8 ms·

I find it quite fascinating how long tailed single use technologies last. It's been 24 years, but if you encounter a N64, it's still safe to assume that you can

I find it quite fascinating how long tailed single use technologies last. It's been 24 years, but if you encounter a N64, it's still safe to assume that you can flip the switch and be playing. Whereas the multipurpose OG iPhone isn't even a good paperweight because it has dated styling. And it's not just electronics. The Browning M2 is still in service. It's one job is to deliver reliable .50cal rounds. Versus the m16/4 or m246, which are constantly under scrutiny because they promised multirole capability. Aviation, B-52 is projected for 100 years of service.

krtkush 8y ago
> Versus the m16/4 or m246, which are constantly under scrutiny because they promised multirole capability. F-35 too comes to mind.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  I considered mentioned the A-10 and it's "replacement", but they're starting to get it together.
tonyarkles 8y ago
Yeah, some military stuff has pretty impressive longevity. I’ve got a surplus Lee-Enfield No4 Mk I that my grandpa gave me years ago. Stamped 1943 on the receiver. I didn’t realize until a few months ago that these are now considered vintage collector’s rifles... I’ve just been using it as a great deer rifle all these years!
- huffmsa 8y ago
  I think it was the US Marine Corps who issued and reissued M1911 frames printed for WW2 until the pistol was finally phased out of all units in the 1990s / 2000s. You could have had 3 generations of Marines using the exact same weapon. Unlikely of course, but not technically impossible.
- manfredo 8y ago
  It's pretty impressive how long firearms are expected to last given proper storage. I've got a No1 MK III stamped 1914 that still functions alright - doesn't group so well due to a less-than ideal bore but the bolt and magazine shoot fine. People still shoot martini-henry rifles.
patrickk 8y ago
The iPod classics are also wonderful single purpose devices that last a long time, and are quite upgradable. The software is much simpler than an iOS device, and can be changed to the open source Rockbox. You can replace nearly all the older components with cheap Chinese parts eg shiny new outer case, higher capacity battery. Then add a new circuit board so the iPod can use high capacity micro SD cards instead of the original hard drive. The result is all the advantages of the original iPod, with more storage capacity and insanely good battery life.
- smallhands 8y ago
  please give us detail on how to achieve this.i have an old ipod that i will love to use again.
  - patrickk 8y ago
    Hey sure. I am delighted with how my project turned out, an old iPod is fantastic in the car, gym, while travelling without data allowance etc. I hadn't modded an iPod before this and it worked out ok. This has some details: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/86q47c/i_revived_an_old_ipod_classic_6th_generation_3k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/86q47c/i_revived_an_ol... Get an iPod classic, 5.5 gen if possiible (best DAC, for a nice warm sound)[1] A broken one, as long as it's not totally physically destroyed, is one way to go from ebay. Get an offical iFlash device, I got the Quad with slots for up to 4 SD cards [2] Get some large capacity micro SD cards (x4 slots in the Quad, meaning several TBs are possible, for relatively cheap as the cards are getting cheaper by the day) Upgrade the battery, if desired, optional but highly recommended [3] Replace the front + back covers, clickwheel, screen as desired (pay attention to thin and thick back covers) [4] For instructions on opening the case correctly, and replacing the parts, look on Youtube there's a bunch of decent videos explaining the process. Look into installing rockbox[5], an open source firmware. It supports loads of audio formats and let's you escape the cluthes of itunes, to a much nicer application like Musicbee. WARNING for some reason, rockbox never worked correctly with my iPod 5.5 gen. I reinstalled several times, but songs would constantly skip while playing, even though they were fine on any other device. Therefore, I wiped rockbox again back to the Apple factory firmware, and everything works fine. I even figured out a way to sync Musicbee with the default Apple firmware. If you really want to go nuts, you can install a bluetooth transmittor inside the newly freed up iPod case[6] I read though that the bluetooth has limited range inside the metal case, and it runs the battery down much more quickly. [1] https://macintoshhowto.com/ipod/which-ipod-has-the-best-audio-quality.html https://macintoshhowto.com/ipod/which-ipod-has-the-best-audi... [2] https://www.iflash.xyz/ https://www.iflash.xyz/ [3] https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20190421103138&SearchText=ipod+battery https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...] [4] (note these links are random examples, pay attention to the ipod generation you wish to purchase for) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Thick-Metal-Back-Housing-Case-Cover-Audio-Jack-Hold-Switch-Flex-Bottom-Bezel-for-iPod/32844995560.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.9.6a8e744bPwh749&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=eb0913a0-8975-4ade-a77e-ff21a485a714-1&algo_pvid=eb0913a0-8975-4ade-a77e-ff21a485a714&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Thick-Metal-Back-Hous... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Black-Front-Faceplate-Housing-Case-Cover-Lens-Clickwheel-Central-Button-for-iPod-6th-7th-gen/32838054832.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.23.6941559eModHaB&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=0d351fb8-174e-49ea-ba3b-f7004d130424-3&algo_pvid=0d351fb8-174e-49ea-ba3b-f7004d130424&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Black-Front-Faceplate... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Click-Wheel-Key-Button-Replacement-Clickwheel-Flex-Ribbon-Cable-For-iPod-Classic-6th-7th-gen-80GB/32970935331.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.91.69953b53przRvK&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=66a81c29-c223-4346-95c4-eb0fe23d5c9b-13&algo_pvid=66a81c29-c223-4346-95c4-eb0fe23d5c9b&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Click-Wheel-Key-Button-Repla... [5] https://www.rockbox.org/ https://www.rockbox.org/ [6] https://www.instructables.com/id/Mod-Your-5G-Video-iPod-With-Internal-Bluetooth/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Mod-Your-5G-Video-iPod-With...
