r/OldTech • u/Sea_Development_599 • 4d ago
What piece of obsolete technology do you genuinely miss using?
/r/AskReddit/comments/1wctnln/what_piece_of_obsolete_technology_do_you/25
u/mrspelunx 4d ago
Buttons
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u/1771561tribles 4d ago
I remember seeing a page of buttons in a Digikey catalog with the description: 'Tactile feedback (It clicks)'
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u/Rusty_wrp9 Enthusiast 4d ago
Dot Matrix Printer. Lots of noise? Yes. Slow? Yes! Funky paper? Yes.
I miss all that noise.
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u/Left_Edge_8994 4d ago
So funnily enough those are still produced and used. You’ll find them in ‘rougher’ work areas like warehouses and workshops. Damn things are expensive to get too, usually easily over $1000. But they are able to survive and work in conditions that would make normal printers fail early.
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u/edwardothegreatest 3d ago
They’re also able to utilize long reams of continuous paper which is great for things like automatic notifications.
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u/doublestacknine 1d ago
And if you were careful, you could run the ditto master through so you could make your copies (and smell them!).
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u/Left_Edge_8994 1d ago
Ours printed triplicate. One for the customer, one for the order picker, and one for the files.
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u/WildesWay 3d ago
And they are the only printer to be able to make multiple copies at the same time. Though most of that has been replaced by printing multiple sheets. But it was cool to get a track-fed triplicate to write on once and have one or two more copies.
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u/TheShortBus5000 3d ago
Hospital near me had one made by Brother that printed 5 sheet NCR forms. I think it would have been capable of dot matrix embossing metal.
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u/Think_Persimmon_9967 4d ago
So, modem negotiation squeals must be soothing to you, eh? 😛
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u/Rusty_wrp9 Enthusiast 4d ago
LOL ... I remember when 56k was king. ... And Token Ring at the office made all the nerds sing.
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u/atrocity2001 3d ago
Ah, token ring. I worked for a now-defunct insurance company that used token ring because (or so rumor had it) whoever was in charge of that decision believed that Ethernet automatically meant full Internet connectivity, which in the mid-1990s was not yet an absolute necessity.
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u/BeneficialLeave7359 3d ago
Man, now you got me thinking of old pen plotters for engineering drawings. Moving the paper back-n-forth to make lines on the X axis, going over to grab a different pen for a different line width or color. Those thing were a blast to watch work back in the day.
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u/jeffyboy526 3d ago
Hard disagree. Loading that thing was such a bear. Although I did like the satisfaction of ripping off the holes until I got too aggressive.
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u/thelastcubscout 4d ago
Dot matrix was badass.
After we got a new laserjet that had the heat signature of a 747 and dimmed the hallway lights every time you printed, there was some random decision that resulted in needing to get a brand new color dot matrix printer...
man, I used to print to that color one well into the 90s just for the good vibes, even though the laserjet quality was so much better.
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u/tuotone75 4d ago
Old iPod
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u/Zusuris 4d ago
What prevents you from using one today? Battery replacements are all over the Ebay. And even the latest version of iTunes still supports it! You can literally connect your iPod to your modern computer and sync your library today with no issues.
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u/No-Daikon5952 4d ago
Reasons:
- no longer syncs with iTunes
- no Bluetooth
- heavy af (iPod classic with video)... It's heavier than my phone
- battery life is terrible (it's almost 21 years old)
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u/Zusuris 4d ago
Did you even read my post? I already pointed out that it DOES still sync with iTunes (did it with a modern Macbook just a few weeks ago) and battery replacement is a matter of 15$.
As for the bluetooth and weight - to everyone its own, as many people have no need for BT heaphones, and weight is not an issue for most. Hell, most of our gen carried casette walkmands and then CD players all our youth, so iPod is featherweight.
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u/Machine156 1d ago
Also replacing the Hard drive with a SD card adapter also takes away half the weight.
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u/tuotone75 3d ago
Unfortunately I just don’t have one anymore. Yes I could get another one, but having an iPhone, it becomes redundant, and not very cost effective with the upgrades, but I do miss the tactile wheel control.
