Weird Old Tech

A collection of strange, obscure and obsolete items from the early years of technology

[shogunomicon]

hey gang so I just spent like a week and a half recording/writing/editing my first ever real video review and it would be very poggeurs if you would check it out I’m very proud of this one

[weirdtech]

not WeirdTech but blease check this out I worked very hard on it

[weirdtech]

Welcome to the next logical step to the well known and well loved keytar. The Jammy Midi Guitar is a fully electronic instrument designed to emulate the performance of a traditional guitar whilst containing all the functionality of a midi synthesizer. This means, for the less musically inclined out there such as myself, that you can load any midi instrument or sample onto the guitar and play said instrument or sample just like you would a guitar. With function identical to midi keyboards it’s much more suitable to those who are proficient with guitar over keyboard as well as situations where a full keyboard is clumsy or cumbersome to handle (the Jammy comes apart into five different pieces and fits comfortably into an accompanying bag). The most important part about the Jammy (especially to myself) is that is just looks cool as heck. A keyboard is obviously the tried-and-true standard for midi synthesizers but this makes a statement.

[weirdtech]

Has anyone ever wondered “if we want more processing power in our computers why don’t we just add another processor?” Here is the motherboard from a Dell Precision Tower T7910, an enterprise-level workstation used for tasks such as 3D rendering, simulations, and more recently development with VR.

Above is a Gigabyte GA-7PESL server motherboard for use with Intel Xeon E5-2400 processors (processors designed explicitly for multi-socket systems with enterprise use), which highlights the other primary use of a multi-socket system being used in servers. In high-density heavy-traffic servers a single one of these can operate more efficiently than multiple separate systems can together. This is due to the other reason a multi-socket system may be appealing; the ability to use more memory. Modern enterprise processors are able to address a maximum of 1 terabyte of RAM however each processor added will be able to address it’s own separate memory and as with the motherboard shown below that means potentially 4 terabytes of RAM!

While many would think that being able to just add more processors this would be great for personal uses like video games you would find that it’s quite the opposite. A multi-socket system does not behave the same way as if you doubled the amount of cores on a single-socket system; because there is a through-line on the motherboard to share data between the two processors if an application is not designed to make use of a system such as this the two will often conflict over which one works with what data meaning your performance is capped by the motherboard itself. The other downside is that while these systems have absolutely absurd memory capabilities, most consumer applications will not take up more than 32 gigabytes of RAM as well as Windows ITSELF (while being able to acknowledge up to 2 terabytes) is not capable of operating more than about 256 gigabytes meaning that you’ll likely never see a reason to seek out hardware like this.

[weirdtech]

I think I’ve been overdue for a comeback and what a way to come back by talking about a second DIFFERENT type of wearable eye-related tech, and this time a modern piece as well. These are the Bose Classic Bluetooth Audio Sunglasses, a pair of sunglasses (obviously) with built in Bluetooth speakers (again, redundant). They operate by using small, directionally engineered speakers to send the sound towards your ears while causing as minimal noise bleed as possible (whilst still bleeding a lot of noise, mind you). There are plans to add AR functionality to future models, similar to other “smart glasses” many tech companies have discussed.

But these aren’t the most interesting audio sunglasses I came across...

These are the OptiShokz Revves, ANOTHER pair of bluetooth audio sunglasses with a design more akin to what a cycling-enthusiast father would wear but with a far more interesting function. Instead of using plain speakers to send audio into (or in the general direction of) your ears these use a bone conduction platform to send the sound directly into your ear cartilage. This has the benefit of allowing you to hear your surroundings just as well as if you didn’t have headphones in at all (perfect for the cycling-enthusiast fathers out there). However reviews report that you do sacrifice a bit of audio quality which is to be expected from such an indirect form of listening, as well as a noticeable level of noise bleed which I suspect is on a similar level to the above pair.

