Retro Technology

• Invidious
• Youtube

Hi Folks,

We recently found a VHS video of a friend's scumbag parent getting kicked out of the house back in the 90s. We really want to digitize this video, but I can barely get it to play. The two VCRs I've tried keep having issues and trying to chew the tape or just stop and turn off. I wonder if the reels are too hard to move. We know the video is on there because we watched it a few days ago and it was decent save some typical VHS fuzzies and the occasional drop out of the picture.

If it would play, I would just use an adaptor and capture the VCR output. What I need is some advanced data recovery.

Is there a service out there that can directly scan and digitize the ribbon itself or recover a cassette that hasn't weathered the years so well? I'm happy to pay for this service, but I'm looking a skilled service that isn't just going to do what I tried to do, but can actually deliver results in a difficult case.

Can anyone be my hero and help me understand what I'm looking for and maybe help me find a service? Colorado local is great, but mail order is acceptable.

I do have at least 2 more VCRs I could try, but I don't want to do damage.

I had one of these! And I had completely forgotten it ever existed until I saw this article. I lived in the boonies, so reception was terrible, though it was really cool when it worked.

Like the contributor, I also took mine apart when it stopped working. Unlike the contributor, I probably stand no chance of ever putting it back together (assuming I still had it).

When traditional dial-up modems communicate, they encode digital bits as screechy analog tones that would then be carried over phone lines originally designed for human voices. It’s an imperfect way of doing things, but it was the most practical way of networking computers in the olden days. There was already a telephone line in just about every house and business, so it made sense to use them as a conduit to get computers online.

For years, speeds ticked up as modem manufacturers ratified new, faster modulation schemes. Speeds eventually reached 33.6 kbps which was believed to be near the theoretical maximum speed possible over standard telephone lines. This largely came down to the Shannon limit of typical phone lines—basically, with the amount of noise on a given line, and viable error correcting methods, there was a maximum speed at which data could reliably be transferred.

In the late 1990s, though, everything changed. 56 kbps modems started flooding the market as rival manufacturers vied to have the fastest, most capable product on offer. The speed limits had been smashed. The answer lay not in breaking Shannon’s Law, but in exploiting a fundamental change that had quietly transformed the telephone network without the public ever noticing.

An interesting look back with some unique editing choices

After seeing the various Commodore keyboards in Alien: Romulus I'm wondering if these ones from Silo existed in the past too.

Having a penchant for cheap second-hand cameras can lead to all manner of interesting equipment. You never know what the next second-hand store will provide, and thus everything from good quality rangefinders an SLRs to handheld snapshot cameras can be yours for what is often a very acceptable price. Most old cameras can use modern film in some way, wither directly or through some manner of adapter, but there is one format that has no modern equivalent and for which refilling a cartridge might be difficult. I’m talking about Kodak’s Disc, the super-compact and convenient snapshot cameras which were their Next Big Thing in the early 1980s. In finding out its history and ultimate fate, I’m surprised to find that it introduced some photographic technologies we all still use today.

I've inherited all my grandfathers radio and telegraph equipment. I have lots of memories of sitting on his lap in his radio room while he talked to people on the other side of the world before the internet was really a thing. He passed away in the mid 90's and I think he would have loved this modern world and all its tools for instant communication.

This piece is likely from Signal Electrics Telegraph learners kit, there appears to be many eras of this kit from the 1920s until the 40s. I suspect he got this around the 30's but I'm not sure. Its a really cool piece of retro tech tho.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/30929451 in [email protected]

I'm kind of shocked that they built the system in '98 and decided to use 5.25 floppies instead of the 3.5 ones.

For anyone who is unclear what this is, the circle on the back of the card is an actual tiny record, and when you put it in the machine it would play you a little bio about the baseball player on the card!

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/8962980

Sauce: https://post.lurk.org/@loriemerson/111818576272784347

Yeah, my fax has broken. I'm broken.