
Not exactly.

When you modulate a tesla coil, it's a bang modulation - the amount of bangs per second determines your sound tone.
This way you're limited to MIDI music at best - specific tones.

With a plasma speaker, the current in the arc is sound modulated - more current, it heats up and/or expands, less current - it cools down and/or contracts.
This way you have a continuous reproduction of the input signal in a sound wave.

Finesses vs power, basically.
One is rough, impressive and loud, other is high fidelity, quiet and boring.
 

C3PO

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And now you can emulate the way this stuff was calculated:
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~timb3000/index.html

screenshot_gusr_sd_full_front.png


This virtual slide rule is amazing!!!
 
E

ex-orbinaut

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Sad to see this thread slide; I was enjoying it.

Still, I feel it is missing one very accessible piece of retro-tech; the crystal radio. Donkeys years ago (almost four decades now), I made a SW one from of a kit given to me as a gift, and would not listen to anything else for weeks once I made it and got it working, with some very sparing help from my father.

This thread inspired me to revisit that old subject, and learn a great deal more about some of the various formulae involved (the internet is wonderful, really!).

Here's my first attempt, a fixed frequency AM receiver; 58.4 winds of 30 gauge on a 2.2 cm diameter spool, with a 220 pF ceramic capacitor, to target 1360 Khz (Radio Oyambaro, a powerful local transmitter about 6 km away that plays Ecuadorian "pasillos" and "tonadas" 24/7). No doubt there are still some gross error in the design itself, and I attempted to concoct a rusty blade and graphite diode, as germanium diodes seem to be scarce on the earth now (except, it seems, via mail order), as are high impedance earphones to do away with having to amplify (I used my computer speakers, but can't hear anything as yet). Some tweaking will be forthcoming, but I believe I may well get it working soon (with a major rework)!

picture.php


...and, I was already toying with the idea of making a variable rotor type air capacitor (the long lost kit I had actually contained one) to make a tunable version sometime, when I happened upon this. Only sixteen years ago you could pick them up in any TV or radio repair shop (here, at least). Not anymore, alas....

PS: A multimeter that has a diode test and is capable of reading capacitance, as mine does, is pretty much a must.
 

Andy44

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I saw a slideshow from one of the big hacker conventions in which the presenter showed a picture of a "trench radio" like the one above, made by troops in WWI so they could listen to the news. He was trying to remind hackers of their roots in being able to tinker with hardware. Radio Shack used to sell crystal radio kits, maybe they still do. And the Boy Scouts used to have a merit badge for building one, I think.

Since retro tech doesn't have to be old tech, I'll go ahead and post this. It's a tune I made with an analog drum machine and an analog synthesizer, both bran new modern machines based on 70s technology. The 80s introduced digital synthesizers, which kind of drowned out the really cool stuff from the 70s, like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. Fortunately, analog synths are once again popular, and now there are some very affordable, high quality ones on the market, which benefit from modern production and use digital technology for interfacing and control, while using pure analog to produce the sound itself. Anyway, enjoy:

 
E

ex-orbinaut

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I saw a slideshow from one of the big hacker conventions in which the presenter showed a picture of a "trench radio" like the one above, made by troops in WWI so they could listen to the news.

Thanks, indeed. Well, may this opportune bit of tinkering (with hopes of success) be a very small way of paying my respects in remembrance to all those who were "eye deep in hell" or otherwise "hanging on the old barbed wire", as we are on the centennial of the conflagration's ignition.

Fortunately, analog synths are once again popular, and now there are some very affordable, high quality ones on the market, which benefit from modern production and use digital technology for interfacing and control, while using pure analog to produce the sound itself. Anyway, enjoy:
Doing good things with that Microbrute / Volca Beats combo! :cheers:
 

TMac3000

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Some of those items are quite Fallout-esque :p

---------- Post added at 07:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:33 PM ----------

My first one. It is sitting in a corner (litteraly) of my parent's house and still works perfectly.

6128p10.jpg


Notice that it had both a cartridge port in a console fashion that directly booted the inserted game on power up, or the "Basic OS", and a 3'5" disc port ("thick", not like the PC ones), that allowed to run programs/games through the "OS" (you had to type "run nameofprogram" and it worked). The cartridge games worked the best, honestly. The disk-loaded programs were prone to loading errors, but they also could be more complex. The first space-related program I had was an astronomical software, that gave you the angles and the positions of the planets in the sky on 10,000 years or so. I was a bit young to understand it, but it worked well. Pure maths. There was some graphical display though, with stars as pixels with letters near them.

I never finished Burnin' Rubber, the cartridge "24h Le Mans" game that was bundled with the computer. It was insanely hard near the end, as a lot of games were. I also remember "Crazy Cars II", I loved that one because it allowed you to drive freely a Ferrari F-40 (nice car, certainly) on a road network that included Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. You had a map with the road numbers and all, police cars were trying to ram you and you had to go from town A to town B in a limited time, it was pretty cool (sadly, the computer resources did not allowed to render town).