[weirdtech]

The Eyetop Wearable DVD Player is a device used to watch DVD media on-the-go. Unlike the conventional portable DVD player which has a built in screen akin to a laptop, this device displays content through a small screen in the eye of the included sunglasses. As one would probably guess this device was considered a failure as not many people could find a practical use for watching a film through a pair of glasses that they couldn’t by using a standard portable DVD player. While the advertised use of these glasses was the ability to move around while watching a DVD this action is inherently dangerous and should be discouraged. The device also comes with a carrying bag as it is much too large to be simply carried around or placed in a pocket (unlike the Discman, which many have compared it to upon first glance). The battery life is, while not abysmal, rather lacking as the Eyetop only holds a maximum of 4 hours. The greatest feature, as many people have discovered, is the ability to plug the video sunglasses into any device with a composite or A/V output. The device has become popular with RC enthusiasts as a way to see the video output on an RC device’s camera without requiring the attention on a separate screen.

[weirdtech]

The Iomega Zip Disk was stated to be the next evolution in floppy disk technology and touted as a “superfloppy.” Indeed, it was the most popular of the floppy disk successors being cheaper than a standard hard drive while offering greater data storage for the price (hard drives typically cost around $200 for 500mb while a Zip Drive was $200 itself but $20 for each 100mb cartridge and a cartridge was also included with the drive). These drives were also believed to be more stable than hard drives at the time, which were known to have issues with the writing heads becoming misaligned or damaged with slight amounts of movement. 

However, due to Iomega’s attempt at saving production costs, models produced during a period of several months had a foam washer removed from the actuator head area that was used to prevent misalignment due to a jarring stop in the case of sudden power failure. This caused “the click of death” in many drives where the actuator would become misaligned and repeatedly click back into it’s starting position. This misalignment could also be caused by things such as dust, contaminants or even rogue magnetic fields. The misalignment could also cause damage to the zip disks themselves, specifically the edges of the disk, and cause irreparable damage to any drive the disks were inserted in.

Iomega received a class-action lawsuit regarding this “click of death” due to the immense loss of consumer data and violation of the Delaware Consumer Fraud Act. Iomega lost the case and offered effected customers vouchers for other Iomega products. This issue, combined with the growing cost of the Zip Disk and the low cost and high capacity of their main competition caused the Zip Disk to fall out of favour with consumers and eventually cease production altogether.

[weirdtech]

The Bandai Pippin was Apple’s failed attempt to enter the video game market in 1996. The system was released in Japan first, marketed the Pippin Atmark, and came in the off-while color typical of Apple computers at the time. Approximately 7 months later it was released in North America as the Bandai Pippin @World and came in matte black. The system was Apple’s attempt at creating an all-in-one console that not only played video games but could perform some of the basic tasks of a standard Macintosh computer (even running a stripped down version of Mac OS 7). Due to lack of marketing on Apple’s part, the underwhelming power of the console compared to its other 5th generation contemporaries and the general public’s disinterest in media boxes at the time the Pippin was a massive failure; reportedly selling only 42,000 systems out of 100,000 manufactured. The console was officially discontinued by Steven Jobs upon return to the company in 1997 and ordering the shut down of all “Macintosh Clones.”

[weirdtech]

The IBM 3363 WORM Drive (Write Once Read Many) is considered a predecessor to the modern CD-R based media. It used cartridges slightly larger and much thicker than a floppy disk and was meant to be a solution to the inconveniences of a hard-disk drive (such as lack of portability, instability and data loss). It also was more cost efficient than buying a hard drive. While the drive was very expensive itself (around $2000) each cartridge could hold more data than a hard drive (around 100mb vs the usual 75mb) and cost only around $60-$80. It’s downsides were the slow write speeds and being unable to delete/write over used space on the disk (meaning once you filled up a cartridge you couldn’t change it in any way). Cartridge based WORM drives are no longer used but CD-R and DVD-R discs are considered modern examples of WORM media.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum