Vintage PCs still in use

[Yzzerdd]

Stay off the road!!!

I got my license today. I was surprised to see that they are still using late 80s vintage PCs in there. Clicky keyboards, green monochrome monitors, dot-matrix printers, the whole 9 yards. As a matter of fact, the vintage PCs are even running finger print scanners, fancy cameras, and digital signature thingys. Pretty cool. I tried to take a picture, but was told that due to the potentially sensitive information on the monitors, I was not allowed. It looked like they were terminals connected potentially to a server or maybe even mini in the back room. That, or they had individual PCs under the counter. Who knows. I saw "Aoos" and "NCR" terminals.

Oh, and while I was with my bro in Guitar Center, I got a look at a late 80s or early 90s Wyse terminal that was being used for the employees to pull up info. It was displaying a paragraph describing that it was a private machine, and was sitting at the "login:" prompt. Pretty cool. Didn't have my camera that time.

Anyone else have a story or picture to share about vintage PCs still in use today?

--Ryan
MOVING TODAY!!! WOOO!

P.S. in WV with my Mom and her bit of the family, I go by Jack and will thusly begin signing it again at the bottom of my messages. This is probably the last time I will be signing as Ryan.

[Vlad]

I was just at the Credit Union today and they were using IBM terminals of some kind. I didn't recognize them but it looked like the old school terminal/mainframe setup. Model M keyboards too \o/

[nige the hippy]

I was on the point of starting a new thread on just this point!
my other half works for the UK Revenue and Customs, and came home a couple of days ago announcing "Do you know that the mainframe computer at VAT central office ( Purchase/sales tax? ) is still the one installed in the 1970s.
Not a PC, I found some old photos. WOW!!!!:eek:

[Druid6900]

Looks like a bloody appliance store LOL

Must take a whole generating plant just to run that place

[barythrin]

A couple years ago I was at an AutoZone here in town and they had some servers connected with by Twin-Ax cables. I asked them who ran their equipment/servers but it was outsourced.. I wanted some cabling for my 5161's (never did get to try them out due to the hard to find equipment).

The AT&T 7300 I bought was also being used at a school for some multi-user software (I think 4 or 6 people logged into that box and ran it) per the guys comments at the hamfest until a year ago.

[Trixter]

I wanted some cabling for my 5161's

I'm sorry, was that plural? As in, you have more than one 5161?

I've been trying to get one with card+cable for years...

[tezza]

Yes, occasionally in stores I'll see some modified PC clone dedicated as a purchase terminal running what looks like an MS-DOS screen.

This is a problem I see with technology and specialised systems software. That kind of software tends to be written at great expense, and it's often specific for a particular setup or use. A re-write for a newer OS is a major headache. Not only can it be costly, but it's got to be de-bugged and field tested in tandem with the existing system so that there is virtually no risk of it falling over once implemented. If it does fall over in use, then it can cause a business to come to a screaming halt. It's much more of a hassel than just buying some new hardware.

If the existing older program works there is often the feeling "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Hence, where complex systems in small to medium enterprises are concerned, it's not suprising to see older hardware still around and fulfilling a useful purpose.

Of course eventually the hardware DOES fail, and then there is a much bigger problem.

One thing the Y2K issue (real or not) did was to make IT managers bite the bullet and upgrade their software and hardware prior to 2000. Otherwise most banks would still be using that old COBOL code from the 1960s (perhaps many still are?).

Tez

[vwestlife]

Even with modern PCs in use, I still see DOS text mode -- sometimes even 40x25 -- everywhere: at the bank teller, at the library checkout counter, at the supermarket cashier, even at McDonalds!

In fact, today I saw the strangest thing at a Shop-Rite supermarket: two shopping carts full of CRT monitors. They had just replaced all the monitors of their cash registers with LCD flat panels... still showing the same DOS text mode as before.

[vwestlife]

If the existing older program works there is often the feeling "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Hence, where complex systems in small to medium enterprises are concerned, it's not suprising to see older hardware still around and fulfilling a useful purpose.
My local county library system ran the SIRSI Dynix system from 1986 until 2002. Most of the WYSE dumb terminals lasted the entire lifespan of the system! The main server ran IBM AIX. Around 1999-2000 they began replacing the patron terminals with PCs running a terminal emulator (previously they had dumb terminals and PCs sitting side-by-side, to provide both card catalog and Internet access). What finally rendered the text-based Dynix system obsolete was the desire to allow at-home Web access to the card catalog. Previously they had a dialup access number for people to use via their modem and terminal emulator on their home PCs.

