OMG I'm feeling old

[bionichamster]

I popped into a small music store that sold LP's and found them at £20 a pop... Shan't be buying the sex pistols just yet then.

I suspect that's modern re-pressings, as just about anything original from the era can be worth some very serious money these days. IIRC the original EMI pressing of either 'Anarchy' or 'GSTQ' might go for more than £20k/+ these days.

But the vast majority of those popular albums in existence will be fairly worthless as condition is often of primary importance to collectors and let's face it the most will be scratched, worn and dirty, the covers and inner sleeves bent and ripped or drawn on and used as cup rests. I suspect Never Mind the B*llocks suffers more than most in this respect...
Having said that, many while of no interest to collectors may well be still quite listenable and the charity shops are a sometimes a good place to look (try asking the assistants and you may find there is a much larger stack out the back). Mind you a few of them don't bother with them these days and some like Oxfam actually have specialist record stores and are able to sort the wheat from the chaff so you are unlikely to find a replacement Electric Ladyland (illicit picture edition) for 50p there although you might get a copy of Electric Landlady!

BH

Still have several yards of albums in man cave to utter dissaproval of the missus, which is of course the primary reason for keeping them!

[stooz]

I still have my first mobile phone, the battery is about the same size as my iphone.

Its probably still charged

[NomoneyNohoney]

I still have my first mobile phone, the battery is about the same size as my iphone.

Its probably still charged

You're a bad boy for tempting me...

So, out of curiosity, I put a voltmeter across the 6v NiCad battery that has not been charged for probably 20 years plus... and got a reading of 0.036 volts. Unbelievable that it retains any kind of charge after all this time, even a paltry 0.036v

[midnightcatprowl]

Was it this system?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive

John

That's it! Fascinating that according to Wikipedia they only launched the system in 1994, yet today it is history.

[panamagold]

I had to install win 3:1 on an Iomega zip drive in 1995 to enable me to run one of these.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture as it was unable to function with the os and the Lotus Office package together on the one box.

Ah. those were the daze (sic)

[bungeejumper]

No, no, Zip drives were really quite advanced and reliable in comparison with those mini tape cartridges that I used to use back in the late 80s. I still have a box of the little buggers somewhere - they were half plastic and half aluminium, but it didn't make them any more robust. On a PC with a massive 20 mb hard disk, they would take an hour and a half to make your backup, and then another hour and a half to verify it. At the end of which they'd flag up an message that didn't say much more than "Verification failed. Please restart backup". Oh how we laughed.

BJ

[swill453]

I used minidiscs on the computer for a while. That was a technology that didn't last long. Audio for a bit, data for a bit, then gone.

(Cue for someone to chip in with "they're still used for ...")

Scott.

[redsturgeon]

I used minidiscs on the computer for a while. That was a technology that didn't last long. Audio for a bit, data for a bit, then gone.

(Cue for someone to chip in with "they're still used for ...")

Scott.

Apparently the US nuclear codes are stored on 8 inch floppies!

John

[Clitheroekid]

Apparently the US nuclear codes are stored on 8 inch floppies!

Shortly to be copied to a 61 inch floppie!

[DiamondEcho]

Used to use 5" floppies at uni in the early 80s, they were truly 'floppy' and had to be handled with care. [AIR, Verbatim were the main brand we used]
Then came the wizzo 3" or so rigid durable encased 'floppies'.
Before the 5"ers was punch-tape and so on, but for me that was back in Ascii days...


ps yes I seem to recall floppies bigger than the 5" ones above^. Perhaps 7" ones or similar...?

[88V8]

This is why researchers, biographers, of the future are going to have a problem. Systems currently ubiquitous will become obsolete, the hardware the software the knowledge to run them.
Everything electronic is ephemeral.

On the generality of 'progress', I'll bet there are a lot of things you know how to do that yoof doesn't:

Rotary phone (we have two, one is a candlestick)
Double declutching.
Manual choke.
Change a wheel.
Use a starting handle.
Make icecream from scratch.
Darn socks.
Navigate from a map.
Sharpen the thorn needles to play your 78s.
Read a broadsheet in a crowded carriage.

