Technologies that Have Exceeded Their Expectations? 1037
drfunch asks: "With the recent 'passing' of Pioneer 10 after over 30 years of service, I wonder what other technologies have far exceeded expectations. One example from my own experience is my trusty HP calculator, which is still going strong after 21 years. What technologies or devices have gone far beyond your expectations?"
Trusty Old Computers... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The 3.5" Floppy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cheap stuff that lasts longer than it "should" (Score:2, Informative)
If the battery dies (it wont last more than 10 years max, my original Zelda gave it up not more than a year ago), it's a CR-2032 you can get for a buck at Radio Shack. The old ones welded into place, but it's easy to clip out. Replace it with an appropriate holder (another buck from RS) so it'll be easier to replace the next time. Hold the battery in tight with a bit of black tape, so it wont shake loose when you move the cart.
There's no reason an NES cart shouldnt last for 50 years if it's cared for. I'd say NES gets my vote too. I still play it more often than any other console.
Re:I know one.. (Score:5, Informative)
Almost All Apple Products (Score:5, Informative)
Voyager Interstellar Mission (Score:3, Informative)
Voyager proves you can get bang for your buck if you plan for the long term...
The B-52 Stratofortress (Score:2, Informative)
Turning enemy countries into parking lots since 1952.
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/b52-s trat/b52info.html [boeing.com]
Re:How about COBOL? x86? (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on what you mean by good. If you mean the Darwinian sense, then yes, it's phenomenally successful.
However, you write like a person who has never had to work under the 8086 real mode in assembly language. Here are a few things wrong with it (the whole family, over the years):
- Too few registers
- Registers have special purposes, and are
not generic enough
- Many instructions are very rarely used
- Did not have a supervisor mode (pre 386)
or MMU support
- Unbelievably lame 16-bit segmentation
- Overcomplicated memory protection (few
if any OSes take advantage of segmentation)
These are design failings that are not "in the eye of the beholder". Intel overcame the first two by going to a hidden RISCy core with many more registers, the third by implementing many rarely used instructions in microcode, the next two by essentially discarding the 8086 and 80286 architectures in going to the 80386. Intel deserves a lot of credit, but they had to work very hard to overcome these problems.Comparing it to the 68000 is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:C= 64 - The Commodore 64 (Score:3, Informative)
Why doesn't someone make machines like this anymore? Something that could so infinitely be tinkered with? I'd sure buy one. Hell I'd buy parts for it and automate my room.
Oh, and as for old technology, my original Apple ][c is still working (the ugly fat beige one), complete with original disk drives and green monitor.
The green monitor is the neatest part, it takes a standard RCA video cable. It really freaks people out to see themselves on camera on an ancient green computer monitor, but hey, Apples have always had better graphics.
Where can I buy myself a nice C=64 these days? I'd love to own one, emulation is fun but nothing beats the real deal.
PS One more thing, if you like the C64, you might check out the SidStation [sidstation.com], a synthesizer built with the C64's SID6581 sound chip. It has been used in numerous famous songs such as Zombie Nation's "KernKraft 400" (yes, that's right, the lead in that song came from a Commadore 64's sound chip). Kind of neat, and if you're into the whole techno thing, a novelty piece of gear, especially because they're limited. From Their site:
Wha'ts Aztec? sounds familiar. (Score:3, Informative)
Ultima III, Ultima IV, Karateka,
Deadline (I still havent beat that
damn game! INFOCOM>>>>> DAMN YOU)
Snakes (still better on the Apple
than on my phone), What was the
name of that tank game? Battlefield
or something (they remade it recently),
Bolo, and of course I have all
the Original Bard's Tales (1-3) and
the AD&D Character Creator Disk.
Those were the days..... I have
Appleworks as well but the keyboard
on the Apple
I just bought (last year) a complete
Apple IIc with the monitor, mouse,
external disk and carrying case. Sweet
deal.
Re:SR-71 Blackbird (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/sr
Re:The plain old wood pencil and ball point pen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:pants (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ethernet (Score:4, Informative)
I've got 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TCP/IP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ethernet (Score:3, Informative)
The system were manual but the "rules" were when you heard someone else talk you had to shut up. Both parties. Then there were stocastic rules for how long you had to wait before you re-try. The stocastic manual system minimized repeated collisions. Aloha [techtarget.com]
My vote goes to... (Score:4, Informative)
From a history of the paperclip on about.com [about.com]:
"Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany in 1899, since Norway had no patent laws at that time. Johan Vaaler was an employee at a local invention office when he invented the paperclip. He received an American patent in 1901 -- patent abstract "It consists of forming same of a spring material, such as a piece of wire, that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions." Johan Vaaler was the first person to patent a paperclip design, although other unpatented designs might have existed first."
Over 100 years old and still going strong...
Re:Beating a Dead Horse? (Score:2, Informative)
the Winchester mechanism (hard drive) (Score:3, Informative)
This year is the 30th anniversary of what we now think of as hard drives, i.e. a sealed box containing the heads and platters, as opposed to separate removable platter stacks.