They even had a few COLOR dumb terminals... amazing stuff!

p.s. Years ago, I believe Tom Hanks was a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and he started talking about his experience at the DMV... he mentioned that the DMV clerk "had the most worn-out computer I've ever seen -- most of the letters were worn off the keys... I think the nameplate said 'UNIVAC'..." (paraphrasing).

[Trixter]

In fact, today I saw the strangest thing at a Shop-Rite supermarket: two shopping carts full of CRT monitors. They had just replaced all the monitors of their cash registers with LCD flat panels... still showing the same DOS text mode as before.

Should have asked the manager what today's special was on CRTs. Maybe he would've sold them to you for 2 cents a pound ;-)

[MikeS]

And why not?

One of my clients, the investment department of one of Canada's largest banks, is still running software that was originally installed on Cromemco S-100 Z2 computers in 1980. After several hardware upgrades the Cromemcos were finally retired in 1999 and the system moved to Compaq 286s with minor mods, mostly related to screen handling. Three hardware upgrades later it's currently running on Pentium 4s; of course there have been enhancements to the software along the way, but the core is still the same code originally installed on the Cromemcos and the main reason that replacement is finally being considered now is the difficulty of finding someone who can support it.

mike

[Chuckster_in_Jax]

my other half works for the UK Revenue and Customs, and came home a couple of days ago announcing "Do you know that the mainframe computer at VAT central office ( Purchase/sales tax? ) is still the one installed in the 1970s.
:

That is a rarity. Most of those machines were retired either because
1) The manufacturers would not renew repair contracts after a certain number of years. Mainly due to spare parts no longer being manufactured.
2) The Y2k problem. It was a better strategy for companies to switched over to PC server systems than to reprogram the old systems. Many old systems were not compatible with the new network topologies.
3) Costs for PC hardware is now way cheaper than proprietary systems. There are also many more software options availible for the newer systems.

[Druid6900]

A LOT of the stuff from my website goes to big companies with legacy equipment stock-piling specific parts against a failure.

I'll never be a big success because, even though I have them by the short and curlies, I can't bring myself to gouge them.

I suppose that makes me look pretty stupid LOL

[sharkmark7]

ohwss. thats nice vintage PC is so durable....

[James0555]

They even had a few COLOR dumb terminals... amazing stuff!

I work with a system that uses a color graphics terminal it is a Tektronix 4207 - love to have one to hook to an S-100 system. It is very flexible as to what it will display.

The system uses 80286 processor as the main unit and has five 8086 processors as co processors all talking to each other via a SCSI bus. Housed in three Zendex Multibus II chassis in a 19 inch rack. Uses iRMX operating system - it is used to control all of the uplink and downlink equipment used for a ground station.

Jim

[dongfeng]

I once sold a 486 on eBay to a company that needed the motherboard to replace a dead one in a computer that controlled a £500,000 ($1,000,000) laser machine of some kind. They needed a motherboard with EISA slots to take the original hardware!

The London Underground system also uses ancient equipment from the '70s to control signalling, although I've never been able to find out exactly what. I think they are currently going to replace it all soon.

[billdeg]

I have a client who runs an entire office using a custom dBase III application that was originally created in the 80's and is still in production. We have been supporting it since 1996. At that time it was 10 years old.

We are just now replacing it with PHP and ColdFusion web service and hosting it at my company.

bd

[barythrin]

I'm sorry, was that plural? As in, you have more than one 5161?

Oops.. meant I was looking for twinax for one of my 5363s.. not 5161 (sorry.. lack of caffeine).

[vwestlife]

The London Underground system also uses ancient equipment from the '70s to control signalling, although I've never been able to find out exactly what. I think they are currently going to replace it all soon.
The longest-running example of an obsolete electronic technology remaining in use has to be DC power in New York City. ConEd finally stopped supplying 120-volt DC power to customers in Manhattan about a year or two ago. This was the last remaining vestige of Thomas Edison's original DC electrical system from the 1880s in New York City.

DC power was effectively obsolete with the introduction of AC in the late 1890s, but New York remained Edison's DC stronghold, and some buildings still continue to use it to power their DC elevator motors, which run much more quietly and smoothly than AC motors. Eventually, Edison's local DC power plants (which had to be placed every few blocks due to the limitations of DC power distributing) had been replaced with AC-to-DC converter stations. ConEd finally gave up maintaining the converter stations, and now the remaining buildings which still use DC power have to convert it themselves from AC.