tyingq 8y ago
50+ years in service for the M16 though.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Yeah but with quite a few revisions to get it to where it is now. To be fair, the original design was ruined by committees of bureaucrats and "rules because rules." I wouldn't take an original M16. But I would take an original M2 or M1911.
  - saulrh 8y ago
    > original M2 ...Er. Going and looking at the wiki page... Do you mean the M1921, which was a water-cooled fixed-barrel machine gun that had originally been designed to fire .30-06 and was repeatedly trialed by the military between 1921 and 1937 and rejected for being generally terrible? Or do you mean the version that the military eventually adopted circa 1935 as the M2, which was still water-cooled but not quite as terrible as the other options? Or do you mean the air-cooled variants that were finally developed circa 1940 to put on tanks? Like, I understand the point about the 1911, but even there I have a feeling that if I went digging I'd find a decade of prototypes. There are a lot of patterns out there that people think were first set to paper in their final, perfect form but are actually the result of twenty years of iterative refinement.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      We're not debating iterative refinement here, it's about what the first wide release was. The CIA guys in Nam loved the early M16 because it came with IMR rounds. Yes the M2 had a few hiccups in development, specifically related to making it mountable in more applications. But it's singular intent to sling 1/2" lead downrange was never compromised.
      - saulrh 8y ago
        "A few hiccups" and "never compromised"? It took fifteen years of refinement to make it deployable, then a war popped up and it turned out to be totally useless even in the role they'd intended for it. A gun's "singular purpose" is not to sling lead. It's to sling lead at an enemy, which means slinging lead on a battlefield, and those are far more complex and multifarious tasks than you're making them out to be. The navy ditched it because it turned out to be useless against WWII-tech aircraft. The army was about to ditch it because the water-cooling setup was too finicky and vulnerable and it couldn't be mounted on anything useful. You find the same story in the history of almost literally every piece of weapons technology. There are hundreds of guns out there that are fantastic pieces of focused lead-slinging intent but cost four times as much as the alternatives and are so heavy that you're better off literally carrying two cheaper and less-reliable guns and just swapping when one of them jams. It's the same way with literally any technology. Yeah, Peter Watt had the great idea to condense steam in a different chamber so you didn't have to re-heat the cylinder after every stroke. He then spent twelve years figuring out how to improve the piston seal so this idea actually worked. TCP is simple, right? Literally all it does is transfer packets. Sequence numbers, three-way-handshake, resend unacked, done. Except that we then spent thirty years learning how to fine-tune all the parameters and if you get any of them wrong (TTL, backoff, window length, fast-open) you can't actually transfer any packets. Multipole electromechanical relay: AND or OR. Spring, magnet, connection. Not fast, reliable, cheap, or efficient enough to be an improvement over analog mechanical calculators until almost a hundred years after their invention. I, Pencil: Put graphite on paper. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
theoh 8y ago
If N64 games are still worth playing, it's surely equally true that there's really nothing about the styling of the original iPhone that makes it an eyesore. It's just obsolete.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Zelda OoT and Majora's Mask are still extremely playable. I go through them probably once a year. And you've got Mario Kart 64, the best version for playing Kario Mart (finish a beer before the race ends), Mario Party 2, smash 64. On and on. The iPhone isn't an eyesore, but it's definitely of it's time.
  - sosborn 8y ago
    > The iPhone isn't an eyesore, but it's definitely of it's time. I'd argue that the same applies to the N64 hardware.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      And I'd agree. But the N64 still functions exactly the same today as it did when it was released. It still does it's job. It will still entertain 1-4 players. Same with the S/NES. How usable is an original iPhone? Is it acceptable as a phone these days? Is it even functional? Hell, can you even get the OS image it needs and software to run on it? Nintendo still has people on staff at the 1-800 number listed on their machines who will help you troubleshoot your system.[1] They don't have replacement parts anymore though, but they might help you source some. Good design just keeps working and working. Style might change, but a design's utility should not. [1] http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/random_nintendos_snes-era_troubleshooting_phone_line_still_works_troubleshooting_still_given http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/random_nintendos_sn...