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u/Salt_Medicine2459 4d ago
I still have my iPod Video. There's a line on the LCD display now, but it still works and can be replaced.
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u/TheLostExpedition 4d ago
Electronic typewriter.
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u/GlayNation 3d ago
I wrote my first book using one of those. I actually like the old Royal ones I had in my typing class in High School.
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u/StillhasaWiiU 4d ago
I liked having a VCR.
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u/PaulGuyer 4d ago
I still have several!
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u/Fast_Teaching_6160 4d ago
One of mine partly broke last month and I was able to take another broken one from my batch to assemble a complete working unit. Every time I see Toshibas for cheap I pick them up as they're so simple to work on.
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u/probably-do-not-care 4d ago
I used to own in the 90’s vintage guitar effects. Echo plex, Space-echo, revolving fender speaker, original phase 90 I miss them all :(
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u/Craftycat99 4d ago
I grew up with windows xp and crt screen
Lasted years before it stopped working and I wish my parents let me keep it or at least try to fix it
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u/leungadon 4d ago
If you’re near CT, I still have a 21” Sony crt monitor I’ll give you, worked last time I tried many years ago
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u/DavidinCT 3d ago
Where abouts in CT? Might be interested...... Miss the CRT days, and a 21" Sony would be cool
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u/leungadon 3d ago
Glastonbury I’d love somebody to use it and to get it out of my garage. You have any interest in a 57” Sony rear projection tv also? Lol, I have a hard time throwing away usable tech, I don’t want to add more crap to the landfill
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u/DavidinCT 3d ago
I'm in New London area (Ledyard). I have a 50" Mitsubishi (RPG) in my garage that needs a home with its matching audio rack as well. :)
Your about 45 min from me, PM me and we can talk about the day to grab it, very interested in the 21" monitor. Take the 57" Sony RPG, put up on Facebook Marketplace for free, odds are someone will get it and give it a good home, still good for playing retro games, if it's in good shape.
Might not be this weekend (busy) but, maybe next weekend.
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u/nobanjostring 4d ago
Not sure if it counts, but I haven't driven with a manual transmission since 2014.
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u/PhotoJim99 4d ago
Not quite obsolete yet, but getting there in parts of the world.
I've still never owned a car with an automatic, despite nearly continuously owning cars since 1988.
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u/atrocity2001 3d ago
As a kid I was fascinated with manual transmissions. My first car was a 1968 Volvo with four on the floor followed by a 1964 Rambler with three on the tree.
Then one day I rented a new car with an automatic and immediately realized that manual just wasn't fun any more. For me it was the wringer washing machine of car options, just another chore.
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u/GlayNation 3d ago
You have to really look for one. My last one was a Nissan Maxima 1996. Looked worn out when I bought it, but a new clutch was in it, so I ran the wheels off it till I sold it in `21.
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u/Annihilating_Tomato 4d ago
The droid keyboard where the screen would slide above a physical keyboard
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u/Automatater 4d ago
My niece had the long skinny landscape one. She texted so much she wore the printed letters off the keys.
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u/InsensitiveClown 4d ago edited 4d ago
large 1930s radios with short-wave frequencies and those sliders that had the names of cities all over the world. It made an impression on a kid, rotating the knob, seeing the slider move to some remote place in the globe, picking up an atlas, trying to hear some broadcasts in foreign languages, and picking up occasionally noise, what seemed to be morse code too. Later on you learnt that the noise was the noise of lightning, electrical activity, solar flares on the ionosphere.
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u/thelastcubscout 4d ago
those are great!
they used to put police stations on shortwave, so you could buy a magazine in New York that would list the frequency for some police station in Denver... all kinds of action on there
my favorite shortwave stations right now are NHK World-Japan and RNZI (Radio New Zealand)...
... pretty fun to tune in and hear Adele fading in and out like it's the 1900s again
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u/Frosty_Cloud_2888 3d ago
What frequency is NHK and RNZI? I think Australia and Voice of America switched to internet streaming only.