But the game that impressed me as I was a young boy, and that probably ultimately led me to Orbiter and other simulations, was "F-16 Combat Pilot". It was a simulation as precise as the platform could provide. Display was reduced to the minimal to free simulation resources : 4 colors (you could have 16 !), the ground was a flat green surface with a grid of points to render the altitude and speed feeling (that was smart !), and all other assets, including airbases & planes, were wireframe. You had a nice cockpit view, with MFDs (GPS map, SMS, AA & AG radars AFAIK) and an impressive level of detail given the limitations. I also remember a cool loadout screen, where you could select a nice choice of ordinance (AGM-65D ; AGM-65E, AGM-88 HARM, Durandal, such refinements were awesome for the time).

f-16-5.png

Loadout screen

f-16-0.png

In flight

I remember when I tried it for the first times with my father (an aviation enthusiast). We weren't able to move the plane "or fire a single bullet", as he said it. The manual was very rich and it took us time to figure out the basics of flights, without speaking of using the weaponry systems.

Also the "combat environement" was correctly rendered, when you had to strike an objective in enemy territory, climbing above 500 feet was nearly suicidal as you suddenly got locked by EWR that sent you Mig-23, 25, 29, 31, SAMs, etc... When you kept low, flying too close of an enemy military base rewarded you by scary flak barrages, that was cool.

f-16-4.png

War Room map

Even landing was challenging. After crash (yeah it happened often) you had an analysis of what got wrong with your landing. I will always remember "Sink rate too high". That was my most common error. It was not rare to be surprised by a Mig on landing, so I was prone to "rush" on the runway. But the vertical & horizontal velocities were carefully tracked, and no off-runway was tolerated. It was strict military landing.

url

Notice the ILS ! (the cockpit is not the same than above, that was the Commodore 64 version, I think)

f-16-7.png

Pass over a runway

f-16-3.png

Main menu (mission selection, and YES there was a P2P Network Multiplayer mode !!)

f-16-1.png

Loading screen, 16 colors art !

f-16-2.png

Dev team : 3 people. Yeah.

Good memories :cheers:

Then I got a PC, Compaq with 386 Processor, Win 3.1. Upgraded it to 486 with arithmetic coprocessor quickly. Then the Pentiums & Win 95 came in, but it took some time before I got my hands on one of those, I directly switched to Win 98 AFAIR (not a bad thing, indeed !)...
Hey, that was my first sim, too!:thumbup:
I went through 2 C-64s. I miss them like hell:(
 

n122vu

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Some of those items are quite Fallout-esque :p

---------- Post added at 07:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:33 PM ----------

My first one. It is sitting in a corner (litteraly) of my parent's house and still works perfectly.

6128p10.jpg


Notice that it had both a cartridge port in a console fashion that directly booted the inserted game on power up, or the "Basic OS", and a 3'5" disc port ("thick", not like the PC ones), that allowed to run programs/games through the "OS" (you had to type "run nameofprogram" and it worked). The cartridge games worked the best, honestly. The disk-loaded programs were prone to loading errors, but they also could be more complex. The first space-related program I had was an astronomical software, that gave you the angles and the positions of the planets in the sky on 10,000 years or so. I was a bit young to understand it, but it worked well. Pure maths. There was some graphical display though, with stars as pixels with letters near them.

I never finished Burnin' Rubber, the cartridge "24h Le Mans" game that was bundled with the computer. It was insanely hard near the end, as a lot of games were. I also remember "Crazy Cars II", I loved that one because it allowed you to drive freely a Ferrari F-40 (nice car, certainly) on a road network that included Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. You had a map with the road numbers and all, police cars were trying to ram you and you had to go from town A to town B in a limited time, it was pretty cool (sadly, the computer resources did not allowed to render town).

But the game that impressed me as I was a young boy, and that probably ultimately led me to Orbiter and other simulations, was "F-16 Combat Pilot". It was a simulation as precise as the platform could provide. Display was reduced to the minimal to free simulation resources : 4 colors (you could have 16 !), the ground was a flat green surface with a grid of points to render the altitude and speed feeling (that was smart !), and all other assets, including airbases & planes, were wireframe. You had a nice cockpit view, with MFDs (GPS map, SMS, AA & AG radars AFAIK) and an impressive level of detail given the limitations. I also remember a cool loadout screen, where you could select a nice choice of ordinance (AGM-65D ; AGM-65E, AGM-88 HARM, Durandal, such refinements were awesome for the time).

f-16-5.png

Loadout screen

f-16-0.png

In flight

I remember when I tried it for the first times with my father (an aviation enthusiast). We weren't able to move the plane "or fire a single bullet", as he said it. The manual was very rich and it took us time to figure out the basics of flights, without speaking of using the weaponry systems.