      - tinus_hn 8y ago
        Perhaps more importantly, does it do anything a modern iPhone can’t? An original Nintendo 64 is the only way to run Nintendo 64 games unemulated.
taude 8y ago
Or those Beaver [1] sea planes still in use commercially around the country, and by pilots in Alaska. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_DHC-2_Beaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_DHC-2_Beav...
awild 8y ago
Your comment made me think of the musician paradox who for some reason favors using a c64 for his live shows and it's not a gimmick like a 8bit music, you really don't hear it in the music. https://youtu.be/2e0wg_618ac https://youtu.be/2e0wg_618ac
- Max-q 8y ago
  That's an Amiga 1200 ;)
sehugg 8y ago
You just have to pry open your Zelda cart to solder on a new battery for the static RAM :)
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Mine actually hasn't died yet. My Pokemon red and blue carts need new batteries, but OoT is still going. Wouldn't expect any less from the GOAT. (You kids these days wont get why it's the GOAT, but it is).
  - dontbenebby 8y ago
    What is this "GOAT"? Is it what kicked the llama's ass? ;)
    - taejo 8y ago
      Greatest Of All Time
      - dontbenebby 8y ago
        I know. I was dropping my own old reference :) https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/20/after-15-years-of-whipping-the-llamas-ass-winamp-shuts-down/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/20/after-15-years-of-whipping...
        vanderZwan 8y ago
        Appropriately, the original Winamp is a pretty good contender for GOAT
        dontbenebby 8y ago
        I especially miss the old skins: https://archive.org/details/winampskins https://archive.org/details/winampskins The late 90s/early 2000s had a very unique and IMO under appreciated aesthetic.
zyngaro 8y ago
Longevity in aviation in particular is fascinating. The Douglas DC3 aircraft for example is a more than 70 years old design and is still in use. If it works don’t fix it.
- mjhagen 8y ago
  Or, rather: if it’s fixable, fix it, don’t throw it away.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  Ham radio and SWL are similar. I was given a hand-me-down Swan transceiver which is 40 years old and couldn't believe my luck. To have a maintained and working 1950s or 1940s radio typically gets you fine results and some geek cred as well.
chubot 8y ago
Didn't Elon Musk say that NASA had plan to buy rockets from the 70's or 80's from the Soviets to fly some missions in the 2000's? That is, not the DESIGNs from the 70's or 80's, but the actual rockets themselves! I don't know much about space flight but I found that to be fascinating.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  That was actually his plan in the early days of SpaceX. But the missiles were too expensive, so they started from scratch. But a lot of commercial launchers are incremental improvements on old designs. The Delta family is based on the Thor ICBM. Soyuz was first launched in 1966, and it's the only way to get humans to the ISS at the moment.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...
- tigeba 8y ago
  Orbital Sciences Antares rocket uses previously mothballed Russian NK-33 engines. These were originally manufactured for the Russian version of the Apollo program but never flown. These are 70's vintage engines that get refurbished and launched. Also notable they are closed cycle engines, which was seen as somewhat impossible to achieve at the time. SpaceX newest engine uses the same concept, probably inspired by these engines. Documentary about this on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80119093 https://www.netflix.com/title/80119093 I think the documentary makes some great points about how limitations drive creative solutions.
segfaultbuserr 8y ago
The Z80 microprocessor was designed in 1976. 43 years later, its CMOS version is still being produced and can be purchased new in SMT packages. Intel MCS-8051 was designed in 1980, and today you can still find brand new chips that implement the almost-original version. Also, the original version of NE555 timer, the LM741 opamp, the LM317 voltage regulators were still being produced in large quantity and used until recently, despite the availability of their better CMOS counterparts. One can argue that their continued proliferation in the 21st century was due to the large number of legacy designs and legacy systems, that's true. But, yet, few still use 8080, 8085, or some forgotten chips from the same era. So apparently there's another crucial reason for the success of these long-life chip: they were made to do one thing, and they did it well, and still are still doing well in low-lost devices.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
Game Boy didn't have state of the art hardware when it released, it had reliable hardware. Its competitors had color screen and what not; they all failed.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Common mistake the phone market is still making today. People don't buy for the tech, they buy for the [games | experience | brand]
- tlburke 8y ago
  Yeah the original BW gameboy used a modified Z80 which was old even in 1989. It took 4 AA batteries and had twice the battery life of the 6-battery (?) Game Gear.
Bayart 8y ago
Well, there's always the caveat of capacitors. Don't expect a Game Gear for example to work well without a fair bit of soldering.
blackflame7000 8y ago
A lot of electronics between the years of 1999 and 2007 suffered from capacitor plague which severely reduced the effective lifespan of the device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

krtkush 8y ago

> Versus the m16/4 or m246, which are constantly under scrutiny because they promised multirole capability. F-35 too comes to mind.

huffmsa 8y ago
I considered mentioned the A-10 and it's "replacement", but they're starting to get it together.

tonyarkles 8y ago

Yeah, some military stuff has pretty impressive longevity. I’ve got a surplus Lee-Enfield No4 Mk I that my grandpa gave me years ago. Stamped 1943 on the receiver. I didn’t realize until a few months ago that these are now considered vintage collector’s rifles... I’ve just been using it as a great deer rifle all these years!

huffmsa 8y ago
I think it was the US Marine Corps who issued and reissued M1911 frames printed for WW2 until the pistol was finally phased out of all units in the 1990s / 2000s. You could have had 3 generations of Marines using the exact same weapon. Unlikely of course, but not technically impossible.
manfredo 8y ago
It's pretty impressive how long firearms are expected to last given proper storage. I've got a No1 MK III stamped 1914 that still functions alright - doesn't group so well due to a less-than ideal bore but the bolt and magazine shoot fine. People still shoot martini-henry rifles.

patrickk 8y ago

The iPod classics are also wonderful single purpose devices that last a long time, and are quite upgradable. The software is much simpler than an iOS device, and can be changed to the open source Rockbox. You can replace nearly all the older components with cheap Chinese parts eg shiny new outer case, higher capacity battery. Then add a new circuit board so the iPod can use high capacity micro SD cards instead of the original hard drive. The result is all the advantages of the original iPod, with more storage capacity and insanely good battery life.

