Retro Cool Technology

[Thunder Chicken]

Ah, the old Soundblaster cards! Little did I know that Yamaha actually built keyboards around the same chip in the 80s:

Meet the little-known "Soundblaster" Keyboards - YouTube

That reminded me of this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a324ykKV-7Y"]LGR - Evolution of PC Audio - As Told by Secret of Monkey Island - YouTube[/ame]

 

[jedidia]

Oh man, the roland... I remember that card being the ultimate thing until 32-bit wave became a thing. Way too expensive for poor little me, though. The first sound card I ever owned was an AWE32 when it was already well into its run, until then it was PC speaker for me... Or/and the sounds I produced myself, of course. I remember being mocked by my pals when we played Wing Commander 3 and I couldn't stop making pew-pew and whooshing sounds out of habit :lol:

 

[Artlav]

Speaking about the retro-mode sound (and some more),
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/11/23/artisanal-hand-crafted-electrons/

 

[steph]

I remember how the 486-es and early Pentiums had some sort of inner beeper or speaker, many early 90's games had sound like that even if there were no speakers plugged in. Nasty stuff if you wanted to play past bedtime...those things were loud and woke up the parents.

 

[Loru]

Ah. Early PC sound devices.

On my first PC (486dx2/66) I had Covox built by my cousin (it was a bunch of resistors soldered into LPT plug not using any circuit board ). After that I bought used SB16 and after that same cousin gave me AWE32 which was carried on through my PCs into PIII 800 (that was my last MOBO thay had ISA bus). We even used this AWE32 to record our demo back in early 2000's.

One of the song recorded back there (drums recorded using 4 channel mixer on single stereo track, guitars recorded by plugging audio out from amp directly to AWE Line IN. Same with bass guitar and vocals): http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/125481907/Iluzja.mp3

After that I had one Audigy and then 2 Audigy2 (one stopped working so I bought same model).

 

[Ripley]

Wow! I remember playing Hexen after buying my first Sounblaster, and I was in shock hearing all those stereo effects.
You could finally understand where the enemy was coming from!

 

[Loru]

 

[Andy44]

Wow, my mind is blown, Kodak is actually introducing a bran new Super-8mm movie film camera this year! With an electronic viewfinder, on-board sound saves to a micro-SD card, and the film cartridges will reportedly come with free processing and digital transfer included in the cost. It's like the old Brownie days!

Interesting timing, too. I've been seriously considering getting into some sort of movie film lately, researching what kind of equipment and chemicals needed to process it and what vintage camera gear and film was available.

I think someone is trying to tell me something...

 

[Notebook]

Yea, back to film! Wonder if its derived from Super16? That gave a big boost to film production for telly use in the 90's.
I always preferred the film look over video, but film is very dependant on handling for the quality, video is very robust.

http://www.cinematechnic.com/super_16mm/super-16.html

N.

 

[Andy44]

Curta mechanical calculator. Drool....

 

[Andy44]

Nixie tubes!

Err...never mind, I forgot this was posted like 5 posts ago...

 

[orbekler]

Wow, my mind is blown, Kodak is actually introducing a bran new Super-8mm movie film camera this year! With an electronic viewfinder, on-board sound saves to a micro-SD card, and the film cartridges will reportedly come with free processing and digital transfer included in the cost. It's like the old Brownie days!

Interesting timing, too. I've been seriously considering getting into some sort of movie film lately, researching what kind of equipment and chemicals needed to process it and what vintage camera gear and film was available.

I think someone is trying to tell me something...

The 8mm camera return explained by Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke - YouTube

No, thank you. No, please.
Seriously, I like vintage stuff (and I got the house full of it), but I would never come back with that modus operandi. I have a still working Canon Zoom 814, and tons of 8mm/S 8mm tha t I still have to dump in digital.
I don't think that old means always better.
And speaking of 8mm, you find troubles at every frame shot, mech is delicate and many times you hear strange noises that announce that film is going to grip, not to speak of the expenses for trashed films.
The advertised "modern" 8mm Kodak cam, though maybe not unpredictable as the original vintage gear, is just an expensive toy for people who like to waste money and time in having a warm and charming clip, but still poor in quality (by the way, you can reach an almost identical result in post production with Adobe's).
What if in past movie directors were given the possibility to choose between HD digital or their contemporary gear? I don't have doubt. And, by the way, I wouldn't have to dump all damned 8mm to digital

I love vintage gear, but they had their time. I can still use them to revive my nostalgia, but I like the miniaturized tech, and I like to have thousands mp3s in a finger-sized device, I wouldn't come back to my Walkman II with packs of 120 BASF cassettes prone to spill out hundreds of meters of tape, to be rewinded (when not damaged) with a pencil.

 

[TachyonDriver]

Curta mechanical calculator. Drool....

For anyone without a few hundred bucks going spare, you can at least practice & study the Curta's operations:-

http://www.curtamania.com/curta/code/curta_simulators.html

I've not tried the others, but I use the one by Jan Meyer (2d simulator). :thumbup:

 

[Andy44]

I love Techmoan's vintage gear videos. He finds the oddest stuff. Check out this crazy auto-reverse mechanism by Akai from 1972. And stick around for the second half of the vid where he shows the guts of a cassette deck up close:

 

[Andy44]

Yet another cool Techmoan video. Anyone have any experience with this OED technology? Looks like it was mostly junk, but it's a neat idea.

 

[Loru]

I like his videos a lot. In fact he reminds me of garyw.

On the other note since my old amp I was using to drive speakers attached to PC is dying I ordered some 89-90 JVC AX-211. (I hate computer speakers and always had some proper amp & speakers plugged into soundcard)

http://www.aukcjoner.pl/gallery/022090176-9.html#I9

 

[Urwumpe]

Just have some retro-computing literature on my desk: Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulmann - "AN/FSQ-7: The computer that shaped the cold war", about the SAGE computers and its predecessor "Whirlwind." Pretty interesting reading when you are into old computers, since it also explains some basic circuit elements for vacuum tube computers, like gate tubes.

Really recommendable so far, also pretty fascinating how antique some modern systems (GNU/Linux :rofl: ) appear in their user interfaces compared to this behemoth, which had been designed to be operated by USAF soldiers and no academic IT experts.

 

[TMac3000]

Anyone ever checked out Terry Stewart's Youtube vids?

 

[Andy44]

Just have some retro-computing literature on my desk: Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulmann - "AN/FSQ-7: The computer that shaped the cold war", about the SAGE computers and its predecessor "Whirlwind." Pretty interesting reading when you are into old computers, since it also explains some basic circuit elements for vacuum tube computers, like gate tubes.

Really recommendable so far, also pretty fascinating how antique some modern systems (GNU/Linux :rofl: ) appear in their user interfaces compared to this behemoth, which had been designed to be operated by USAF soldiers and no academic IT experts.

I posted an old film about SAGE a page or two back. 1950s computer tech is amazing to me. The amount of work that went into building and maintaining those monsters is fascinating.

 

[Bibi Uncle]

Dave Jones recently disassembled a mechanical computer taken from a B52 bomber. This beauty is mechanical engineering porn, for sure.

https://youtu.be/hzGaO4Kdz2Y