And as for AC, the U.S. standard of 110-120 volts at 60 Hz didn't become universal until well into the 1950s. In the 1940s, Los Angeles had two separate power grids, one running at 50 Hz and the other at 60 Hz. The Niagra Falls power grid, including upstate New York and much of eastern Canada, ran at 25 Hz until the early '50s. From what I've heard, at least one 25 Hz power plant remains in operation to supply some Canadian factories which use it. The hum and buzz of AC electrical equipment is so pervasive in an industrial environment that these factories have an entirely different "sound" to them, compared to the 60 Hz hum (and many harmonics above) that we are used to.

[linemanduke]

i was just surprised when i went to get my license reinstated there using ps2s 25s and 2 30s and a few 70s and one of those tower ones with the lcd screen. its weird enough to see them being used in every day life but the branch office they were at was just built a year or two ago.

my school still used a apple 2 in the attendance office till they changed people and computers. they had to get me to print off 30 years of atendance records off what seemed like 10s of thousands of diskettes.

[vwestlife]

And how about POS (point of sale) terminals? Target is still using ones with beige cases and tiny black-and-white CRTs, even in stores that were built within the past 1-2 years. In one Wawa convenience store around here, the POS gives the customer his own CRT to see what's being rung up, but they're so burned-in that you can hardly read the text anymore.

Back in the day, ATMs used to use the same exact character font on their little CRT as an Apple ][. I always wondered if they were actually run on an Apple hiding in there!

And if you want a real sight to see, there's a Burger King up in rural northwestern NJ that is still using pre-computerized cash registers, with a small blue vacuum flourescent display to show the prices and a dot-matrix receipt printer with about half the pins dead... plus a microphone for the cashier to call out the orders to the kitchen workers, of course. It's like you've stepped back in time 25 years! :) (Not as odd, though, as another BK that makes you order ketchup, and it shows up on the receipt. :eek: )

[kb2syd]

Hey, I live in rural northwestern NJ. Is that the BK in Franklin? I'll have to go check it out. I think Newton modernized a couple of years ago. Assumed the Franklin one did after the fire.

[vwestlife]

Hey, I live in rural northwestern NJ. Is that the BK in Franklin? I'll have to go check it out. I think Newton modernized a couple of years ago. Assumed the Franklin one did after the fire.
It's on Route 31 just north of a Hess station and Jeep dealer. I'm not quite sure exactly what town it's in.

[kb2syd]

Ok. That's probably Washington, NJ. Quite a bit south of here (an hour and fifteen as google maps calculates it). I forget that N/S perspective in NJ is a little skewed. To some, anything north of Trenton is North. I guess this is OT enough...

[penguin86]

At chemist's near my home, are still using dos terminals. I don't know what is it (I think 286 or similar). Little case, little keyboard (without right number keys), no mouse and a very little orange monitor (I think 10inches). No USB, big DIN for the keyboard (AT standard, if i'm right...), rs232 and parallel.

[vwestlife]

At chemist's near my home, are still using dos terminals. I don't know what is it (I think 286 or similar). Little case, little keyboard (without right number keys), no mouse and a very little orange monitor (I think 10inches). No USB, big DIN for the keyboard (AT standard, if i'm right...), rs232 and parallel.
Just how "small"? Small like a SIIG MiniSys (http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/siigs286/)? (For perspective, the rectangular hole fits a 3½" 1-inch-high floppy drive)

http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/siigs286/front2.jpg

Or small like a SFF (Small Form Factor) case? Mine is a Pentium III, but this general size category dates back to at least the 386SX era:

http://i3.tinypic.com/116klzl.jpg
That's a 15-inch LCD on top of it.
http://i3.tinypic.com/116m0bp.jpg

The Tandy 1000RL-series (http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/RLRLX.html) is the same footprint as SFF but is not as tall due to the lack of a 5¼" drive bay:

http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/images/RSXFrontSmall.jpg
The floppy drive's eject button is just barely tall enough to be reachable when the keyboard -- with its "feet" not extended -- is placed in front of the computer.
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/images/RSXSetupSmall.jpg

[Mad-Mike]

Old computers are still in rather common use, probably more than most folks think.