smallhands 8y ago
please give us detail on how to achieve this.i have an old ipod that i will love to use again.
- patrickk 8y ago
  Hey sure. I am delighted with how my project turned out, an old iPod is fantastic in the car, gym, while travelling without data allowance etc. I hadn't modded an iPod before this and it worked out ok. This has some details: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/86q47c/i_revived_an_old_ipod_classic_6th_generation_3k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/86q47c/i_revived_an_ol... Get an iPod classic, 5.5 gen if possiible (best DAC, for a nice warm sound)[1] A broken one, as long as it's not totally physically destroyed, is one way to go from ebay. Get an offical iFlash device, I got the Quad with slots for up to 4 SD cards [2] Get some large capacity micro SD cards (x4 slots in the Quad, meaning several TBs are possible, for relatively cheap as the cards are getting cheaper by the day) Upgrade the battery, if desired, optional but highly recommended [3] Replace the front + back covers, clickwheel, screen as desired (pay attention to thin and thick back covers) [4] For instructions on opening the case correctly, and replacing the parts, look on Youtube there's a bunch of decent videos explaining the process. Look into installing rockbox[5], an open source firmware. It supports loads of audio formats and let's you escape the cluthes of itunes, to a much nicer application like Musicbee. WARNING for some reason, rockbox never worked correctly with my iPod 5.5 gen. I reinstalled several times, but songs would constantly skip while playing, even though they were fine on any other device. Therefore, I wiped rockbox again back to the Apple factory firmware, and everything works fine. I even figured out a way to sync Musicbee with the default Apple firmware. If you really want to go nuts, you can install a bluetooth transmittor inside the newly freed up iPod case[6] I read though that the bluetooth has limited range inside the metal case, and it runs the battery down much more quickly. [1] https://macintoshhowto.com/ipod/which-ipod-has-the-best-audio-quality.html https://macintoshhowto.com/ipod/which-ipod-has-the-best-audi... [2] https://www.iflash.xyz/ https://www.iflash.xyz/ [3] https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20190421103138&SearchText=ipod+battery https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...] [4] (note these links are random examples, pay attention to the ipod generation you wish to purchase for) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Thick-Metal-Back-Housing-Case-Cover-Audio-Jack-Hold-Switch-Flex-Bottom-Bezel-for-iPod/32844995560.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.9.6a8e744bPwh749&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=eb0913a0-8975-4ade-a77e-ff21a485a714-1&algo_pvid=eb0913a0-8975-4ade-a77e-ff21a485a714&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Thick-Metal-Back-Hous... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Black-Front-Faceplate-Housing-Case-Cover-Lens-Clickwheel-Central-Button-for-iPod-6th-7th-gen/32838054832.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.23.6941559eModHaB&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=0d351fb8-174e-49ea-ba3b-f7004d130424-3&algo_pvid=0d351fb8-174e-49ea-ba3b-f7004d130424&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Onjess-Black-Front-Faceplate... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Click-Wheel-Key-Button-Replacement-Clickwheel-Flex-Ribbon-Cable-For-iPod-Classic-6th-7th-gen-80GB/32970935331.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.91.69953b53przRvK&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10084_453_10083_454_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_537_10302_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_90,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=66a81c29-c223-4346-95c4-eb0fe23d5c9b-13&algo_pvid=66a81c29-c223-4346-95c4-eb0fe23d5c9b&transAbTest=ae803_5 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Click-Wheel-Key-Button-Repla... [5] https://www.rockbox.org/ https://www.rockbox.org/ [6] https://www.instructables.com/id/Mod-Your-5G-Video-iPod-With-Internal-Bluetooth/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Mod-Your-5G-Video-iPod-With...

tyingq 8y ago

50+ years in service for the M16 though.