Continue.....

V8

[malkymoo]

The original floppy disk size was 8 inch, mostly made by Shugart I think. Made a great clunking sound in use.

[DiamondEcho]

Rotary phone (we have two, one is a candlestick)
Double declutching.
Manual choke.
Change a wheel.
Use a starting handle.
Make icecream from scratch.
Darn socks.
Navigate from a map.
Sharpen the thorn needles to play your 78s.
Read a broadsheet in a crowded carriage.
Continue..... V8

Consult the encyclopedic phone-book to get a residential phone number, even for your village or the neighboring one.
Buy an ice-cream maker and produce better/cheaper than that in the shops.
During the EU 'Butter-mountain crisis', have an attachment to a Kenwood Chef that turned butter+milk in cream
Rationing of basic goods, with ration books [early 70s], fuel, sugar, flour, bread, etc.
Constant power cuts. Hence paraffin heaters in our house, and table-top oil-lamps [Victorian style, brass with large glass 'chimneys'].
Jam-making in the autumn > all the family called into duty.
Have a grasp on how the stock market works before your teens.
Hanging out at local farms helping with milking/harvest etc., esp if the farmer had a looker for a daughter.
Absorbing the lore and feel for the land that the local farmers etc had.
Wonder whether in visiting my parents in later years in rural parts, they'd ever be able to have access to the internet.
Feeling perplexed but also amused that the 'farm-gate' food of my youth is now considered desirable/posh/$$

[kiloran]

Used to use 5" floppies at uni in the early 80s, they were truly 'floppy' and had to be handled with care. [AIR, Verbatim were the main brand we used]
Then came the wizzo 3" or so rigid durable encased 'floppies'.
Before the 5"ers was punch-tape and so on, but for me that was back in Ascii days...

ps yes I seem to recall floppies bigger than the 5" ones above^. Perhaps 7" ones or similar...?

My first experience of computer storage was http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/user ... C-3415.jpg
Totally soul-destroying for any reasonable amount of data.

--kiloran

[UncleEbenezer]

Rotary phone (we have two, one is a candlestick) Yeah, I remember sore fingers.
Double declutching.
Manual choke.
Change a wheel.
Use a starting handle. Good riddance to that kind of nonsense. When did you last live by gaslamps?
Make icecream from scratch. Oh, now it's middle-class kitchen-porn.
Darn socks. You, or someone your granny once knew?
Navigate from a map. I think young folks who navigate still do that. In fact I've seen it being taught to primary-age kids out in the wild, which didn't happen in my day.
Sharpen the thorn needles to play your 78s.
Read a broadsheet in a crowded carriage.
Continue..... V8

Consult the encyclopedic phone-book to get a residential phone number, even for your village or the neighboring one. Cos if you wanted the number for someone a few miles away, you would need a different 'phone book. Which would be as out-of-date as the one you just put down in frustration because it covered the wrong area.
Buy an ice-cream maker and produce better/cheaper than that in the shops.
During the EU 'Butter-mountain crisis', have an attachment to a Kenwood Chef that turned butter+milk in cream
Rationing of basic goods, with ration books [early 70s], fuel, sugar, flour, bread, etc.
Constant power cuts. Hence paraffin heaters in our house, and table-top oil-lamps [Victorian style, brass with large glass 'chimneys']. Not quite the 1970s, but we had quite a lot of power cuts in 2016. And assumed that ice both inside and outside the window was normal in winter.
Jam-making in the autumn > all the family called into duty. When did that change? Surely that's a demographic, not a generation.
Have a grasp on how the stock market works before your teens. Good grief! How the other half lived!
Hanging out at local farms helping with milking/harvest etc., esp if the farmer had a looker for a daughter. Gerrorffmoiland!
Absorbing the lore and feel for the land that the local farmers etc had. Like the 19th century commentators bemoaning the passing of contact with the land?
Wonder whether in visiting my parents in later years in rural parts, they'd ever be able to have access to the internet.
Feeling perplexed but also amused that the 'farm-gate' food of my youth is now considered desirable/posh/$$

[Alaric]

Rationing of basic goods, with ration books [early 70s], fuel, sugar, flour, bread, etc.