At work, a few months ago, I was assigned to dispose of a Compaq Deskpro 286 like the one I used to have. It was used with a Zebra Label printer to make labels for cubicle desks. Me and the computing focal were sad to see it go, we both thought it would be funny to set up an april-fools joke with it and replace someone's Dual Core Dell with the Deskpro or something like that. I've also seen an IBM Ps/2 Model 70 with monitor be sent to disposal, unlike the deskpro, it looked like it had been dragged behind a truck, all the Deskpro had was dust. I've also come across the random 486 Laptop every so often as well. Had one come by with Windows 95 just the other day, had to ask the boss if it was okay to destroy the data using a Floppy Diskette I provide myself.....of course, he said it was not worth bothering.

Guitar Centers across the board all use old Wyse Terminals. I just went into the brand new one in Lynnwood this past weekend, and they are still using the old monochrome terminals they had in their old store. It's apparently plenty enough to do the job.

I don't see nearly as much vintage-computer action in Washington like I did in Alabama though. When I was supposed to graduate high school, our computer hierarchy by age looked like this.....

- 1 1985 IBM Personal Computer 5150 - Auto Mechanics Class, 256K, VGA, 2X 360K, I think I'm the only student in high school who knew how to make use of, no less game on that thing.

- 1 IBM PC AT, somewhere, kicking around, if not moved to the Middle School, which already had one for the office secretary at her desk.

- 6 IBM Ps/2 Model 25 - Card catalogs to the school library, saw a recent photo, they're still there, screen burned in, DOS card catalog software and all. I'm sure they're still tacked in using Token Ring network technology too.

- Around 40-50 or so IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 based machines - More Token Ring madness, all used for typing class, using the old Novell Edlan network to access WordPerfect 5.1. I used to doubly use them to draw login screens for the school network. I always preferred a PS/2 with the original 80's style PS/2 mouse for that, the level of control seemed to be better. Some newer PS/2's lived in the electronics classroom, I used to program annoying BASIC stuff on them and play computer games to show off to the class.

- About 80 IBM EduQuest - Of different model series, the majority were 45's and 50's around the time I left, with 30's being more common in english classes and places where sheer power, speed, and multimedia was not all that important. For those that don't know or remember, these were like a later version of the Model 25 with a 386 or 486 processor, 4X 30 pin SIMMS, SVGA video built in, and on some a built in sound card with dual headphone jacks and a volume control on the front of the box. These were the first to get on the internet, and used the NetScape Netvista package to do it, which usually consisted of an E-mail client that I forget the name of, and Netscape Navigator 2.02 or 3.03. They were also favored because they were the computers that ran Oregon Trail, some bike racing game, and more of the fun DOS based educational software. I also learned how securely setup these boxes were when I tried to load an Atari Emulator from the floppy drive in my 11th grade Video Productions class and instead wound up in a directory full of student-named files of some sort. Apparently A:\ was re-mapped on OCS's network machines pre-Windows 95. They probably still have these too, probably to replace the now likely dying PS/2 Model 30 286 machines in typing class, unless they now have a Dell lease like everyone else has these days.

Also our local thrifts used old computers a lot, usually cast-off ex-city PS/2s and stuff like that. Also, my mom's work at the hospital used an Apple II in the bloodbank till around 1995 or so, when it was replaced with a brand new PC hooked up to an IBM AS/400.

[penguin86]

Just how "small"? Small like a SIIG MiniSys (http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/siigs286/)? (For perspective, the rectangular hole fits a 3½" 1-inch-high floppy drive)



Or small like a SFF (Small Form Factor) case? Mine is a Pentium III, but this general size category dates back to at least the 386SX era:

Uhm... I think (but not sure) my Philips PC-100 is the same form factor.... Here a photo:
http://www.xtremehardware.it/forum/photoplog/file.php?n=1434&w=o
The monitor is a 12 inches.

EDIT: The PC-100 is an 8088, 640kb ram; so older than a 386SX... But I think were hard to find such little PCs...

http://i3.tinypic.com/116klzl.jpg
That's a 15-inch LCD on top of it.
http://i3.tinypic.com/116m0bp.jpg

The Tandy 1000RL-series (http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/RLRLX.html) is the same footprint as SFF but is not as tall due to the lack of a 5¼" drive bay:


It's difficult to understand perspective throught photos, but I think was like the SFF case you linked. Btw, the Philips is a little bigger.
The shocking thing is the monitor... sssooo little!!! Beautiful :mrgreen:
I wonder if is it an MDA/CGA or a monochrome VGA :rolleyes:

[vwestlife]

The shocking thing is the monitor... sssooo little!!! Beautiful :mrgreen:
I wonder if is it an MDA/CGA or a monochrome VGA :rolleyes:
I had a 9-inch monochrome VGA monitor once. It was only rated for 640x480, but by tweaking some of the trimmers inside, I was able to get it to display 1024x768. :)

[nige the hippy]

The London Underground system also uses ancient equipment from the '70s to control signalling, although I've never been able to find out exactly what. I think they are currently going to replace it all soon.