huffmsa 8y ago
Yeah but with quite a few revisions to get it to where it is now. To be fair, the original design was ruined by committees of bureaucrats and "rules because rules." I wouldn't take an original M16. But I would take an original M2 or M1911.
- saulrh 8y ago
  > original M2 ...Er. Going and looking at the wiki page... Do you mean the M1921, which was a water-cooled fixed-barrel machine gun that had originally been designed to fire .30-06 and was repeatedly trialed by the military between 1921 and 1937 and rejected for being generally terrible? Or do you mean the version that the military eventually adopted circa 1935 as the M2, which was still water-cooled but not quite as terrible as the other options? Or do you mean the air-cooled variants that were finally developed circa 1940 to put on tanks? Like, I understand the point about the 1911, but even there I have a feeling that if I went digging I'd find a decade of prototypes. There are a lot of patterns out there that people think were first set to paper in their final, perfect form but are actually the result of twenty years of iterative refinement.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    We're not debating iterative refinement here, it's about what the first wide release was. The CIA guys in Nam loved the early M16 because it came with IMR rounds. Yes the M2 had a few hiccups in development, specifically related to making it mountable in more applications. But it's singular intent to sling 1/2" lead downrange was never compromised.
    - saulrh 8y ago
      "A few hiccups" and "never compromised"? It took fifteen years of refinement to make it deployable, then a war popped up and it turned out to be totally useless even in the role they'd intended for it. A gun's "singular purpose" is not to sling lead. It's to sling lead at an enemy, which means slinging lead on a battlefield, and those are far more complex and multifarious tasks than you're making them out to be. The navy ditched it because it turned out to be useless against WWII-tech aircraft. The army was about to ditch it because the water-cooling setup was too finicky and vulnerable and it couldn't be mounted on anything useful. You find the same story in the history of almost literally every piece of weapons technology. There are hundreds of guns out there that are fantastic pieces of focused lead-slinging intent but cost four times as much as the alternatives and are so heavy that you're better off literally carrying two cheaper and less-reliable guns and just swapping when one of them jams. It's the same way with literally any technology. Yeah, Peter Watt had the great idea to condense steam in a different chamber so you didn't have to re-heat the cylinder after every stroke. He then spent twelve years figuring out how to improve the piston seal so this idea actually worked. TCP is simple, right? Literally all it does is transfer packets. Sequence numbers, three-way-handshake, resend unacked, done. Except that we then spent thirty years learning how to fine-tune all the parameters and if you get any of them wrong (TTL, backoff, window length, fast-open) you can't actually transfer any packets. Multipole electromechanical relay: AND or OR. Spring, magnet, connection. Not fast, reliable, cheap, or efficient enough to be an improvement over analog mechanical calculators until almost a hundred years after their invention. I, Pencil: Put graphite on paper. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil

theoh 8y ago

If N64 games are still worth playing, it's surely equally true that there's really nothing about the styling of the original iPhone that makes it an eyesore. It's just obsolete.

huffmsa 8y ago
Zelda OoT and Majora's Mask are still extremely playable. I go through them probably once a year. And you've got Mario Kart 64, the best version for playing Kario Mart (finish a beer before the race ends), Mario Party 2, smash 64. On and on. The iPhone isn't an eyesore, but it's definitely of it's time.
- sosborn 8y ago
  > The iPhone isn't an eyesore, but it's definitely of it's time. I'd argue that the same applies to the N64 hardware.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    And I'd agree. But the N64 still functions exactly the same today as it did when it was released. It still does it's job. It will still entertain 1-4 players. Same with the S/NES. How usable is an original iPhone? Is it acceptable as a phone these days? Is it even functional? Hell, can you even get the OS image it needs and software to run on it? Nintendo still has people on staff at the 1-800 number listed on their machines who will help you troubleshoot your system.[1] They don't have replacement parts anymore though, but they might help you source some. Good design just keeps working and working. Style might change, but a design's utility should not. [1] http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/random_nintendos_snes-era_troubleshooting_phone_line_still_works_troubleshooting_still_given http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/random_nintendos_sn...
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      Perhaps more importantly, does it do anything a modern iPhone can’t? An original Nintendo 64 is the only way to run Nintendo 64 games unemulated.

taude 8y ago

Or those Beaver [1] sea planes still in use commercially around the country, and by pilots in Alaska. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_DHC-2_Beaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_DHC-2_Beav...

awild 8y ago

Your comment made me think of the musician paradox who for some reason favors using a c64 for his live shows and it's not a gimmick like a 8bit music, you really don't hear it in the music. https://youtu.be/2e0wg_618ac https://youtu.be/2e0wg_618ac

