And tell me how proud of it you are.
Me. 62 years. As long as it keeps on ticking, I’m proud.
Seriously? No upgrades, augments, removals or additions?
I’m 45 and I don’t think my knees or hips will last that long. And my memory will probably degrade over the next twenty years.
You go girl!
A pocketwatch manufactured in 1889. I keep it running as a memento mori: the watch may outlive the watchmaker. Build things well – they may be all people remember you by, one day.
I also have a slide rule at my desk at most times, to remind me of false-precision.
I guess the oldest though, is a Wu Zhu coin from the Three Kingdoms period (currency is a technology, too?). I keep it to remember that all empires arise from chaos, and must return to it; that all assets eventually have no value. That the things that endure, are stranger currencies still.
You’re the badass stoich character from fantasy stories!
“I keep the relics of my ancestors to remind me we all die”
Certainly, no one would accuse me of insufficient gravitas.
Just the right amount 🤌
A pocketwatch manufactured in 1889. I keep it running as a memento mori:
And to think I almost typed in my Lumia 1020… 🤣 🤣 Hats off mate!
If you happen to want one, they are surprisingly affordable (I think I paid ~100$). So many were made, for so many years, that they are not exactly rare! Some antiques are fun like that.
I absolutely cherish it.
With the word “multiplex” does it let you play both the radio and 8-track at the same time (overlapping?)
I’m afraid it does not.
Aw I was getting some “Weather on the ones - REMIX” ideas hah
Award winning
I still listen to my music using a 160 GB iPod Classic. Apple struck gold with that clickwheel. Carrying around a dedicated device for music just for that elegant one-thumb control I don’t even have to look at to use is still totally worth it to me.
I could use it through my back jeans pocket. It was great!
In public would it just look like you’re caressing your own ass?
Probably. Just quickly and more of a poke the cheek. I did have a headphone cord coming out of the pocket though, so maybe less suspect. this was around 2010 probably.
The click wheel also works through fabric. I miss changing songs and adjusting volume without removing it from my pocket.
I still keep mine in my car. Have you seen Dankpods mod them with terabyte micro SD kits? Stuff is amazing.
I did it to mine. It’s fantastic.
If I could get Spotify and FLAC files on this then I’d be in heaven
Damn, it still can’t play FLAC?
Mine can’t. Don’t know about the later models.
It’s currently not working, but I’m going to replace the battery soon on my 80gb Zune. I fucking loved that thing back in high school. I want to make it my dedicated music device for my stereo set up, as a digital parallel to my turntable
I’m sorry you were bullied (I kid, I’ve had non ipod music players (still do), but I hope you didn’t get beat up a lot for having a zune, thats not fair to you)
I know you were joking, but luckily my high school really wasn’t too bad when it came to bullying. Like, there were the cliques that beefed, but there weren’t any like, actual bullies. I think what helped was that all of the really big dudes (I was a “small” big dude, at 6’2" 200lbs) we’re all nerds, and we protected the small nerds. We couldn’t let anyone hurt any of our WoW guildees haha
My original NES and game cartridges. Still work great, although retired as collectibles in favor of emulators now.
I got lucky with mine. I started having issues with mine around 2000. I lived in Washington, only like an hour from Nintendo of America. At the time, Nintendo still serviced all their old consoles up to and including their current consoles. (This would change in 2006, with the Wii, when they started releasing old games digitally, it was game-over for their long-term servicing of old consoles.) So I took mine in, and if I recall correctly, it was about $50 to get all my games professionally cleaned and for the console to be cleaned, fixed, and sent home with new power supply and controllers.
It’s been a champ ever since.
I wish I had known about that. The cleaning accessories I’ve found over the years have kept it going without issues, but I definitely would have sent mine in for a preventative professional cleaning and refurbishing if they found anything wrong with it.
I remember being a bit surprised when I found out about it, but it also seems to be that a lot of people didn’t know about this service, despite it being something Nintendo seemed to pride themselves in for a long time. Maybe they just didn’t publicize it widely enough?
I never heard anything about it. I definitely would have sent in the NES, SNES, and N64 for servicing if it was on my radar.
Neat.
I have a hand-me-down NES from a relative that sadly passed away, console works a treat but at some point within the past decade the cartridge batteries went flat. Finally have the gamebit driver to replace them but the gear is all packed away at the back of my storage cupboard…
Could always do the melted pen trick (outside; burning plastic is not good for you). Could risk melting the game cart plastic, though if you get the pen too hot.
A 1940s era Sterling Siren Model “F” factory siren. This siren spent decades outside of a Long Island, NY firehouse, acting as a street clearing siren to allow fire engines to exit the station unimpeded during an emergency. It was decommissioned a few years ago and popped up on eBay, and I was able to get ahold of it for cheap as the seller didn’t know its worth. Model F sirens are very hard to find, as they haven’t been made since the 1960s, and the need for street clearing and fire sirens have lessened with the advent of pagers. I believe there are less than a dozen left in service across North America.
Mine is in very good running shape, despite its age. I lubricated the bearings recently (brass sleeve bearings) and let the motor break in. It isn’t quite as loud as my Federal Sign & Signal Model “L” (built in the 1960s) but still packs a punch. I usually set them off with the city sirens every Monday. It does need cosmetic restoration, as the paint is badly weathered and the projector has some dents in it, but it won’t be hard to fix up.
https://youtu.be/KvsGiL15g1k?si=ZgheNIH-fqOHJXnJ
My Model L is on the left, and my Model F is on the right.
Your neighbors must love you.
They’ve never complained, and I’m respectful with them. So I think them and I are cool lol
Your city has sirens that go off every Monday?