Wow, are they still using those systems!

I used to work alongside the "test-bed" one at the computer workshops in the late 1980s, they were trying to phase them out then, but couldn't get a reliable replacement, 4K core stores & loads of blinking lights. I have been trying for years to remember what it was called.

Wonder if we could get a viewing/film one in action before they're decommissioned?

I'd build another shed just to house one (covet! covet!)

[penguin86]

I had a 9-inch monochrome VGA monitor once. It was only rated for 640x480, but by tweaking some of the trimmers inside, I was able to get it to display 1024x768. :)

Yes, we have one in the free repair club I go :)
We use it as shell monitor for the Debian server.

[Floppies_only]

Yes, we have one in the free repair club I go :)
We use it as shell monitor for the Debian server.

But how do you get a monitor to display a different number of PELs (picture elements, IBM-Speak for pixels) than it is rated for?

Sean

[vwestlife]

But how do you get a monitor to display a different number of PELs (picture elements, IBM-Speak for pixels) than it is rated for?
With a CRT, pixels are irrelevant; the monitor doesn't care how many pixels you are trying to display on it, as long as you are using horizontal and vertical scan rates within the range it was designed to accept.

Standard 640x480 VGA at 60 Hz uses a 31.5 kHz horizontal scan rate. Normally that is all that a standard VGA monitor will accept. But if you can adjust the monitor to accept slightly higher scan rates, several other modes are possible:

800x600 at 48 Hz interlaced is 33.8 kHz.
800x600 at 56 Hz non-interlaced is 35.2 kHz.
1024x768 at 43 Hz interlaced is 35.5 kHz.

However, if you adjust a fixed-frequency VGA monitor to display one of these higher resolutions, you'll probably have to re-adjust it again if you want to go back to standard VGA resolution.

[Mike Chambers]

I was on the point of starting a new thread on just this point!
my other half works for the UK Revenue and Customs, and came home a couple of days ago announcing "Do you know that the mainframe computer at VAT central office ( Purchase/sales tax? ) is still the one installed in the 1970s.
Not a PC, I found some old photos. WOW!!!!:eek:

omg wow, hahahahaha. yeah that's definitely 70's. very cool pics.

[Mike Chambers]

My local county library system ran the SIRSI Dynix system from 1986 until 2002. Most of the WYSE dumb terminals lasted the entire lifespan of the system! The main server ran IBM AIX. Around 1999-2000 they began replacing the patron terminals with PCs running a terminal emulator (previously they had dumb terminals and PCs sitting side-by-side, to provide both card catalog and Internet access). What finally rendered the text-based Dynix system obsolete was the desire to allow at-home Web access to the card catalog. Previously they had a dialup access number for people to use via their modem and terminal emulator on their home PCs.

They even had a few COLOR dumb terminals... amazing stuff!

p.s. Years ago, I believe Tom Hanks was a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and he started talking about his experience at the DMV... he mentioned that the DMV clerk "had the most worn-out computer I've ever seen -- most of the letters were worn off the keys... I think the nameplate said 'UNIVAC'..." (paraphrasing).

worn off keys, just like the VAIO i got rid of recently lol. it's half-missing a couple letters and half of the left mouse button as you can see in the pics in the 'for sale' thread.

[Mike Chambers]

Yes, we have one in the free repair club I go :)
We use it as shell monitor for the Debian server.

w00t! debian. best linux distro ever.:)

www.debian.org <---- everybody try it if you haven't yet.

[TroyW]

With a CRT, pixels are irrelevant; the monitor doesn't care how many pixels you are trying to display on it, as long as you are using horizontal and vertical scan rates within the range it was designed to accept.

Standard 640x480 VGA at 60 Hz uses a 31.5 kHz horizontal scan rate. Normally that is all that a standard VGA monitor will accept. But if you can adjust the monitor to accept slightly higher scan rates, several other modes are possible:

800x600 at 48 Hz interlaced is 33.8 kHz.
800x600 at 56 Hz non-interlaced is 35.2 kHz.
1024x768 at 43 Hz interlaced is 35.5 kHz.

Yup, that was the big deal with multi-sync monitors, I used to use an NEC multi-sync that was able to accept down to a 15 kHz and up to a 36 kHz, which made it perfect to use with my Amiga - it could display the TV display modes (flicker city in resolutions of 640x400 or above at 15 kHz, haha), as well as the VGA and above style modes too.

[Mike Chambers]

Yup, that was the big deal with multi-sync monitors, I used to use an NEC multi-sync that was able to accept down to a 15 kHz and up to a 36 kHz, which made it perfect to use with my Amiga - it could display the TV display modes (flicker city in resolutions of 640x400 or above at 15 kHz, haha), as well as the VGA and above style modes too.

oh cool. if it can take down to 15 kHz, and i believe NTSC horizontal is just slightly above that, you could actually pipe a NTSC signal directly into that thing and it should show it with no problem. nice! especially if your TV breaks!:D

NTSC vertical, if i remember correctly, is 59.94 Hz.

would the NEC be able to tell it's interlaced? if not, you'd get two half-vertical-sized frames, one above the other... 29.97 times per second. i really wish america switched to PAL. i can deal with the slightly slower frame rate. i don't even care about the slight resolution increase, i just HATE interlacing. it's not as bad on TV's as it is when you try to watch an NTSC broadcast on a computer screen with a vid cap card. it's almost impossible to watch without de-interlacing. so ugly.

as a bonus, VHS tapes would have much better color stability... good thing nobody uses those anymore. :)

[vwestlife]

would the NEC be able to tell it's interlaced? if not, you'd get two half-vertical-sized frames, one above the other... 29.97 times per second. i really wish america switched to PAL. i can deal with the slightly slower frame rate. i don't even care about the slight resolution increase, i just HATE interlacing. it's not as bad on TV's as it is when you try to watch an NTSC broadcast on a computer screen with a vid cap card. it's almost impossible to watch without de-interlacing. so ugly.
Both NTSC and PAL are interlaced. The digital equivalent of NTSC and PAL is 480i and 576i, respectively -- the "i" indicates interlacing. These both fall under the category of "SDTV" (Standard Definition TV).

[TroyW]

oh cool. if it can take down to 15 kHz, and i believe NTSC horizontal is just slightly above that, you could actually pipe a NTSC signal directly into that thing and it should show it with no problem. nice! especially if your TV breaks!:D

NTSC vertical, if i remember correctly, is 59.94 Hz.

would the NEC be able to tell it's interlaced? if not, you'd get two half-vertical-sized frames, one above the other... 29.97
You'll have to find a multi-sync that is capable of going that low, I'd tell you what model the one I had was, but it's gone now and it was years ago so I don't remember, sorry.

But yes, it will be able to tell if it's interlaced or not and will display perfectly. :)

Never had much to do with NTSC myself, seeing as here in Australia we use the PAL standard, but I have heard it referred to as Never Twice the Same Colour, and from what you've said, maybe there is or was some truth to that, LOL!

[Mike Chambers]

You'll have to find a multi-sync that is capable of going that low, I'd tell you what model the one I had was, but it's gone now and it was years ago so I don't remember, sorry.

But yes, it will be able to tell if it's interlaced or not and will display perfectly. :)

Never had much to do with NTSC myself, seeing as here in Australia we use the PAL standard, but I have heard it referred to as Never Twice the Same Colour, and from what you've said, maybe there is or was some truth to that, LOL!

lol. well, the color thing is only noticeable on VHS tapes in my experience. the color looks great on laserdiscs and DVD. VHS is just a low-fidelity format compared to those.

[Mike Chambers]

Both NTSC and PAL are interlaced. The digital equivalent of NTSC and PAL is 480i and 576i, respectively -- the "i" indicates interlacing. These both fall under the category of "SDTV" (Standard Definition TV).

wow, you learn something new every day! i really thought PAL had progressive frames. according to wikipedia, you're correct though. i don't have much PAL experience, being in the USA.

i did used to trade bootleg VHS tapes (music stuff) with people all over the world, and i bought a very sweet aiwa multi-format VCR for it about 8 years ago. (was $800, EEK!) model number is MX100

unfortunately, it's been having problems lately. seems the motors are getting extremely worn out. it's making LOUD grinding noises when i try to use tapes in it now. it doesn't eject right either anymore, it comes out half-way and then i have to pull it the rest of the way lol. i guess i shouldn't be surprised, i've gotten so much use out of that thing. not useful for anything other than an incredibly expensive tuner atm.

http://www.skingco.com/video_audio/hvmx100.jpg

[vwestlife]

lol. well, the color thing is only noticeable on VHS tapes in my experience. the color looks great on laserdiscs and DVD. VHS is just a low-fidelity format compared to those.
The poor resolution is a limitation of the videotape format, not of NTSC.