Max-q 8y ago
That's an Amiga 1200 ;)

sehugg 8y ago

You just have to pry open your Zelda cart to solder on a new battery for the static RAM :)

huffmsa 8y ago
Mine actually hasn't died yet. My Pokemon red and blue carts need new batteries, but OoT is still going. Wouldn't expect any less from the GOAT. (You kids these days wont get why it's the GOAT, but it is).
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  What is this "GOAT"? Is it what kicked the llama's ass? ;)
  - taejo 8y ago
    Greatest Of All Time
    - dontbenebby 8y ago
      I know. I was dropping my own old reference :) https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/20/after-15-years-of-whipping-the-llamas-ass-winamp-shuts-down/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/20/after-15-years-of-whipping...
      - vanderZwan 8y ago
        Appropriately, the original Winamp is a pretty good contender for GOAT
        dontbenebby 8y ago
        I especially miss the old skins: https://archive.org/details/winampskins https://archive.org/details/winampskins The late 90s/early 2000s had a very unique and IMO under appreciated aesthetic.

zyngaro 8y ago

Longevity in aviation in particular is fascinating. The Douglas DC3 aircraft for example is a more than 70 years old design and is still in use. If it works don’t fix it.

mjhagen 8y ago
Or, rather: if it’s fixable, fix it, don’t throw it away.
themodelplumber 8y ago
Ham radio and SWL are similar. I was given a hand-me-down Swan transceiver which is 40 years old and couldn't believe my luck. To have a maintained and working 1950s or 1940s radio typically gets you fine results and some geek cred as well.

chubot 8y ago

Didn't Elon Musk say that NASA had plan to buy rockets from the 70's or 80's from the Soviets to fly some missions in the 2000's? That is, not the DESIGNs from the 70's or 80's, but the actual rockets themselves! I don't know much about space flight but I found that to be fascinating.

huffmsa 8y ago
That was actually his plan in the early days of SpaceX. But the missiles were too expensive, so they started from scratch. But a lot of commercial launchers are incremental improvements on old designs. The Delta family is based on the Thor ICBM. Soyuz was first launched in 1966, and it's the only way to get humans to the ISS at the moment.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...
tigeba 8y ago
Orbital Sciences Antares rocket uses previously mothballed Russian NK-33 engines. These were originally manufactured for the Russian version of the Apollo program but never flown. These are 70's vintage engines that get refurbished and launched. Also notable they are closed cycle engines, which was seen as somewhat impossible to achieve at the time. SpaceX newest engine uses the same concept, probably inspired by these engines. Documentary about this on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80119093 https://www.netflix.com/title/80119093 I think the documentary makes some great points about how limitations drive creative solutions.

segfaultbuserr 8y ago

The Z80 microprocessor was designed in 1976. 43 years later, its CMOS version is still being produced and can be purchased new in SMT packages. Intel MCS-8051 was designed in 1980, and today you can still find brand new chips that implement the almost-original version. Also, the original version of NE555 timer, the LM741 opamp, the LM317 voltage regulators were still being produced in large quantity and used until recently, despite the availability of their better CMOS counterparts. One can argue that their continued proliferation in the 21st century was due to the large number of legacy designs and legacy systems, that's true. But, yet, few still use 8080, 8085, or some forgotten chips from the same era. So apparently there's another crucial reason for the success of these long-life chip: they were made to do one thing, and they did it well, and still are still doing well in low-lost devices.

deleted 8y ago
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Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

Game Boy didn't have state of the art hardware when it released, it had reliable hardware. Its competitors had color screen and what not; they all failed.

huffmsa 8y ago
Common mistake the phone market is still making today. People don't buy for the tech, they buy for the [games | experience | brand]
tlburke 8y ago
Yeah the original BW gameboy used a modified Z80 which was old even in 1989. It took 4 AA batteries and had twice the battery life of the 6-battery (?) Game Gear.

Bayart 8y ago

Well, there's always the caveat of capacitors. Don't expect a Game Gear for example to work well without a fair bit of soldering.

blackflame7000 8y ago

A lot of electronics between the years of 1999 and 2007 suffered from capacitor plague which severely reduced the effective lifespan of the device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague