Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room Remembering when (for the over-50 crowd!)

Tube sets were all analog while today's sets are all digital. Digital requires about one bazillion components to do the same function an analog circuit consisting of a few reactive components and a vacuum tube can do.

But give me digital any day. The math is easier.

At least back in the day repairing a TV was a reasonable option. Now it's a matter of deciding whether to repair your existing 3 year-old set for $800, or saying "screw it" and springing $1500 for a(nother) new one with a warranty. TVs have gotten to be like Richard Pryor's old line about home repairs:

"Gonna be $500."

"But you haven't even looked at the problem yet."

"Don't matter - gonna be $500."

Mercury, Gemini or Apollo? Wait - you didn't say "ignition" around 5 or "we have lift-off" after BOOOOOOOOM - maybe not.

All of the above, fortunately with no peeps aboard... (except Apollo 13)

Let's say you want your wholly analog TV to remember that you were watching channel 24 when you switched off, & want it to come back up on channel 24 when you turned it back on. Well, if Wang had invented it yet, magnetic core might be around, but it cost 10 times more than the TV set - let alone the logic to implement it.

I don't think there was enough core memory ever manufactured that would allow you to turn the set off then back on and remember which channel you were watching. That would probably take a couple of megs of memory.

My grandparents had a set with a remote in the late fifties that would use vibrating reeds to activate a motor that would rotate the tuner rotating mechanism. Quite the hot shoe device of the day. Hot shoe???? Whut???

Did you ever come across acoustic memory?. Essentially a wire spiral, a hammer & a microphone.

This was my first "computer". A massive 120 instruction steps.

Shark tank is running this thread in parallel.

Warning: IT-related material.

You need to go to the comments. Or not.

Huh?

They were running a tangent off to things us older blokes know.
Since I posted, there are a lot of new comments inserted.

Never mind...

(but the haiku & limerick each day are worthy).

There was a thing called a delay line memory that IBM used in the System Three. It was a piece of piano wire about 30 feet long I believe (coiled up of course)that was twisted on one end with a little solenoid for about a msec or so. It would take a bit of time for that twist to wave its way down to the end of the wire where that twist would be detected. If I remember correctly you could store about a Kbyte or so. I may be off on the numbers though. I'll see if there is anything on google.

Here is another TV show that came to mind after reading wagga's "street surfing" thread and in reference to the Human Fly...

"You Asked for It"

As I recall the Human Fly was on this show and there was mention that if the plane flew through a cloudburst, the rain would hurt like hell!

Stirling Moss. Won at Monaco 50 years ago this weekend.

Anyone remember 77 Sunset Strip? "Cookie lend me your comb"
I believe they had a 57 T Bird convertible.

And of course Route 66 with a convertible Corvette, 62 I believe.

And Peter Gunn. The theme music was a big hit.

Anybody remember the Cray-1?.

Puppy cost nearly $10 million in 1972 dollars. 80 MHz! 2 Megabytes of memory! 250 MFlops!

My desktop production machine runs 50 times faster, has 2000 times the memory and 30 times the megaflops. The solid state disk is millions of times larger and thousands of times quicker than the million dollar disk installion in the first Cray-1. And the SSD cost less than $200. And the heat dissipation is 500 watts, not 115 Kilowatts.

Remember pixels.?

No computer stuff....I'm computer illiterate. My wife or son fix my computer for me.

I remember, when I was a kid in 1964. My older sister begged my parents to be able to watch TV to see something called "The Beatles". I was so excited and was hoping my sister could convince my parents that we should watch it. I couldn't believe it when "The Beatles" turned out to be 4 guys singing and playing music......and NOT a monster movie, like the movies "Them" or "Earth vs the Spider".

What a letdown.

I also remember going to Yellowstone. In the early and mid '60's, the bears were everywhere. We would see the cars all stopped and call it a "Bear Jam". People would walk out of their cars to feed them..... and the bears would stand up on the sides of cars. My brother tried to take a picture of a bear from our Corvair and when the bear came over, my brother rolled up the window and caught the bears nose in it! The bear actually got a bloody nose and some blood dripped down the window.

I had one too -- Corvairs were dangerous!

Corvairs; 1 gallon of gas and 1 quart of oil.Drive 15 miles pull over and put in another quart of oil that was blown all over the inside of its rear compartment engine.