My mother still has my old Super Nintendo hooked up in the basement. I think she’s afraid to take it apart so it’s been left since the day I moved out. While visiting recently, I decided to pop in Super Mario World for a few minutes just to bring back the old memories. As the power slider went Chunk, and that familiar MIDI coin noise sprung from the television, I was suddenly struck by this realization: not only is this hunk of plastic still working; but as I flipped it on it never occurred to me that it wouldn’t.
This thing is 20 years old! It has electrons running through it! Frickin electrons, people! It should be long dead. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – at least not about my old Nintendo. But nowadays if you expect something as advanced as this thing was back then to last, you’re paying an extra 200%. And this was a toy. Granted, it hadn’t been licensed for sale here yet and my parents paid something like $300 for a grey market unit, so maybe we did get the ruggedized version.
What gadgets have you got kicking around that still work despite everything?
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I had a TI-82 (with a TI-85 battery cover and TI-81 case stolen from classmates) in college. I used it all through college and into the first many years of my career. I finally semi-retired it when I went to take my PE test…it wasn't on the approved list of calculators and I had to buy an HP 33s. I put fresh batteries in it last month because I needed to do some calculatin' at home and my computer was off. It fired right up. It would be almost 17 years old now.
On a related note, I recently bought an LCD TV as my present for finishing the upstairs of Project House Hell. I still have the Sony Trinitron CRT TV I bought when I first moved to Michigan 11 years ago. As I was setting up the new TV, I wondered if it would still be working flawlessly in 11 years.
I have a Panasonic RE 7500 table radio that my parents gave to me as a Christmas present almost 40 years ago. A big, fairly hefty AM/FM mono unit that still works fine, though the sliders are getting a bit crackly and touchy. Amazing sound and bass. I also have a working Macintosh LC 575 that I bought in 1993, though the display is getting a bit on the fuzzy side.
<img src="http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/2/8/5/8/4/5/webimg/418005199_o.jpg" width=500>
Here's a picture of the illuminated tuning dial.
<img src="http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/2/8/5/8/4/5/webimg/418124272_o.jpg" width=400>
That's freaking cool.
I'd like to take one of those old console TVs and replace the screen with a new LCD. My grandparents had one and I loved playing with it. It looked something like this:
<img src="http://www.byvinzant.com/images/old_console_tv.jpeg">
It had the phonograph on one side and a radio on the other with the TV where the TV should be.
NES, SNES, solar powered scientific calculators from elementary/middle school (i don't remember what brands… but the solar cells are cracked/shattered on both of them… and they're still running on the original batteries– right… umm… early to mid 90s), my grandfather's 1st gen plug in calculator, 1st gen sony LCD monitor(19 inches (not widescreen) and no dead pixels!), packard bell 386(486, 486 sx, dx, and dx2)((and no… you don't want to ask why i know they still work…)), 1st gen compaq ipaq hand held…. lots more stuff…
and you're right… the amazing thing isn't that they still work.. it is that you never question any other possible outcome. they don't make stuff like that any more… eh?
Newer consumer products seem to be designed to last until the next newer and better generation comes along, 3-5 years.
From an appliance standpoint. In the last 10 years or so my family has had or bought 7 or 8 refrigerators, mainly due to buying new houses, having rental property, or just upgrading, etc. All of our refrigerators have needed some sort of work except one. The International Harvester that was built on Dec. 24, 1954 that is sitting in my basement. This fridge came out of my grandmother's basement, it has been running pretty much constantly for at least the last 38 years except for a couple of moves and power outages. The movers that I used were really surprised at how heavy it is. The lead Israeli guy thought it must be German, I explained to him, "No, American!"
Of course this fridge isn't frost free and probably gets a big frowny face from Energy Star.
I think they call it "planned obsolescence," and yeah, stuff just does not last like it used to.
The more I bitch and complain about it, the more I feel like a curmudgeon, but it seems to be quite true. The Nintendo that my parents bought when I was 3 still works. The 360 my buddy bought when they first came out, RRD'd after a month, then the next one died after a year.
The really sad thing is now, unless you can solder on a PCB you can't even repair anything.
Recently my projection screen HDTV died and since I work at a place where people solder on PCBs all the time I was able to get the parts from these guys (www.tvrepairkits.com) and fix it for about $80. I would have probably spent $1000 on a new TV otherwise, I even had the wife's approval to get a new TV, I just didn't feel like dropping that kind of money on one.
Things aren't designed to last, but they also don't cost as much. If consumers were willing to keep a TV for 30 years, TV makers would make them and you and I would be paying $10,000 for a TV. Back in the early days of electronics innovation wasn't quite as fast as it is today. Today, your computer is obsolete by the time it's delivered to you. And today people want the latest and greatest. And today we don't want to pay more than a few grand for the latest TV. Why? Because we know that in a few years we'll be trading that TV in for a new one.
I'd like for things to be built as reliably and "to last" like they used to be, but at the same time I like being able to go out and buy a 37" LCD TV with 1080p and 120 Hz for less than a grand.
I agree on the designed to a pricepoint, this is especially true of anything sold by a big box store. I'm not so sure about the 30 year TV costing $10,000 vs. $1,000 for the 3-5 year model, I'm thinking more like $2,000-$2,500, which some people might be willing to pay.
