When I was a kid my family owned a device whose sole purpose was to rewind vhs tapes.
2 Garmin GPS, one handheld and one for the car. I’ve been using my phone for directions now for years, but I suppose I’ll hang on to both units for a bit longer.
I own plenty of Libreboot computers without Intel Management Engine (2006-2009 era). For the average user in today’s world, I don’t see many people using them unless definitive proof came out that the government uses the IME to spy on them. These 2006-2009 era desktops/laptops can have the entire IME firmware removed, along with a 100% free BIOS. I collect as many as I can.
I am going different on this one.
An awl on a utility knife.
Nowadays, 99% of camping, hiking, and “survival” equipment is light weight composites that can be better fixed with glue, tape, small needle and thread, or a patch with one of the above. There are very few alternative uses for it that aren’t better with a different standard tool.
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 a hoodie with a little tunnel sewed in it to route your headphone wire down to the phone pocket.
Oh, and some backpacks have a hole for headphones. I guess you’re supposed to keep a CD player in there or something.
Those have a modern use too. I keep my power bank in the bag and use it to charge my phone on the go.
What does that GPS display? A direction?
A direction and coordinates most likely. You can use the paper map for the rest. It makes sense in some scenarios, mostly doesn’t anymore.
Most of the ones I’ve seen actually had a map but the problem is that since it has no internet connection it can’t update when changes happen in real life.
Therefore you have to go and find new and updated maps for it and a lot of them cannot be updated either due to new maps not being released for them anymore or the manufacturers expectation that there aren’t enough of those devices in service anymore for a map release to make sense.
Oh I just looked it up and I was way behind on the technology leap those devices did! I was thinking of LCD 3 row displays. Nice to see those are available now!
Those were popular for geocaching before smartphones became ubiquitous and you could just use a geocaching app.
With a regular GPS that has a map you could usually not navigate to a precise off-road location, even if the GPS allowed you to enter the exact coordinates it would just navigate you to the nearest street on the map.
With these simple GPS devices you would just get a compass pointing to your goal and it would allow you to reach the precise coordinates you entered
Here’s one way you could have used it. You drive your car to a remote location. You grab your rifle and your dog, and go hunting. You mark the location of your car on the GPS and start walking. In the evening, you can use the GPS to find your way back to the car. You could also go hiking and use the GPS to find your way back.
The whole point is to mark locations and later find your way back those locations. In the era of geocaching you would have made a custom point of interest and input the coordinates manually before actually visiting the location.
This device actually shows you lots of information you rarely need these days: direction, speed, distance, coordinates, signal strength, just to name a few.
I used it that way when I did desert hikes. Do food and water caches, mark them as waypoints. I would mark them on my topo too of course. Sure was nice on night hikes to pull out a backlit GPS instead of a topo map.
Removed by mod
Not mine personally, but my town still has some hitching posts.
In Amish country, you’ll see horses hitched up at Costco.
Reminds me of another thing: you see these boot scrapers all across european cities (1) They’re usually victorian era, and were used to clean horse shit from your shoes before entering a house.
Owie the photo contains errors :-(
You’re right :(
There are those kind of things everywhere where I live, took me some time to find out what it was for:
Birmingham Alabama has a zeppelin mooring building.
Pretty cool! I’ve actually been to the site where the Hindenburg went up in flames. There’s a small museum there with pieces of the actual blimp in it, including a tiny piece of the Nazi flag that was painted on the tail portion. Felt pretty odd for me to see that in person.
Mooring to the top of tall buildings didn’t generally work well in practice
Chicago has one, but it’s never been used
Maybe they kept it around in hope of making it a flying saucer dock, as in old Popular Mechanics cover art.
My hometown did, too! Even Chicago still has a couple.
I got a Toshiba music centre like this…
Keep it in good shape.
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.
Depending on their age and how you stored them they might not even work anymore
I got rid of mine with my most recent move. Why bother bringing them with me.
I still have a couple hundred and a couple usb cd/DVD burners. Maybe someday I’ll use one again…
If I dig down into the drawer with several layers of old iPhones I can find my palm pilot at the bottom right next to the Treo that replaced it.
I have an old PCI TV tuner card. It predates the digital TV switchover so I have a card that can’t be plugged into modern motherboards for which no signals are broadcast. Plus I’m sure there are no 64-bit drivers ever made for the damn thing. At this point it’s ewaste.
TI-89 graphing calculator
There’s an app for that now
Same, but different calculator: I own an HP-48SX, but now I just use HP-48GX emulated in an Android app.
I still have to use the calculator when taking exams. If I pull out a phone it’s an automatic fail.
Ti-83 plus silver edition, baybee! I learned to code (badly) on that bad boy.
- CLS
- PRINT “Same,”
- PRINT “BASIC was my first programming language.”
- GOTO 1
Look at this guy who doesn’t number his commands by tens! Such confidence!
Exactly! And a TON of labels with single character names. GOTO E
They’re still using the successor TI-84 in high school and it still costs around $100.
My record player has the ability to record cassette audio onto USB.
Mine too!
Was it shaped like a sports car? Those were radical.
My dad had the sports car VHS rewinder.
He also had a device that would turn the house antenna so that you could modify the reception you’re getting for the TV. I’ve never seen anyone else with a device that like that. The VHS rewinder just jogged my memory about it because they were next to each other.
We also had the antenna motor! That thing was awesome. I could pick up stations from Canada!
Haha, that’s funny because we used it to pick up stations from the US!
I think in some cultures that means we’re married now.
We had it as well! Turn it one way for ABC, turn it the other way for NBC, FOX. I don’t remember the details but we had a little label on the dial telling you which way to point it for which channels.
I remember it being more industrial looking.
paper maps
I’m actually trying to buy some for my area. I’m trying to learn how to use a compass.
Sliding ruler for doing multiplications (1). Still have it for nostalgia or post-apocalyptic scenarios.
You just beat me to it! Still got my slide rule in my desk, right next to the digital calipers.
Can do more than just multiplication, too.
Oh yeah! I have my dad’s old slide rule, looks a lot like that one.
Same. Got them from my old retired draft engineer papa.