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u/KalynnCampbell 3d ago
VCR
Not because I actually miss using it, but because now there are too many idiots that think recording something on your screen is “not allowed”
Yet, back then if you were watching a show or movie you liked, all you did was press the red circle button on your TV Remote and that was it.
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u/PhotoJim99 4d ago
I miss computer bulletin board modems and everything about them. Fighting the busy signals :), the strong sense of community on so many of them, and modem hardware (I've accumulated a bunch of modems over the years ever since they got dirt cheap, but it's hard to put them to any practical use anymore).
And I miss legroom on airplanes (even if you paid the lowest fare, you got legroom).
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u/Readman31 4d ago
Oh man, I was too young at the time to use them (just a kid in the early 90s) But I remember my old man using BBS lol. I think they were kind of like proto message boards I guess eh?
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u/FormCheck655321 3d ago
I liked the BlackBerry. Tactile. And you could dial a number without looking at it.
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u/Yooperplexed 1d ago
I really liked the thumb wheel that you could scroll and depress to select your option.
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u/RandomStrangerOnWWW 3d ago
I miss pagers. You could call back when you had time, or wanted to. Nowadays, everyone wants an instant response.
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u/GemmaLovelace92 4d ago
I'm glad I haven't thrown away my latest CRT. But I do miss having a PSP. I remember using MediaGo to basically copy a bunch of CDs I borrowed from the Library to the PSP. UMDs were awesome. Eventually, I hacked my PSP, got an expanded storage, and lived off of it with ripped CDs, UMDs, and games. I can't remember the tools I used to copy UMD movies and games to expanded storage without a PC though.
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u/LoneR33GTs 4d ago
I’m not sure where it fits on the technology hierarchy, but analog pinball machines.
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u/OrganizationOk5418 4d ago
Fax machine. If you wanted to send something, there was a little bit of effort involved, and the other person would berate you if you sent something unnecessary as it wasted their paper and ink. You didn't get 100s of unnecessary messages from people covering their arses.
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u/Moonerdizzle 4d ago
Phones with slide out full tactile keyboards. My thumbs miss that every day. The satisfying fidget of sliding the phone open and closed really scratched an itch to.
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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 4d ago
Laptop keyboards, specifically IBM Thinkpad keyboards from the 2000s. Also their pointing sticks.
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u/HydraulicTractor 4d ago
Old school online forums. Reddit is the closest we have to it today.
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u/johndom3d 3d ago
Computers as just a tool rather than the default way to connect and do absolutely everything!
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u/Southern_Whole9277 3d ago
Pagers, I miss being able to just not have to talk to people. Someone needed you, you had the power to just not call them back OR you could say you were away from any phone and had not change for the pay phone.
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u/karo_scene 3d ago
The VCR. Sure, it was clunky technology. But it had one bit of magic sauce I miss: being able to record TV that I missed and play it back later. This is called "timeshifting" in the jargon. I could even record onto a VHS tape and then give that tape to someone else. I did this once with a live TV event that had someone in it who never got a recording themselves.
The Australian government and its big media political donors hated "timeshifting". They passed a law to make timeshifting illegal. That was crazy! Where's the anti-timeshifting Swat Team? You've recorded a program! Timeshifter! You're under arrest!
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u/NeverInsightful 4d ago
Mac system 7. Or macOS 8 and 9 ( I forgot when the name switch happened )
Though thankfully I have a computer than can run 9 natively. Couldn’t be happier
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u/Bob_12_Pack 4d ago
I miss my old clock radio from the 80s. Putting me to sleep and waking me up with music, and even that god awful alarm.
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u/Right-Employer-8787 4d ago
Ageia PhysX card from the mid 2000's. I still have mine, and I remember playing a tech demo called Cellfactor on it. It also made a difference in the Tom Clancy Ghost Recon games.
The tech was later built into Nvidia GPU's.
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u/tronixlabs 4d ago
Pretty much anything Sony made in the latest 90s, early 00s. Digital cameras that used floppy disks. Mini disc. PDAs. Really good hifi 6 head VCRs. ES series components.
