Sort of a meme, sort of a query...

[heidi]

What's the oldest technology in your posession? tea_and_toast's husband has a Commodore 64, aaron's aunt has an Atari 2600 and my parents have a possibly-still-working PONG in a closet, as well as a tonne of beta tapes, but no player, sigh.

I've got an Apple Newton from 1994; nothing older than that made it into our 1998 move from NY to Florida.

What've you got? What's your oldest overall tech-thing, and what's your oldest *working* tech-thing?

Comments

[moonlight69]

Well, it's still back in Utah, but I too own a (working!) Atari 2600. :)

Cool!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Got Pitfall, too?

[lapsus-0-calami.livejournal.com]

I have an Apple Newton - I confess to never using it as it was bigger than most of my handbags and I was already a convert to the first Palm Pilots by then. Not really techy, but I have my Grandfather's 1940s Bang and Olufsen radio which is a wonderful and beautiful (and working) antique.

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, probably an original Nintendo GameBoy (the kind released in 1989, although I bought mine in the early 90s) - it's in one of the kitchen cupboards at Castle Fox.

Somewhere at my parents' place is my Sinclair ZX81 and, failing that, my 1984 Oric-1!

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm pretty sure I still have a functionning Sega game player thingie stashed somewhere from about (does mental math)...1989.

And while it's not *techically* a high tech thing, my Mum still has a working
SONY stereosystem from the late seventies, complete with vinyl disk player. It's kind of awesome, actually, all slick chrome lines and wooden speakers, and the sound ain't half bad either.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Vinyl disk? You mean record?

;)

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

Old school 1989 Gameboy, complete with Tetris and SuperMarioLand. Still works too!

Although my parents have a Betamax player thingy that still works, although it's mostly kept in a cupboard. That would be from about 1979, wouldn't it?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

We got our first beta in 1977, so it might be older than 79...
All we had for it, back then, was Star Wars and, then, not long after, Grease.

[benjj.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. An Atarti ST - but that must be what '92? Also a Tandy OS computer that has no hard drive and you start with a 5 1/4" 'diskette' and a Texas Instruments something or other. TI-Basic is a wonderful language! They are in the loft at me mum's place. They worked when they went up there, but it's full of fibre glass and nesting sparrows (front) and starlings (back) so I hate to think what they are like now.

There's also some N-gauge railway.

Oh wait, there's a black thing with about eight orange buttons that you plug into a TV and play games on... of the bat'n'ball type.

[benjj.livejournal.com]

Hmmm the TI is a TI-99 4A from 1979-83 and there's also a Sinclair Spectrum +2A from '83 I think...

#potters through museums#

[enelya-oronar.livejournal.com]

I have a functioning rotary dial phone from 1981.

Also a functioning 1975 Japanese pin ball game ~ called a Pachinko Machine. Lights and bells.

[enelya-oronar.livejournal.com]

Hubby said my response was not technology, which of course lead to a semi-philosophical argument..
..
.anyway hubby said answer should have been a Betamax machine circa 1983?? and a Mac Performa6250CD ~ 1992ish?

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

The answer to both would be a working gameboy-type-thing (I don't remember the brand) from 1991.

My parents probably have some even older things though.

[phoenixsong]

Currently in my immediate possession? Probably the TV I got for Christmas in 8th grade (Dec. '90). Still works perfectly, though the remote's always been a bit flaky, and rarely used at this point.

I don't know if my parents still have it, but when I was still living there, they still had a clunky record turntable in a cabinet in the family room...

[nyourdrms.livejournal.com]

I got a really old consol TV that has tubes and the picture is green, the kids have a couple of game boy colors, and I have a very old VCR

(er and I got this computer when my middle schooler was in kindergarten, which makes it very outdated *kicks it*)

T

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

:)) This seems to be passed down from generation to generation. My dad is an old school computer guy, and also an intense packrat, and my parents just found an old cache of unused punchcards (http://www.cs.sun.ac.za/~museum/software.html) in the garage and are currently using them as notepaper. I remember my sister and I fiddling around with rolls of old paper tape and trying to find some kind of craft project to use it for. :)) We tried to make those paper flowers out of it, you know that thing where you roll the paper into a coil and then glue one side of it to a sheet of paper? And my parents used some of it as packing material when we moved once. Ah, the good old days. My parents still have the PC they were using when I was in middle school and high school, amber monitor and all.

