Pulled it out to type up a repair manual and it fired right up, no driver issues on Windows 10. Took me 3 hours to find a PS/2 to USB adapter at a thrift store though - has anyone else had luck with ancient peripherals just working?
Bought a 5-pack of those 64GB flash drives for $12 last month and tried to pull old family photos off a dead laptop, they corrupted the files worse than the original hard drive. Has anyone else ruined a backup this way or am I the only sucker who fell for it?
My old Palm Pilot Vx had been my daily driver for years, but that Tuesday the screen just went blank and never came back... I was in the middle of a coffee shop in Austin when it died, and I lost six months of notes and contacts. Has anyone else had a gadget just quit on them without warning like that?
Found a Zip 250 drive at a thrift store in Phoenix for $80 a month ago. Thought it'd be cool to offload some old files onto the disks I had sitting around. Worked fine for a week then started making that clicking sound of death. Guess that's why nobody uses those things anymore. Anyone else get burned by old storage tech?
Back in 2008, my uncle gave me a box of floppy disks and said to keep them for 'real backups.' I thought he was crazy. Fast forward to last month, I was trying to recover some old family photos from a crashed hard drive. Nothing worked until I dug out that box. One of those floppy disks had a copy of the only photo of my grandma from 1987. So yeah, he was onto something with physical media. Has anyone else found old data on forgotten formats like Zip disks or MiniDiscs?
Found my old Motorola Razr last week while cleaning out my closet in Chicago. Plugged it in just for fun and the battery somehow held enough charge to show the startup animation. It took me back to 2009 when I used to text my buddies on AIM through it. Has anyone else randomly found an old phone that still works or am I just lucky?
I pulled it out of a box labeled "junk" for $5, charged it overnight, and it fired right up with 3,000 songs from 2005. My iPhone glitches on playlists daily, but this 20 year old clunker handles everything smooth. Is the simplicity of old tech actually better, or did I just get lucky with a survivor?
I swear I downloaded a cracked version of Photoshop from a mirrored link and it actually worked, then the whole thing vanished again like it never happened. Has anyone else stumbled onto a dead app that briefly rose from the grave?
I was at my uncle's garage last week helping him clean out junk and found his old Sony projection TV from like 1998. I was about to trash it but he stopped me and said those things had a specific smell because of the cooling fans pulling dust through the vents and burning it slowly over years. He's an old TV repair guy from back in the day and he told me the dust buildup inside those things was basically a fire hazard waiting to happen but nobody ever thought about it because the sets were so heavy nobody moved them. I never really thought about old electronics having a personality like that, a smell that dates them. It made me wonder what other weird quirks old tech has that we just forgot about. Anybody else notice a specific smell or sound from old gadgets that takes you right back?
Bought it in 2010 because I thought it'd beat the iPod. Battery gave out after 18 months. Microsoft stopped supporting the software, couldn't even sync music. Wasted another $50 on a replacement battery kit that never arrived. Anyone else get burned on dead platform hardware like this?
It took me 20 minutes to find it on a dusty hard drive but it loaded right up with the MP3s I'd already forgotten I had - has anyone else had an ancient skin or plugin that just refused to die?
I found a Sony TC-WE475 at a yard sale for $50 last weekend. The belts were shot and it sounded like a dying cat. Grabbed a $3 tape head cleaning kit from the dollar store and ran it through 5 times and it actually plays smooth now. Has anyone else fixed dead audio gear with just cheap cleaning supplies?
It wouldn't charge no matter what cable I used, so I pried it open with a butter knife and found the battery all swollen and crusty, anyone know if there's a place that still sells replacements for these things?
I kept my Netflix DVD plan until 2021, paying $10 a month for discs I barely watched. After 6 months of renting nothing, I finally cancelled it and realized I'd wasted about $60 on a service I forgot I even had. On one hand, the selection was huge and no streaming service had those older movies. On the other hand, who actually waits for mail in 2021 when you can stream instantly? Anyone else stick with a dead tech service longer than they should have because of nostalgia?
I dug out my Palm Pilot V from 2001 last weekend and charged it up, totally expecting the screen to be dead or the battery to explode. Turns out it still synced with my laptop after I found a serial-to-USB adapter, and all my old contacts from college are still on there. Anyone else have an old gadget that just refused to die no matter how long it sat?
I needed a break from doomscrolling, so I grabbed a Palm m500 off eBay for about $20 back in September. Figured it would be a decent organizer and maybe calm my brain down. Compared to using my old iPhone 6 on airplane mode with just basic apps, the Palm was way better at keeping me focused. No internet at all means you actually use the calendar and notes for real. Has anyone else tried a similarly old gadget for digital minimalism and found it worked or totally failed?
Bought a Dreamcast off FB marketplace for $30 thinking it could double as a retro game machine and a way to watch old DVD rips. The games are fine but getting video files to play is a joke. You need a specific boot disc and an ancient version of some media player software that barely works on modern routers. Had to burn 3 different CD-Rs because the format has to be just right. Is there a better way to do this or should I just give up and use a Raspberry Pi like everyone else?
Who still has a machine that can even read these things, or are they just waiting for the eventual retro revival that never actually comes?
Last month I dug out my 20-year-old Creative Zen Micro from a drawer in my parents' basement, and it wouldn't turn on at all. I spent a whole evening online hunting down a replacement battery for $12, and after a tricky swap it fired right up with all 500 of my high school playlist songs still on it. Has anyone else brought an old gadget back to life with a simple part swap like this?
I was reading a banking security report from last month and it said there are still about 95,000 ATMs running XP. Can you believe that? I remember when they ended support in 2014 and everyone joked about it, but turns out the joke never really ended. Does your bank still have those old blue screen ATMs or did they finally upgrade?
Drove from Charlotte to Asheville last weekend using Google Maps and got rerouted three times for traffic I couldn't see, and I'd rather have my printed turn-by-turn list that I wrote myself and knew was staying on the route I picked.
Back in 2008 I could drive through rural Vermont and hold a call on my Motorola RAZR without a single drop, but my current iPhone drops calls in my own living room. It took a road trip last summer where I missed three important calls in a row to really hit home how much we gave up for apps and cameras. Anyone else keep an old phone around just for making actual calls?
Pulled them out last Sunday after a rain leak made me check storage. Three of them still worked in my old USB drive, had a half-finished pixel art of a dragon on one. Anyone else ever find old digital stuff that actually survived?
I was digging through a bin of tangled chargers and random cables when I spotted a Palm Pilot IIIxe buried under a broken keyboard. The guy at the counter said they get one in maybe every 3 months, but nobody buys them. Has anyone else had luck finding weird old PDAs in the wild?