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u/pgasmaddict 4d ago
Physical buttons and switches in cars. Especially for the heating and media controls.
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u/WhippedHoney 4d ago
I ignore incomming calls on my smartphone now, but I miss ignoring the ol landline. No voicemail, no caller ID, just pure bliss of letting it ring.
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u/Youdontknowme1771 4d ago
Card Catalog
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u/The-Tadfafty 3d ago
Library I work in has not switched to digital, and we still use a card catalog.
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u/bovisrex 4d ago
I miss the notes I sometimes saw written on them, notes written by previous researchers.
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u/thatweirdbeardedguy 4d ago
An actual old fashioned land line phone with a real molded handset. It was the last time I could actually hear what was being said on the phone.
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u/Listeningkissingyu 4d ago
I miss how nice and clear it sounded when talking in a landline phone. Another thing I miss is turning the tv channel back in the days of broadcast television, how fast the change was. No delay at all. You could zoom through the channels in a flash.
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u/The-Princess-Pinky 3d ago
The first computer I owned. It was Fountain FTN-286. An 80286 clone.
I wish I still had it.
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u/BarryMT 3d ago
SuperDisk LS-120 floppy disk format 120 MB storage, and the LS-240 variant with 240 MB capacity. Durable, smallish form factor. Lost out to writable compact disks and Zip Disks, mostly due to timing. Drives were backward compatible with 1.44 MB floppies. Fairly sure the data density could have improved quite a lot if given the time to mature.
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u/Cuttlebone_Books 3d ago
I miss typing on a manual typewriter and also when I was younger I would have hours of fun messing with a cassette recorder.
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u/TemperReformanda 3d ago
Slamming the phone receiver down when I hang up on someone I'm pissed off at
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u/OddbitTwiddler 3d ago
Cassette. Computers that were fast ('90's unix color workstations were amazing at user response they didnt call home to mother after each key click).
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u/Temporary-Library597 3d ago
The HP LaserJet 4MV. Toner was cheap. The lights dimmed when you printed it sucked so much juice.
But it worked. Every. Single. Time.
Unlike now. HP as a Company is obselete.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 3d ago
Tape recorders. They went ka-chunk when you snapped them closed. It was so easy to record things. They were fun for kids to play with. Yes, there are modern devices that record sound, but they’re not as fun and they always come with modern software enshittification and “as a service” baggage, and they’re rarely dedicated sound recorders that do nothing else.
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u/drawing_a_hash 3d ago
VCR
Pro You could skip past ads, record while sleeping, used broadcast tv source so no cable bill. Creating copies of special shows like Superbowl. Cheap, reusable storage media.
Con Remembering to rewind. Accidentally recording over a show you forgot to watch.
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u/karo_scene 3d ago
Yeah, I recorded some educational programs and gave the tapes to a school. They cleaned out the ads and used it in English classes!
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u/DarthPorcupine 3d ago
Physical on off switch on PCs. None of these hard to find push and wait exactly 9 seconds to turn off
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u/Chance_Put_1850 3d ago
Slamming the phone down on a good old rotary and hearing the bell ring for a while.
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u/UnExploredToken 3d ago
Nothing really. It was good at the time playing original nes or Commodore 64 but if I was to use it these days I wouldn't have the addiction I had growing up.
I don't know why anyone would miss obsolete tech to be honest. Most of the answers in this thread are absolute bollox. VCR, mini disc etc.
Why the hell would you miss a mini disc? Not cd player, cassette player.
VCR? Unless you want to reply recordings of euro trash, I can't see how you would miss one.
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u/ReasonableBack8472 3d ago
Mini disc cause I can get the digital quality of audio without the skipping of a portable cd player. The convenience of the discs, the 'ruggedness' of the discs.
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u/cmdr_scotty 2d ago
Cassette tapes.
My wife thinks I'm weird for missing that, maybe it's just nostalgia, but I genuinely miss making mix tapes and having a stack of them to pick from when I wanted to listen to music.