This is a very funny thread. Hee.

[musikologie.livejournal.com]

Let's see...

At my home, we have an Apple IIc (complete with Lemonade Stand, the greatest game ever!), a IBM electric typewriter (one of the blue ones), and a small IBM punch-card reader, like a time clock, from about the 1930s. Don't know if that's actually a tech-thing, but it's pretty darn cool.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

You have Lemonade Stand? I used to play that in junior high school! Is there an emulator for it? : looks...

I'm only seeing colourized graphical ones........

[simons-flower.livejournal.com]

My parents still have the Commodore 64 we used to use (with the tape drive, too!) and until I moved to Pennsylvania I had an Apple IIC. Currently, I have a Compaq computer that dates from 1995 (and it runs better -- when I boot it up -- than my 2000 Gateway desktop).

Interesting question.

[ina]

My sister and I still have our C64 (it's in the attic of my sister house). We owned a VC20 before that, but we sold it when buying the C64.

[aswas.livejournal.com]

As I've moved nearly yearly and thrown things out every time, I'd have to say it's a Motorola V100 mobile phone. That was the Voicestream one that opened up, had the little mono screen, and the keyboard. It doesn't fully work as the headset jack shorted out, which means you can't make or receive calls as it has no speaker or mic.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

You could shadowbox it & hang it on a wall...

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Big old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck, back home. And tons and tons of stuff still on giant tape reels.

[ladylaw7.livejournal.com]

We had a Commodore 64 when I was little, but it's either in storage somewhere or my parents must have gotten rid of it a few years ago. They do still have a working grammaphone in the living room.

The oldest thing I have in my apartment in Boston is probably a discman from 1998...it works *sometimes* :)

[angelamermaid.livejournal.com]

I also have an original Gameboy, cicra 1989, that works.

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

A tape/radio recorder from 1984. A cd player from 1990. (Both still work perfectly.)

And a game boy, which doesn't work anymore. Back then in the 80s my siblings and I sometimes watched tv on a tv set that looked like it was from the 50s. My mother owns really old kitchen stuff, which still works. I wager some of it must be from the seventies.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Like another poster above, we have an old Apple IIc with matching printer, loads of disks for it (the whole thing still works), plus printer cartridges and printer paper with the tractor-feed along the sides. The kids call it 'the antique.' I also have an ancient comptometer, which is an adding machine from the thirties that my mother used to use; it has no tape but it makes lovely typewriter noises and I always enjoyed just punching the buttons on it when I was a kid. ;) We also have an old rotary phone from the seventies but never use it since we have a touchtone account. (I don't think you can even GET a non-touchtone account with the phone company anymore.)

Oh, and my husband's bicycle is a folding Pony bike that's at least fifty years old and still gets him around when he's running errands on the weekend. He'd ride it to work if that wouldn't mean having to pedal from Philadelphia to Valley Forge and back.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

My oldest and my oldest working are the same SNES system I ganked from my brothers when I moved away to school. They won't miss it, what with all their other systems, and how else would I play Bust-A-Move or use the running pad for Track and Field I bought the boy for Xmas one year? :P

My parents have an Atari too, but I couldn't bring it. I think the oldest working possession in their house is a grammarphone. I call it that, but it's not really one of those you set on a table, it has it's own cabinet and all.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

EDIT - Quick Google search says that it's probably a Victrola instead. *shrug*

[verstehen.livejournal.com]

Let's see... I have an Atari 2600 with Pong. I have an original NES system with several games, including Mario and Friday the 13th. Hmm. I have a working rotary phone, if that counts. ;)

[quasarsglow.livejournal.com]

I've got a working Simon game from when I was 7.. I guess that makes it 1988?

[heinous_bitca.livejournal.com]

I'd be more jealous if you had a working Merlin. Though I loved my Simon.

[novembersnow.livejournal.com]

Probably the oldest thing in my possession is a battery-powered cassette player/recorder I got for my birthday in 1984 or so, which still works perfectly.

My parents still have both an 8-track player and a stereo system with turntable from the mid-1970s in their house. The stereo still works like a charm, but I don't think the 8-track player works anymore. I can't be sure, though, because, oddly, they don't own any 8-tracks.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Elderly IBM Selectric typewriter and turntable, inherited from husband's parents.

Heyy, you never know when the computer will crash, and cats love THE BALL)