While many people have said for years that the Winchester drive design would run out of steam "any year now", it has continued to achieve greater and greater areal density with reasonable reliability and steadily decreasing price.
Re:C= 64 - The Commodore 64 (Score:1, Informative)
Uhm, you are probably talking about a BIG external cartridge with basically was a separate videocard (was it called T-80 IIRC).
The VIC II included in the C= 64 could do 320x200 monochrome (well at least the same 2 colors in each 8x8 rectangle), or 160x200 in multicolor mode (with four colors in each 4x8 rectangle, and the horizontal size of pixel was doubled).
Hackers also broke the sprite (i.e.: high-speed moving/animated graphics blocks) barrier from 8 (or 16?) to basically an unlimited number
VIC II managed 8 sprites (24x24 monochrome or 12x24 in multicolor). The trick with increasing them was simply to change the VIC II registers in sync with the electronic beam (i.e. when at half screen), thus making the chip believe it had to superimpose the sprites again. The only limit was you couldn't have more than 8 sprites in the same row.
Hackers also figured out a way to display graphics in the "overscan" area
Again, by appropriately changing the VIC II registers when the electronic beam was in a specific position, the VIC II ceased to draw the side borders. While no conventional graphics could be displayed there, sprites were still visible, so (using the trick above) you could use them to display actual graphic.
You can also find software-based synthesizers that could extend the number of sound voices to 6
Never heard of those, but it could be... the SID had 3 separate waveform generators (geneating either a sine wave, a square wave or a triangular wave or combinations of them) at several frequencies. Software speech synthesis was possible (and has been done).
There were also hacks to make it seem as if it could display hundreds of colors (as opposed to 16).
Basically this was done by swapping colors each other video frame, so the resulting color was approximatively a mix of the two. Talk about flickering. Ugh. Nonetheless, an interesting idea.
Other than that, there were TONS of external interfaces made for it: modems (300 baud), MIDI interfaces (made by Siel), printers (C= 802 and 803), a mini-plotter, a 5 1/4 floppy driver, a 3 1/2 floppy driver, an hard disk, an adapter to use an audio CD to load games instead of the tape recorder, mice (for the GEOS 64 graphical operating environment), memory expansions (256KB, mostly used as ramdisks since it was an 8 bit computer after all), optical pens (I still have mine somewhere), audio digitizers that plugged in the joystick ports (which incorporated an AD converter), and much, much, more.
Unfortunately, Commodore never managed to replicate that huge success by itself (Amiga does not count since it was acquired by Commodore, remember). But it's nice to hear the real thing (and not just emulators like Vice, even if it's excellent) is still going on somewhere.
sys 64738
Re:The Great Wall of China (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Internal Combustion Engine (Score:1, Informative)
Meanwhile GM has had their small-block OHV V8 for the last 50 years (started out with 283 cubic inches, about 4.6L, then went up) and they've developed this so-called ancient technology to a level of refinement equal to their Japanese counterparts' four and six cylinders. The current iteration of this engine, the LS1, has a displacement of 346 cubic inches and, in the Corvette, makes 345 HP and around 375 lb-ft of torque. That's about one HP per cubic inch (or about 56HP per liter of displacement). Not too bad for a pushrod V8. Not only this, but with modern engine management controls the new 'Vette is capable of getting around 30 MPG on the highway if driven conservatively. (that means around 70 MPH in 6th gear)
The next engine in the lineup for the 'Vette? You guessed it, an OHV V8 displacing around 366 cubic inches, if the reports are correct. (That's about 6.0 L) GM just knows how to get a lot of efficiency out of this kind of engine.
Re:As a tech support person... (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps it's a case of "tunnel vision" to an extent. It takes so much time and effort to master physics and earn a PhD in it - those doing so haven't spent much time working with the devices in the "real world"?
After all, getting one's head around quantum mechanics and all the hypotheticals of matter vs. anti-matter is pretty far from such concepts as H.D. defragging and mastering navigation of a Windows operating system.
(My own father is a PhD in physics and I see this with him all the time. He can barely use the mouse, and finds GUI's extremely frustrating - because things aren't strictly rule-based. I think he vastly prefers a command line based system where specific commands entered in exact ways give specific results.) He finds it odd that programs don't always have consistent menus with the quit/exit or print options in the same places each time. He wants to know why you click the Windows "START" button when you want to shut down the system (or log out). For that matter, he wants to know why the program menu button is labeled START - when that generally connotates a function performed to power on a system. I tell him "you just have to play around with it and you'll catch on to it" - but he wants something written out with clear, concise rules. Step 1, step 2, step 3, etc.
Re:Toaster (Score:2, Informative)
Michael
The Eiffel Tower (Score:2, Informative)
Built for the International Exhibition of 1889, it was supposed to be destroyed in 1909. I am pretty sure Mr. Eiffel would never have hoped it would last more than a century.
It is a very good example of steel architceture (Art ?) which boosted the architecture creativity in the 19th century.