Yup! A weekly 30 second test.
That was common in the town where I grew up. The sirens were used as tornado warnings, so they made sure they were in good working order.
It’s relatively common in small towns. Some towns with volunteer fire departments will have a siren they use both to call all available volunteer firefighters and to announce the need to shelter for a tornado. They used to sound it at noon every day and my wife (then girlfriend) used it as an alarm clock when she worked 2nd shift anytime she slept in too late
About 5 years ago they stopped sounding it at noon, and honestly I’m not sure when the last time i heard the sirens was since tornadic storms are becomes much less common here and the firefighters have become increasingly reliant on their radios instead. I kinda miss it. There’s a quaintness to just listening for the noon whistle to tell time
It’s very common even today for fire sirens to still be in use, as well as noon whistles. Unfortunately, people complain about the noise despite choosing to live near the fire department, and the sirens get shut off.
Which country are you in? Not a thing I’ve heard of happening here in the UK
Canada. It’s not really a thing in the UK. Fire sirens/noon whistles are mostly a North American/European thing.
My paternal grandmother’s KitchenAid model K mixer she bought just after my grandfather returned from WW2. She gave it to my mother in the late 70’s because she wanted a new one and the damn thing showed no signs of dying. My mother gave it to my wife about 15 years ago for the same reason.
We’ve bought some new accessories but that fucking zombie mixer will outlast the roaches.
Might be worth regreasing it, iFixIt has some good guides on that.
Those old KitchenAid mixers are beasts. I think they were still made by Hobart at that point and really built to last and easy to fix.
Not at all impressive, but to maximize interactions on a newborn thread:
It’s probably my PS3, which I would have gotten Christmas 2008 (or maybe it was 2009?). I recently started sailining the seas, and the most convenient way to watch those videos is to burn them to a disk, and so the PS3 is really just a glorified DVD player (can’t even be bothered to use it’s blue ray functionality)
Similarly, my PS2 which I got for Christmas in 2003 is still running strong, I replayed Simpsons Hit & Run recently and it the console plays as well as it did when I first booted up.
It also has the honour of being the last device I own capable of playing DVDs since my PC’s optical disc drive died.
Our wii is still hanging in there, though there DVD drive doesn’t like to fully latch and I have to keep the side cover loose too hello it Fully load.
But I also have a working PS2, PS1 with GameShark that can load pirated games. And a battery working finicky NES.
I got a fountain pen with my initials on it from my grandfather. We have the same initials.
I have my grandparents gramophone.
We pull it out each year to listen to their old Christmas records.
It’s become a tradition that my university age kids still look forward to.
I have a General Post Office model 711 telephone. I installed a microcontroller into it and it’s now the keypad for my home alarm system. It’s also hooked into Home Assistant so I could have it for other things if I wanted.
That is just brilliant!
Thanks. It has occurred to me to add a voice assistant to the phone as well but I’m not sure I’d ever actually use it.
I was thoroughly impressed by Technology Connections exploration of the Sunbeam automatic beyond belief toaster. Bought one cheap off Craigslist a while ago and added a ground wire. Works great.
I also picked up an IBM selectric pretty cheap, mostly works.
1959 mechanical cameras. An electronic camera from 1969. Polaroid SX-70 from 1976. A calculator from 1988: FX85P from Casio. And then the Atari Lynx from 1991.
An electronic typewriter that my parents bought when I was entering highschool in the early 90s.
While my first works of fiction we’re not written on it, my first fiction I ever submitted (it was rejected btw) to a publisher was.
I wouldn’t get successfully published until the late 90s/early 00s after I had built my first PC out of scrap parts and a cheap copy of windows 95.
But that typewriter still holds a special place in my heart.
Was it a Clark Nova?
I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous.
id have to double check when I get home, but iirc, it was a smith corona SL470 or something like that.
Original Xbox console with a copy of Halo Combat Evolved though the console would probably pop if I plugged it in
Open it up and see if any of the capacitors are leaking! Soldering is a great skill to learn and you can fix it yourself.
The biggest problem people have is buying a bad soldering iron that gets way too hot. You can get an excellent iron for only 10 or 20 dollars more than the garbage out there. I used to recommend the TS-100, because that’s what I use and love, and they used to be way cheaper. The TS-80 was an upgrade to that, which was also nice but I never liked. If you’ve got the money, I still recommend them. However for the budget minded, the pinecil is almost the exact same thing, it’s well made, and it’s still like $30-40 bucks. In fact some people prefer it over the others. You can power it with a beefy USB-C charger if you have one, or an old laptop charger if you want to cut up the end and put a barrel jack on it. The thing pulls about 90 watts at full tilt, but only for brief periods.
Next you want to buy yourself some practice boards, you can get soldering kits from AliExpress that will let you build little flashing trees and hearts and stuff. Or even small handheld games if you’re getting better at soldering.
Then you watch YouTube tutorials, find several. You want to focus on quick work, at low ish temps like 280C, keep the tip clean, and flux is your friend. The very tippy tip of your iron should always be shiny, if it starts turning black, it’s building oxides from being too hot and not enough flux. Clean that thing with flux. If you leave it that way too long you’ll ruin it, that’s why most people struggle to solder.
Then once you’ve learned, and you’re ready to go. Watch YouTube videos on fixing the Xbox, buy the caps, crack that thing open and have fun. Caps aren’t that hard to replace, compared to other soldering projects. You’ll do fine 👍
Hey thanks. I may need to solder something in the near future, and it’s always felt a bit daunting to start/learn for some reason. This comment was super helpful.