Also the "combat environement" was correctly rendered, when you had to strike an objective in enemy territory, climbing above 500 feet was nearly suicidal as you suddenly got locked by EWR that sent you Mig-23, 25, 29, 31, SAMs, etc... When you kept low, flying too close of an enemy military base rewarded you by scary flak barrages, that was cool.

f-16-4.png

War Room map

Even landing was challenging. After crash (yeah it happened often) you had an analysis of what got wrong with your landing. I will always remember "Sink rate too high". That was my most common error. It was not rare to be surprised by a Mig on landing, so I was prone to "rush" on the runway. But the vertical & horizontal velocities were carefully tracked, and no off-runway was tolerated. It was strict military landing.

url

Notice the ILS ! (the cockpit is not the same than above, that was the Commodore 64 version, I think)

f-16-7.png

Pass over a runway

f-16-3.png

Main menu (mission selection, and YES there was a P2P Network Multiplayer mode !!)

f-16-1.png

Loading screen, 16 colors art !

f-16-2.png

Dev team : 3 people. Yeah.

Good memories :cheers:

Then I got a PC, Compaq with 386 Processor, Win 3.1. Upgraded it to 486 with arithmetic coprocessor quickly. Then the Pentiums & Win 95 came in, but it took some time before I got my hands on one of those, I directly switched to Win 98 AFAIR (not a bad thing, indeed !)...

Reminds me a lot of F-117 Night Storm for the Sega Genesis. F-16 was likely more realistic for the time, but I had loads of fun with F-117.
 

orbitingpluto

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I was at the local Unique with family, preparing for a road trip(more than one of us needed clothes, and Unique was one of the places we stopped) where I found a neat old cassette tape player. It's a Panasonic RQ-350 Auto Stop, which I know little else about it beside the model number and that it was made in Japan; there isn't even a date of manufacture. It had a single battery stuck inside with some battery acid junk, and was missing the battery cover. Picked it up for two bucks, and with help from my brother we freed the battery and cleaned up the junk. It actually works, inbuilt speaker doesn't sound too good but the darn thing works:RnR1:

It has a built in microphone, ports for power, a external mic, and something called "Remote". I put that in quotes because I'm not too sure what that means, since what seems to the headphone port is called "Monitor (8 ohms). Sounds decent with headphones, though in order to get stereo the jack has to sit part way out, or only one side has sound. Bit weird, but since I guess this isn't an actual headphone port I'm willing to accept it being strange. I'm really pleased, though I'm might decide to leave it at home while I'm out on the road. I could take a picture of it after the trip if anyone is interested, it's silver and rather Sony Walkman-looking, which is one of the reasons I first saw it. My my brother wants to find a 1st gen Sony Walkman because of Metal Gear, though he's the one who thought better of taking a chance on this mere Panasonic with an a acid problem, so it is me who is flipping over to the B-side and enjoying only cassette tape I have* more than I thought I would.:headbang:

*Anthrax's sounds of white noise. My older sister offered it to me out of her car's stash of cassettes, so it's actually the most available one I have at the moment. I'll probably find a bunch of cassettes tucked away at home to play, though they're all find to find now that I'm looking for them.
 

Andy44

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Google the make, model, and model number if you can find it on the plate somewhere. You'd be surprised how much info for this old stuff there is out there on the net. People collect these old machines and catalog stuff. There was a story on public radio a couple of years ago about a guy who collects 80s-era boom boxes and has his own little museum somewhere.
 

Andy44

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Time to revive this thread!

Lately I've been digging up videos on the youtubes related to nuclear space propulsion (and also nuclear accidents, which are fascinating, but I digress). Nuclear thermal rockets (NTR) have always had an allure for me; they are one of the few truly futuristic propulsion technologies that were ever developed, yet we haven't flown any so far.

I love the 1960s high tech hardware. No Dell flat panel displays, here, every control panel is custom made, and look at all that shiny metal. And at the heart of it all is an atomic rocket on a test stand. Love. It.

 

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The first computer I ever played on was either a commodore or a spectrum. Had a game where you had to jump over train wagons and avoid some birds. Gotta love that stuff
 

Andy44

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Speaking of retro tech, many of you've probably heard of the Mellotron, a keyboard instrument from the 60s that uses sound samples on 8-second stretches of magnetic tape. It has been used by many famous acts, including the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and is still in production today. The Mellotron itself is retro-tech; for some reason musicians tend to be very conservative about technology, often preferring old-school instruments and amplifiers to newer ones. There is a modern compact keyboard Mellotron which uses digital samples, but for just under $8k you can still buy a tape unit complete with 60s-looking wooden construction.

101-0120x_IMG.jpg


Not only are their instruments retro tech, but Mellotron's website looks like a throwback to the early happy days of the 1990s internet!

http://www.mellotron.com/

All they need is an awful midi sound file that starts up when you visit the site and won't shut up, and maybe a few cheesy animated gifs!
 

Notebook

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We had a Mellotron in a sound-dubbing area, wasn't a musical one. Looked like a normal upright piano. It was filled with sound-effects, all the worlds birds, and creaky floorboards, spooky footsteps, gunshots, etc. Great fun to play with, hardly used in anger.

Sadly went in the skip, shocking.

N.
 

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Andy: I have just discovered the page you were mentioning (thanks to you) and I did lose a part of my real life :D Very nice page, lots of memories! Steam Powered King Tiger Tank for the win! :D
 

Andy44

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Oh yes, steam engines. I still have one. Haven't fired it up in a long time. They still make them.
 
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