That never happened. The last rationing was in the 1950s.

What did happen during the Wilson/Callaghan governments was periodic shortages where supermarkets would sell out of some basic commodity like sugar, bread or salt. Similar panics, usually petrol or diesel are not unknown in recent years.

There's sometimes contempt for the inability of older generations to use computers. That's misplaced because those of us who were using personal computing as part of their work experience from the early to mid 1970s onwards have no problems with using a command line to reduce a computer to submission. Phones and tablets are a different matter.

[Lootman]

Rationing of basic goods, with ration books [early 70s], fuel, sugar, flour, bread, etc.

That never happened. The last rationing was in the 1950s.

What did happen during the Wilson/Callaghan governments was periodic shortages where supermarkets would sell out of some basic commodity like sugar, bread or salt. Similar panics, usually petrol or diesel are not unknown in recent years.

Yes, my mother told me that she was able to get an extra quarter pound of bacon when I was born in the 1950's. I had a "baby" ration book and a baby gas mask, presumably designed to protect me from Russians, or someone.

And yes, the artificial shortages of the Wilson/Callaghan years were horrible, but perhaps no more than the 3-day week (actually under Heath but he was a left-winger by modern standards anyway). And who can forget exchange controls, and that page in the back of your passport where the bank would record the currency you were taking out of the country?

Not all nostalgia is good nostalgia.

[Generali]

Speaking of rotary phones, my Dad was an IT bod from the 60s onwards and in the late 70s/early 80s used to bring home a computer terminal so he could catch up with work at the weekends or occasionally work from home.

You'd get the rotary phone and call the number for the mainframe and then place the phone handset in the cradle in the top of the terminal. The bandwidth of the phone line couldn't support a screen apparently so it had to use a printer for its output.

At least it meant we had to get rid of the party line for the house as Dad felt that he couldn't tie up the party line for hours on end with good conscience.

At the same time he used to bring home pages and pages of ASCII art, pictures that were produced on old-style printer paper with holes in the sides to guide it through the printer using letters, numbers and characters (if you don't know what it is Google ASCII art). Mum was not very impressed when she discovered that the art included lots of pictures of topless ladies amid the Mona Lisa etc that made up the stack of pictures and Dad was slightly surprised and embarrassed! Tech has long been used to provide a better form of pornography it seems.

Dad used to take me into work a lot, I don't think his time management skills were all they could have been, and I have a very early memory of getting a smack for playing keepie uppies with a football a secretary had found for me against the side of the multi-million pound mainframe computer which was in a nice soundproofed, airconditioned room! That was in the days of punched cards being used for data entry and punched paper tape and mag tape being used for storage.

One of Dad's colleagues had made a rip-off version of Space Invaders that I could play for free at his work a couple of years later. Dad hated computer games of all sorts and couldn't wait for the fad of them to blow over so computers could go back to being used properly. I'm not sure what he'd think of his grandson watching You Tube videos of people playing computer games!

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDiamondMinecart

[bungeejumper]

Rationing of basic goods, with ration books [early 70s], fuel, sugar, flour, bread, etc.

That never happened. The last rationing was in the 1950s.

Point of order, your honour. Ration books were reissued during the early 1970s as a temporary measure (old wartime stock), but in the event they were never needed. So you're both right.

Members of the jury, I am indebted to the curators of the records at I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue for the information that the Sugar Rationing Blues was performed by Willie Rushton on 3rd September 1974. And what a fuss it caused, being broadcast by Auntie on the Home Service during daylight hours.

"Whoa, woke up this morning
Wife brought me my tea
I said "Whurrrrgh, no sugar!
Woman what you trying to do to me?"
She said "Would you like some honey?"
I said "I sure would...."
(Drum roll)..
"But after my cup of tea."


Shocking, just shocking. Ah, Willie Rushton. Such a loss.

BJ

[panamagold]

Example of 70's ration book Here