GE stops making its iconic bulb in the U.S.

[gnu / linux]

I have a original IBM PC AND a VCR, will make someone a real deal if they want 1 or both

[Oren]

I've got four 1/4 meg RAM sticks, would they fit or is your RAM built on-board..

[A. Baum]

BAH! I own 2 working IBM PS/1 models. An Everex 286, a DEC terminal, a working Sony Betamax and a working Atari 2600 so there neener neener :)

[A. Baum]

There is a company in Japan that builds atomic powered AC generators down to about one megawatt. I'll sell the bulbs and buy one. Wait,, if I sell the bulbs I won't need AC.

[willshak]

I have a Commodore 64 stored away. But the earliest video game player I have stored away is a Magnavox Odyssey video game console still in its original box That was the one where a clear plastic sheet was placed over the TV screen for various video games, like "Pong" and skiing. Very primative compared to now, but real fun when first introduced back in 1972.

[Kurt Ullman]

I still use my TI 99-4A from time to time. I like to hear the guy from the mountain climbing game scream when one of the boulders hit him (g).

My first one was the original Pong game with the controller you both had to use.

[willshak]

Just like in the liquor prohibition age, organized crime will take over the trafficking of illegal incands. The gubmint will have to create a new anti-crime force, the Bulb Enforcement Agency, or BEA.

[A. Baum]

LOL I remember the Magnavox! Since I have the time and remember the story and am on caffeine power I will tell you a story about the Magnavox and how they fought in court with some other manufacturers over just who invented the first video game. Enter William Higinbotham the real inventor of the first video game. Someone you probably have never heard of and would have gone unheard of had it not been for the lawsuits. It seems William, a physicist at Brookhaven Nuclear Laboratory in Long Island NY was working on a timing device for a nuclear detonator. He was also trying to come up with a 'hands-on' exhibit device for the lab's visitor day. He gathered up an oscilloscope and an old 'analog' computer (not digital as today's computers are) that he could hook together in a way that a 'ball of light' would bounce randomly around the oscilloscope's screen. He found that he could make a game with a ball of light that bounced back and forth as a tennis ball does in a game looking from the side. Two people played using control boxes that had a serve button and a control knob that determined how hight the ball was hit.

Is this starting to sound familiar? This happened in 1958 :) He labeled the game Tennis for Two. After visitors day he took the game apart and never re-assembled it. Nor did he patent it. Like I mentioned before had it not been for the lawsuits in 1970 between Magnavox and others William would have been long forgotten. A patent lawyer for one of the others found out about William and brought him into court to prove he was the true inventor of the first video game and not Magnavox. William died in

1994 and never made a single penny off his invention. Actually he couldn't have since he invented it while working for the US government. If he had patented it the government would have owned the patent.

[A. Baum]

LMAO! Sadly though there is validity to your sarcasm.

[aemeijers]

Chuckle. That is why I never bothered to sell it. Kaypro suitcase machine, which was actually born as an 8086, but I upgraded to a V20, maxed out the ram when I found a card at a hamfest, replaced one of the

360 5.25" floppies with a then state-of-the art 720 3.5", and even found a way to shoe-horn an MFM 10mb hard drive in there. Pretty hot stuff in 1986. By 1990, not worth a damn thing on the open market, and it had enough sentimental value to me, that as long as I have a spare corner, I'll keep it. If my 4 YO niece gets into computers when she grows up, maybe I'll stick her with it, to eventually show to HER kids. All my later computers of the 286/386/486/early pentium era are long gone, but you always have a soft spot for the first one you played with the guts of.

No room inside for a modem, by the way. I used a 1200 external with it, and my first cable was rat shack ribbon cable, paper clips, and masking tape. Kaypro did NOT use a standard cable for their serial port, and it took me months to find where to order one. But the damn thing did come with full docs, just like the test equipment that was obviously the source of the parts they used. Very 'old school' inside. Even has an external fuse socket on the back, just like an old stereo amp.

[aemeijers]

Individual socketed chips, 9 chips per bank. Max 640k, once you found the daughter board that fit in an ISA slot. Remember those long plastic tubes the chips came in? I still have a couple full tubes stashed at work, leftover visual aids from a class I used to teach once a year. Some idiot threw out all the later memory chips, and the CPUs, that went with it. I used to set them up on the front table in timeline fashion, to explain Moore's law to these non-techies, and how the hardware they were supporting for end-users had changed. Some of those later 486 and early pentium chips could have been made into jewelry- those rows of gold-plated pins were downright pretty.

[AZ Nomad]

Nah. Go with a diesel generator, if you're sticking to 19th century technology.

[Oren]

I've opened plenty of the "old machines" and marveled at them. Seems like the hard drives weighed 10 lbs. and would make a good door stop. Never started working PC's until the 286, just before the 386. Been building my own machines ever since.

I've seen different items made from parts. Peoples imagination can be funny.

Here are two "bugs".

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Jon Danniken" wrote

It will work, but makes no sense at all. I'd have agreed with you some years ago, but I've been changing to CFL and like the light output now. Not the sickly green of the past. And they save energy. If you get rid of your old notions and try new bulbs, you may be surprised.

[krw]

I have an original ("first day order") PC with expansion unit (with a whopping

10MB disk drive) and a "new" VCR.

[aemeijers]

Hey, vcrs still have their place. Lotsa old movies for a quarter each at garage sales. I think I still have 3 of them, but haven't lit them up in at least a year.

Somewhere, I still have one of those back plates to convert a 5-slot case from the original PC, into an 8? slot case so a modern motherboard would fit in it.

[krw]

That's why we bought one. SWMBO has a number of titles for which there is no DVD.

Retro-PC look? ;-)

[The Daring Dufas]

Do you remember the old ads for mainframes where artists made whole sets of animals out of discrete components?

Found at:

TDD

[Jim Yanik]

" [e-mail]" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I believe there are places that transfer tapes to DVDs. you get a better life out of a DVD,I believe,because tape suffers from print-thru,each play degrades it a little bit,it accumulates over time. since this is for personal use,you don't have any copyright violations.

there are even VCR/DVD recorder/players,that can do the transfer.

[Jim Yanik]

Smitty Two wrote in news:prestwhich- [e-mail]:

Oh,I thought the copy protection schemes allowed one copy,and encoded the copy so that further copying would be blocked. (of course professional decks can unlock that...)

maybe your friend can make an "exception" for you? B-)