It seems the price points have remained relatively stable for the last few years, with some adjustment for inflation. 20 years ago an average big TV 27-32" CRT cost $500-$1,000. Today and average big TV 37-46" widescreen costs $500-$1,000. The new one is 10X better than the old one feature wise, if not quality wise.
VCRs became really popular when the price point hit about $200, the same can be said for DVD and Blu Ray.
A decent computer has cost about $600+ for the last 15-20 years. The current i5 for that price is miles beyond the 286 from 1991 though.
Not really. I'm looking at old InfoWorld magazines online. In 1992, the cheapest Gateway was $1,300 and that was for a crippled 386SX running at 25mhz. To get something usable like a 486DX, you still had to spend somewhere near $2,000.
Actually, my seven year old laptop survived a milk spill on Sunday. I took it apart and dried it out, and at first I had five screws left over. I took it apart again, found three I missed, and had four left over. This morning, I went over it one more time and am now one short. And after coaxing it back to life, I've taken the opportunity to expand my backup scheme.
I have a 1954 JEP (Jouet Electrique de Paris) O scale train set. As far as I know, the locomotive is still good to go. I'll show it some electrons tonight to make sure… It's been at least 5 or 6 years since its last run.
Besides this, I'm afraid I don't have much old technology: I had to buy everything new when I moved out of my parents' almost 15 years ago. The only electrical gadget I brought along is a boom box that I bought in 1995 (it has a switch at the back to select 110 or 220). I think it still works although it has been supplanted by my Squeezbox Boom running Pandora…
I can still play games on my first-generation Playstation that my pa bought when I was a wee little lad (uh, 8? 9? I'm not as old as you guys ;D ) Funnily enough, the PS2 is currently stowed in the shelf because of its burned out laser. I've performed emergency surgery on it a couple times, but that only gave me a couple hours of play. The Playstation? Still going, despite the yellowing plastic case hinting otherwise, plus the odd times of leaving it on for the whole night. I don't even know what the insides look like!
It hasn't been feed any electrons lately, but down in the basement is an RCA video disc player. Not no fancy laser disc either! A vinyl disc that used some sort of capacitance difference to give you your video. Picture is comparable to studio produced VHS tapes. It worked fine the last time we fired it up… http://www.cedmagic.com/selectavision.html
Mine's still working too! The actual movie discs aren't quite as reliable though, and if I remember correctly the microscopic needle used to play movies will eventually wear out no matter what you do.
Good luck finding a replacement.
I do beileve that in 'your' mothers opinion, that the super nintendo is mine now. You, like everyone else, abandoned it and so it belongs to the last remaining child who STILL plays it on a regular basis.
Besides if you really wanted it you would have fought to the death to take it with you when you moved out.
Let’s see. I have a fully functional Victoreen CDV 700 geiger counter that was government issued to the Civil Defense department in 1962 and still works fine. I even used it to prove that a glow in the dark clock from a 1942 aircraft ( B25 Mitchell bomber I believe) that I found in my grandfather’s basement had a radioactive radium painted dial face. I also have a set of 1952 Lionel trains that still work almost as good as the day they were new. My house’s original refrigerator was from 1979 and I got rid of it a few months back not because it no longer worked, but because I got a newer one given to me for free. As for game consoles, I have an original NES and an old Atari 2600 that both still work. I threw out my Commodore VIC-20 though as it was broken and I saw no value in fixing it. Sadly though, I have no way of finding out whether or not my Soviet toy Lunochod 1 or polar tracked vehicle that were brought in for me as a child from the USSR still work ( the funky Soviet batteries are hard to come by). They have deteriorated quite a bit as it seems the Soviets did not make good plastics for their toys. I still love them all the same though as they are a part of my family’s history and they have a great story to go with them.
I have a Dell Inspiron 8000 P3 850MHz (bumped to 900MHz) running Edubuntu 9.04, which I use as my son's laptop now. I mainly love it because it is a 4:3 15" screen that supports 1600×1200, which is massive. This laptop was during the time that Dell actually made decent hardware. Not only does it have every peripheral attachment needed but it also has dual front modular bays and a side CD/DVD ROM. I have two batteries, cd rom, floppy modules for the front. I also have a spare keyboard and other parts harvested from another 8000 I had. It is good for my son because at 9lbs, it is a monster of a laptop with thick plastic housing. Which he will have a difficult time breaking. I also swapped the internal NIC card with a wireless g card and ran some antenna wires inside it. So now it has built-in wifi. I have a PCMCIA NIC card if I need to hard-wire it.
I recently came into possession of an eMac for recording (OK, not that old, but a PPC G4 running 10.3.9 is ancient by interweb standards), which joins a Apple Workgroup Server (604e processor! 64MB RAM! 1MB VRAM! System 9.2.1!), a Mac SE (which has survived the business environment of Dinoland Entertainment Park before being abused by a crazed 5-year old daughter of a room-mate), an Apache 6700 upgraded to WM 6.1 used as an ebook reader, and a trio of unloved laptops of varying vintages running various Ubuntu Linux variants.
Reduce.
Re-use.
Reboot!
One Reel-to-Reel tape deck, a Lionel train set, a Super Nintendo, a 70's record player, and one of THESE bad boys, my vintage 70's Pioneer SX-850. Nothing better for an evening of vinyl spinning…
<img src="http://www.classicaudio.com/value/pio/SX850.jpg">
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