Ask Lemmy

I have a large collection of VGA cables and proprietary phone charging cables.

I have an old 6 volt lantern that uses a battery that is 6 inches wide, 4 inches tall, and 3 inches deep.

If I turn it on it gives you almost enough light to actually see where you are going and the battery lasts for about 2 hours.

With two 18650s I could replace that battery for a package 2/3 the size of a pack of cigarettes and run that light for a day or so.

If I replace the bulb in it with an LED equivalent I could probably stretch that out to nearly a week.

My record player has the ability to record cassette audio onto USB.

Rewritable CDs? Technically I can still use them, but I don't really expect to use them and I wonder if they are still worth keeping.

TI-89 graphing calculator

There's an app for that now

Sliding ruler for doing multiplications (1). Still have it for nostalgia or post-apocalyptic scenarios.

A large reel to reel tape recorder.

A few early pentium laptops that no longer turn on.

Not mine personally, but my town still has some hitching posts and mounting blocks

I have an ISA soundcard around here somewhere.

Film canisters. People saved the plastic canisters photo film came in because they were so well made, waterproof, airtight, and ubiquitous. They were used in all kinds of DIY designs. I've heard some companies still make them, without the film, for people who need them for crafts. I still have some in the junk drawer.

A coat with a phone pocket. If you have something shaped like a Nokia 3210, you can actually use that pocket. Modern phones are the exact wrong shape to fit in there.

A Minidisc player. First, music went to mp3 players and then it went completely online. Fortunately I sold that thing while it still had some value.

A battery powered GPS device. It’s just for navigating in the forest, and nothing else. It doesn’t even have a map, so it’s pretty useless while driving.

I have an old dial telephone from the 1940s. A couple years ago I saw an Arduino project to make them dial digitally, but it's not the top item on my bucket list.

Jaz drive (and the isa scsi card) and several tapes.

Scientific calculator.

I got a graphing one from TI. It was really expensive and was marginally useful during college. Then I had a cheap one that just did numbers.

And those were way better than sliding rulers.

I have a sheet of foam with 40 or 50 old 7400-series chips - mostly simple logic gates. I could probably make some fun retro led blinky things.

I have a sony mini cassette video camera. Got a new battery for it and works like a dream. Really fun to record modern events in that format.

I also have a Sears VHS video camera. Working on getting a battery for that.

A functional electric Smith Corona typewriter

8mm slide projector

Too many CRTS

It's a good time being a Junkman

I have a stereoscopic viewer. Like a desk version of Google Cardboard. You tape down two photos taken from different angles and view them in 3d. It has an adjustment knob like binoculars for your pupil distance, and some legs to hold it parallel to the desk. It’s made for aerial photographs. Maybe I could turn it into a VR viewer.

I've got a film negative scanner. I've also got a big pile of old negatives. I keep telling myself that someday I'm going to scan all those old negatives. We'll see.

I have my dad's old Pentax camera and accessories, as well as a Super 8mm film camera, unused film cannisters, and a projector with a screen. It's all still functional, and I could still film stuff with the 8mm. I could use the Pentax but I would need to go out of my way to get film for it. Shit probably costs way more now than it did when I first got into photography.

I also still have one of those CD/DVD repair things. Put a scratched CD in, run it, and it smooths out the scratches and, most of the time, makes an unplayable disc perfectly fine again.

A tone dialer. Like this

https://images.app.goo.gl/fbdmckv44BY7fdWw9

Not for phone phreaking, just for speed-dialling.

I would make international calls frequently. I would buy calling cards. The process was: dial the 800 number on the card. Enter the id number on the card to use some of its credit. Dial the number to call. Their service would then connect me at a low rate to another country(probably making a voip call).

So I'd set up the 3 speed dial buttons with those. For each new card I'd only have to change the card's unique number.

My modular synthesizer.

I love it and I've poured far to much money into it for something that doesn't come close to the power of making music in a DAW. But I do love it, and it can do some cool stuff that I've not been able to reproduce in a DAW - like random triggers and probability. It's also nice to get away from my computer.

I got a Toshiba music centre like this..

I have a rope lighter.
It's like a normal lighter but it uses a flammable rope instead of gas.

I had a large collection of antique computers and adjacent technology. Although I lost most of it in a natural disaster 😭. But I still have my commodore 64, vic-20, and 90/00s apple computer collection.

We still have a landline (technically VoIP) phone. There's also a list of important phone numbers written on the fridge. Good for emergencies.

There are few things more nerve wracking than frantically trying to find your cell phone and the number for poison control after your kid just swallowed something they shouldn't have.

I found my old TomTom GPS in a box last year. I struggled to find a reason it might be worth keeping. In the end it got recycled.