When was the last time?

[There Be Whales Here]

I don't even remember seeing a payphone after moving from a big, urban city, so I'd have to say not since at least the early 90's.

For a VCR, I actually still have a VCR/DVD combination player but I haven't used it since I got rid of most of my taped movies and replaced them with DVD versions so I'd say maybe early to mid 2000's was the last time I watched a tape. I even have two or three Beta (yeah, I said Beta) tapes from the 80's that have something recorded on them, I just don't know what and obviously can't find out. Yet maybe someday I'm hoping to solve the mystery is why I haven't thrown them out.

As far as a typewriter, I haven't used a conventional one since the 80's and bought my first portable Brother word processor in the early 90's until we got our first PC. I still have that as well in storage (I can't seem to part with anything I no longer need).

 

[Australis]

Let's see...

Typewriter - mid 90s
VCR - mid to late 00s, maybe early 10s
Telegram - never (that I can recall)
Phonebox - hmm, let's say mid 00s
Film camera - 90s. I still have a separate camera (not in phone) but it's digital.

 

[Westie1701]

I have a DVD/VCR combo and still have old tapes I play occasionally, though it's a bummer to find out someone taped over my high school graduation with an episode of Seinfeld...

Payphone ? Found one in a bar about 2 years ago and immediately called someone just to shout "Guess what I'm calling you from ?!"

 

[There Be Whales Here]

As far as other obsolete devices, the only film camera I have left is an old polaroid in storage that hasn't seen use after the mid-90's when we got our first digital camera. I don't even know if you could buy film for it anymore and it was always expensive and inferior at any rate.

Though I still have vinyl records, cassette tapes and even two or three 8-tracks (!), I no longer have anything to play them in; the tape player being the last thing to go when I got rid of the last car nine years ago.

A calculator? I have maybe three of them still, but haven't touched them in years; as I automatically reach for my phone should I need to add up something more complex than 1 + 1 (I really suck at math). But I do still have one of these in storage:

So, with something this cool, who needs a conventional calculator anyway?

I haven't written an actual letter to anyone since being overseas in 1991, although to be fair I don't much send emails either or even like to talk over the phone to friends or those I know. Yeah, I'm kind of introverted and asocial; which is kind of weird considering my steady activity on online forums .

 

[Westie1701]

One man's asocial is another man's outgoing and gregarious, Whales, and I always like to see you on the boards here...

As for the Trekulator ?

 

[Malicia]

I remember the days of going to a payphone near my home when I didn't want my parents listening in. It must be a few years since I've used a payphone but I always carry coins on a long journey just incase I find myself needing one. There's an old red phone box in my village that has been turned in to a library that people can visit to donate and borrow books. I remember when it was a working phone box but with mobile phones there isn't the need for them anymore especially in built up areas.

Last time I watched VHS is almost exactly 10 years ago when I was working on digitising family videos using a gadget that connected a VHS player to my PC and I spent months playing about 80 hours of footage so I could capture it as a video and create DVDs for Christmas presents. I had to clean the head of the VHS player so often I ended up leaving the casing off so I didn't have to keep unscrewing it and will never forget how it worked right up until I had captured everything and then one day it wouldn't power up. It was like it knew it had finally captured everything I needed before passing on to Silicon Heaven.

Before VHS I remember one Betamax tape I had which had Police Academy on it recorded from TV. I watched it so often I became fluent in the script. I remember borrowing The Young Ones on Betamax in the days before they were released on VHS.

 

[JD]

I don't think I've ever even seen a betamax tape, we did VHS when I was a kid.

 

[John Clark]

I don't think I've ever even seen a betamax tape, we did VHS when I was a kid.

We had both (I mean personally), but went with betamax first. The local hire shop tended to have more of them than VHS, at least early on. Once it got to about 86, then they went all vhs.

 

[There Be Whales Here]

My parents bought our first VCR in the early 80's and it was one of the top-loading Betamax's. Up until then I'd never really saw such a contraption and was amazed how I could record all these shows and movies off TV and not have to wait till they were aired again (if they even were) for repeat viewing. I must have worn out the tape I used to record "Alien" when it was network broadcasted and though I watched it so many times, it actually wasn't till a few years later I finally got to see the theatrical unedited R-rated version and it was almost like seeing a new movie.

Unfortunately, being a Beta Family had its drawbacks since the "format wars" had started by this time and VHS was already becoming predominate and most of my friends had the latter format. Along with being an Intellivision household in an Atari neighborhood, this only further compounded my adolescent ostracization. I will never forget taking trips to our local video store where my father would plunk me down in the spartan Beta section (with 1/4 the selections of the VHS movies) so I could pick out a rental; while he disappeared behind the Curtain of Mystery at the back of the store. It took me another year or two of puberty to find the tapes and finally figure out what was back there, but I digress.

I remember the day when my parents bought me my own VCR for Christmas and it was actually a VHS! Not only did this mean my choice of movies had expanded greatly, but I could also now rent the Star Trek TOS episodes the store carried only in that format! Since this was back when the only other way to see them was if a local station broadcast them, I now could view them at will and even better once I found out how to copy pre-recorded tapes to another VCR.

Like I said in a previous post, I actually have a few of those Beta tapes I've hung onto but since it would be very difficult (and expensive) to find a working machine to play them on, they really are useless. Though I'm somewhat sure they contain either movies or science documentaries I recorded in the mid 80's, including one about the Voyager (not V'Ger) probes that used to be my favorite (though since this was before the Uranus & Neptune encounters, it is now outdated). Guess I'll never know for sure.

 

[John Clark]

Think we've still got some Beta tapes kicking around and I'm not sure if the last machine we had is up there too. (If it is, it was still working then). I too reckon finding a working replacement will be very difficult (at best)

 

[XCV330]

VHS: sometime before 2008

Betamax: never

That weird RCA video disk thing that wasn't a laser disk: Maybe 1983

Payphone: I recall using one with a phone card at an airport in the late 90's. Had an alphanumeric pager but no cell phone.
Telegram: I sent one in 2007.

Telegraphy: currently, though at the moment my telegraph key is unhooked and stored in an electronics drawer. My repeater id's via morse, so it still counts.

Typewriter: the 90s. I had an old Remington manual that I had convinced myself would make me a better writer. It didn't.

Film Camera: I switched to digital really early so probably 18 years or so. Having said that, I am interested in medium format and developing, so I may order some cheap gear from Lomography and try it out.

Slide Rule: today. one of my watches has one built into the bezel. It's handy.

When was the last time you used a trackball?

 

[Westie1701]

When was the last time you used a trackball?

Today ! I have an old laptop with a dead trackpad in the laundry room that I rescued with an equally old mouse from only God knows where so I have something to do when I'm waiting for a load to be done...

It also plays DVDs ! I feel like I'm in a time machine where the maximum range is 20 years

 

[There Be Whales Here]

[QUOTE="XCV330, post: 13960889, member: 74683 When was the last time you used a trackball?[/QUOTE]

The only trackball I still have would be the optional controller for my Atari 5200. Ironically if I wanted to play it, I would have no choice but to use the trackball no matter if the game called for it or not due to the stick controllers being broke and replacements obviously not the easiest thing to find. Those controllers were always the Achilles' heel of that system and why it was the black sheep of the Atari family. Not that it would matter, since I haven't played it in many years because even though it still works, the coaxial box isn't compatible with modern HD TVs.

I do still have an IBM Thinkpad that has a trackstick and ran Windows 98, but I've obviously not used that in a long time. Ironically out of all the broken computers I have laying around, that one is the only one that still could be used despite being the oldest. But of course, in reality it's not much good for anything, even connecting to the web.

 

[galleywest]

Payphone ? Found one in a bar about 2 years ago and immediately called someone just to shout "Guess what I'm calling you from ?!"

"1992!!"

• VCR: mid-2000s, i invested a lot of time and effort into my taped shows.
• Cassette tape: same, for the same reasons. So many mixtapes.
• Typewriter: same, but only because i had a job where certain forms had to be filled out on the typewriter.
• Calculator: I use mine quite often, actually. I prefer it to the one on my phone.
• Atari: my beloved Atari is stored upstairs. Never shall we part.
• Phone booth: to book a room while traveling in the UK in the 90s, I think.
• Film camera: also in the UK in the 90s. The pictures I took were so much better than 80% of the digital pictures I take today, and that's not me being nostalgic. I'm usually terrible at photos and there were so many good ones.

 

[Westie1701]

The four beautifully ornate bronze and glass structures on the left used to be phone booths...

Though the phones are now gone, I'm so glad they preserved the artistry and history !

Oh, and @galleywest - I still have my Atari, too !

 

[XCV330]

Still got my Texas Instruments Ti-99/4a but it ain’t the original

 

[galleywest]

The four beautifully ornate bronze and glass structures on the left used to be phone booths...

Though the phones are now gone, I'm so glad they preserved the artistry and history !

Oh, and @galleywest - I still have my Atari, too !

What were your favorite games?? Mine were Raiders of the Lost Ark, Circus Atari, and Breakout.

Still got my Texas Instruments Ti-99/4a but it ain’t the original

Can you spell BOOBS on it? That's all that matters.

 

[Westie1701]

What were your favorite games?? Mine were Raiders of the Lost Ark, Circus Atari, and Breakout.

Oh, definitely Pac-Man and Dig Dug !

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Ah, fellow Atari fans!

You know you can still play pretty much every Atari game ever made - just fire up Stella.

(my favorite Atari games were Missile Command, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Adventure, BTW)

 

[galleywest]

Ah, fellow Atari fans!

You know you can still play pretty much every Atari game ever made - just fire up Stella.

(my favorite Atari games were Missile Command, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Adventure, BTW)

Adventure! Oh, I felt so justified seeing it show up in Ready Player One. And old. Justified and old.