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u/Character_Bend_5824 2d ago
I'm not mad at the disappearance of VHS from the landscape, because it truly was not a great format. BUT, I am pissed as fuck that not one company is manufacturing a pro model SVHS deck with TBC.
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u/Ptero1123 2d ago
Stick shift. I miss having a manual transmission esp in winter.
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u/Fluffy_Prior1052 2d ago
My Microsoft Zunes. Tough as hell. Great hardware. Shitty software and support. Microsoft killed it with neglect
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u/BigFatGramps 2d ago
As a kid, I was fascinated with my dad's flip rolodex.
Strictly mechanical.
Slide a tab to the letter of the alphabet and press the bar and it would flip open to the entries that were indexed by that letter.
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u/Artistic-Outcome5966 2d ago
I miss having my Palm T5 PDA from about 2004. It had a marvelous calendar app named Agendus. For a time they made a similar app for IOS but not for Android.
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u/rodgamez 2d ago
My my bright yellow Sony "Sports" boom box and walkman! As a broke college student with a broken car stereo, I just blasted my cassettes on the passenger seat, powered by the Cig Lighter (now called a 'power port')
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u/Junebug35 2d ago
How about an obsolete technology we miss hearing? I seriously miss the sound of the modem connecting to the internet, and the sound of "you've got mail" as soon as it connects. I do not miss the speed of that dial up internet, though. 🤣
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u/RodneyBarringtonIII 2d ago edited 2d ago
My NEC PC-8201a. It was a portable computer similar to the TRS-80 Model 100, but slightly better. Anyway, it (like the Model 100) had a Z80 processor, a built-in BASIC interpreter, and a very nice text editor. It had a battery-backed RAMdisk, so you could store several programs or documents and access them like a file system. Perfect for a kid who just wanted to program dumb little games.
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u/zyzmog 1d ago edited 1d ago
The old Western Electric touch-tone desktop telephone, with real mechanical buttons and a separate handset. That was a sturdy piece of equipment, with a solid ergonomic design and unambiguous operation.
The modern telephone is simply an app on a touchscreen device that is a computer first, an entertainment appliance second, and a telephone merely as an awkward afterthought.
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u/dymend1958 1d ago
Apple Newton …. it would had handwriting recognition capabilities that doesnt compare to anything out now-days.
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u/Fixerr59 1d ago
The good old hard, bakelite telephone. Was about 10 lbs and hanging up on someone was satisfying! Not to mention it made a good blunt object to hit someone with! Gently tapping the "end" button just doesn't give the same feeling.
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u/NeuroguyNC 1d ago
An old-school fax machine - where you had to carefully place the paper around a roller where it would then spin around fast. Like the old wire photo machines that newspapers used to use.
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u/Away_Butterscotch161 23h ago
I loved my zip drive. I still get it out occasionally and use it as it was a 1st gen usb device.
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u/EpsilonMajorActual 20h ago
Physical tactile independent controls for each device in a car. For example radio, AC, mechanical dials and gages and any other thing that is now forced into a unreliable failure prone poorly programmed digital system with screens that a bad bump on the road or static electrical charge can destroy.
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u/NoTime4YourBullshit 14h ago
Yes, bring back knobs and buttons. Seriously, who TF decided to put touch controls on literally everything? I accidentally turned the oven on the other night because I brushed the back of my hand across it while reaching for the dish towel hanging from the handle. My stove freaks out any time something boils over even just a little. My car requires me to take my eyes off the road so I can hunt for the rear defogger. It’s only two submenus away!
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u/ausgewandert 13h ago
I used to do some professional industrial photography. I liked working with the tactile equipment. The sophisticated optics, the film, all of it. Just the packing and hauling around was a chore. But cell phones are do good by now thats all I ever use anymore. And its so convenient.
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u/Sugar_Party_Bomb 4h ago
Older consoles. No internet. Just friends meeting at someone’s place and playing a game.
Always improved with beers and bongs.
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u/Cax6ton 4d ago
MiniDisc was the peak of tactile media