With digital comb filtering techniques introduced in the late 1980s, NTSC color encoding performs just as well as that of PAL. The only reason why PAL may still look better is because of its extra 100 lines of resolution (although the downside of that is its flickery 50 Hz frame rate). In fact, if you go to Brazil, they use PAL-M, which uses the same resolution and frame rate as NTSC (525 lines, 60 Hz).

To keep this relevant to vintage computing, I wonder if any home computers were designed to output one of the black & white video standards previously used until the mid-1980s: the 405-line system in the UK, Ireland, Gibraltar, and Hong Kong, or the high-definition 819-line system in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, Morocco and former French colonies in Africa. Probably not, though, as the British and French had already been using 625-line broadcasts on UHF for color TV since the late 1960s, and these two remaining non-standard black & white systems were effectively obsolete by the time home computers arrived in the late '70s.

[Mike Chambers]

The poor resolution is a limitation of the videotape format, not of NTSC.

With digital comb filtering techniques introduced in the late 1980s, NTSC color encoding performs just as well as that of PAL. The only reason why PAL may still look better is because of its extra 100 lines of resolution (although the downside of that is its flickery 50 Hz frame rate). In fact, if you go to Brazil, they use PAL-M, which uses the same resolution and frame rate as NTSC (525 lines, 60 Hz).

To keep this relevant to vintage computing, I wonder if any home computers were designed to output one of the black & white video standards previously used until the mid-1980s: the 405-line system in the UK, Ireland, Gibraltar, and Hong Kong, or the high-definition 819-line system in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, Morocco and former French colonies in Africa. Probably not, though, as the British and French had already been using 625-line broadcasts on UHF for color TV since the late 1960s, and these two remaining non-standard black & white systems were effectively obsolete by the time home computers arrived in the late '70s.

yeah, that's what i said. because of the relative low-fidelity of VHS compared to laserdisc and DVD. you get an effective resolution of about 250 horizontal "pixels" on normal VHS.

it's not really possible to directly compare the "fidelity" of DVD to VHS actually, seeing as it is digital storage. laserdisc, however, is analog video still. i love LD. if you get a very very well made LD, it's quality can meet and sometimes even exceed the quality of a DVD imo. most of them are NOT made that well, but even those are generally much higher quality than tape.

the best thing about LD is that it does not have any annoying MPEG2 compression artifacts. they are hard to notice without looking for it on a high-bitrate MPEG2 video but it's still there.

i wish LD recorders had a chance to become commonplace. if DVD had not been invented, i think they would have slowly started becoming cheaper and more common.

[vwestlife]

i wish LD recorders had a chance to become commonplace. if DVD had not been invented, i think they would have slowly started becoming cheaper and more common.
LaserDisc's biggest problem was the size of the media itself, and the inability to record. VHS didn't truly die until recordable DVDs were introduced.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/CDE/_LDISC.GIF

[Mike Chambers]

yup! that's true. i still have my Pioneer LD-V2200 player, and plenty of laserdiscs to watch on it. they are pretty damn big. same diameter as a regular vinyl album, and a bit thicker.

they can take some abuse, though. a while back i bought Scarface on LDs on eBay, and when i opened the package i found that the discs were very scratched up. it put it in and hit play, and lo and behold it starts right up and looks fantastic still!

[carlsson]

Interesting, because Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc#Laserdisc_vs._DVD) writes:

Given the analog nature of Laserdiscs, without any forms of checksum or error correction, slight dust and scratches cause various problems that could affect video quality.

The article however also mentions that while a DVD can recover from small errors, big errors used to be fatal for playback until recently DVD players feature a repair+skip algorithm. Still, an analog LD player can recover from read errors faster than a DVD can. It also says that the amount of error depends on what caused it: a scratch, a finger print and so on.

But on the other hand, who gets a multimedia player only in order to play damaged records? :-P

[squirrel-steam]

I don't see many old computers still in use, just new dells mostly running a special software that looks like ms-dos green screen software in a XP window. I have seen some old IBM cashier stations at our local felpaush, but they run windows 98, and have amd k5's.

The only place i have seen actual old computers being used is in our machine shop at school, our instructer uses an old ibm 286-30 computer to run the mini cnc lathes and mill. And the 1991 giant cnc lathes we have run a very interesting computer in them. They have 2 486DX's on 2 motherboards, each with 16mb of ram, and they run the special cnc operating system, if you do a warm boot, you can see the bios screen, and freeze it there, (2) 486DX at 33mhz, 32mb ram, 4mb flash rom (where the operating system is,) and whats even more interesting is it says "keyboard OK, Mouse OK" but there dosen't appear to be a mouse. He has one that dosen't work, it boots and everything, but the actual lathe dosen't work. I told him to put a hard drive in it and install windows 3.1 on it. It has 2 ISA slots, and a built in floppy drive/IDE controller it uses if it has the optional hard drive to store programs. Suprisingly it has PS/2 ports on it. That would be cool, it can display colors also, its not just a green screen. It will sometimes display a 3d simulation of what the cutters and work is doing (its color too!) This was a very advanced cnc machine in its day, they were $100,000 brand new, and were donated by stryker. He said he would give me the non-working one, but you litereally need a semi truck to deliever it.

[barythrin]

I bought some laser discs a few years ago since I never got to see the quality but I never found a working player for cheap so I still haven't lol. Not vintage computer, but when I was trying to find an RF to RCA converter I realized it was cheaper to go to our local goodwill's and they sell perfectly working VCRs *with* a gaurantee for $9. So I got a nice one and used that to connect older antenna RF systems to RCA (actually to RCA on my Commodore monitor) as well as to watch TV on the Commodore monitor upstairs in my computer room (yes I also have a TV tuner card but it's just nice to have the vcr/remote, etc and an antenna hooked up to look away from the computer once and a while).

The scratches are relative to the compression of the data. Fitting one movie on 6 laser discs a single scratch may not cover that much data or be big enough to corrupt it unlike a scratch on a 9GB dvd which could cover 400MB of data. Sort of a downside to that much data in smaller scratchable areas.

A few (ok, quite a few) years back when one of our local arcades was closing they were selling all their systems. I was in or just out of highschool so didn't have much money but was looking at the ones I could afford just for kicks. The arcade "Dragon's Lair" was actually a (486?) Acer computer with a laserdisc reader inside of it and the game was just a laserdisc. I think they did make some rom versions of it but still that one was just a computer and video player. So.. wrapping our video segment back into vintage computers, a few arcades you may see could be an example of vintage systems in use.

[carlsson]

If it was the original Dragon's Lair, it could hardly be a 486 as the arcade game was released in 1983 or perhaps even 1982; I can't be bothered to look it up right now. But as you mention, with all the data and graphics pre-recorded on laser discs, it may not require a monster of a CPU to run it. For example Pioneer had a Palcom LD extention to their MSX (!) computer in the mid-80's, and that was a 3.5 MHz Z80 inside the actual computer. Now, the LD player may overtake the whole system, rendering the MSX computer one big I/O slave device; it is highly possible the arcade games worked in similar fashion.

[shawn510]

If it was the original Dragon's Lair, it could hardly be a 486 as the arcade game was released in 1983 or perhaps even 1982; I can't be bothered to look it up right now. But as you mention, with all the data and graphics pre-recorded on laser discs, it may not require a monster of a CPU to run it. For example Pioneer had a Palcom LD extention to their MSX (!) computer in the mid-80's, and that was a 3.5 MHz Z80 inside the actual computer. Now, the LD player may overtake the whole system, rendering the MSX computer one big I/O slave device; it is highly possible the arcade games worked in similar fashion.

I thought it was pretty neat how the "industrial" LD players could be controlled by serial, there was even a Laserdisc driver for win9x. The same setup was used with some PC based educational titles, I saw one win 3.1 system back around '97 that had a touchscreen and a video-in card to pipe the LD video into the PC for interactive training. Was used by the nursing students. LD seems to have been popular in the educational market, I saw a lot of players turn up back when I used to go the the state warehouse sales.

Even more inetresting to me was the Laseractive game system, with the data occupying what would normally be the digital audio track. Thought about trying to get one of those a few years back, but the ebay price was too steep. Not to mention trying to get both modules & the games. I settled on a newer industrial model LD player with the digital audio, no more screeching on the AC3 discs! Doubles as a really big CD player too! :mrgreen: