Technology..

[Ming the Merciless]

Yeah called technical debt as the job was done quickly and supposedly cheaper at the time, but bites you in the bum multiple times since. Rather than doing it properly when the time come. Building proper modern stuff on top of legacy isn’t hard but you need to invest properly when you do it and not some end user dreamt up cludge Cause it’s “quick”

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Of course all the GUI applications that were built by contractors that hung off the side of the system were unfailingly rubbish.

 

[ColinJ]

Hmm, @ColinJ not been really following this, but. Microsoft do a 'Your Phone' app for W10 and a phone app not surprisingly called 'Your Phone Companion'. Works on my Samsung phone and desktop.

Thanks, but MS say that the app needs the phone to be on at least Android 7.0. Mine has version 6.0 and there is no official upgrade beyond that.

I'm sure that I will work it out in the end, but it is a pain having to mess about to do something so basic!

 

[presta]

In 1980 I got my first PC at work, a Hewlett Packard HP85. The US price was $3250. It had a massive 16K of RAM. View attachment 502072

I used to use an HP85 too, but mainly I used the 9826:

...and a VAX 11/780

 

[ColinJ]

I'm sure that I will work it out in the end, but it is a pain having to mess about to do something so basic!

Ha - I have finally managed to make the connection. After a lot of Googling I found somebody suggesting installing various Android .apk files on the phone, one at a time, until one of them worked!

These files were to be found in the HTC Sync Manager folder on the laptop. Unfortunately, I couldn't just transfer them directly to the phone over the USB lead because that was the thing that wasn't connecting properly!

I took an alternative route - I zipped the files up, transferred them to OneDrive (because the zip file was too big to email), then emailed myself a link to the cloud file.

I went onto the phone, accessed the cloud file, and tried installing the .apk files but most of them wouldn't install. I found that the one labelled 7 DID install, but... didn't work!

I thought I'd give Win 10 the chance to untwist its knickers, so I rebooted the laptop, reattached the USB cable to the phone and... it connected!

I did what I have been trying to do, which was to update my prototype games app on the phone and can now do some testing.

I'm hoping that the phone will connect reliably in future so I don't have to do this every time! Yes - damn technology...

 

[slowmotion]

I used to use an HP85 too, but mainly I used the 9826:
View attachment 502190
...and a VAX 11/780
View attachment 502191

My HP85 was hooked up to an industrial plant controller, the kind of box of tricks that controlled industrial processes in cement works etc. All I had to do was measure and store the readings from a couple of hundred temperature sensors. Not a complicated task really, but in 1980 the hardware cost upward of £5000.
Now it can be done with a cheap Chinese Arduino clone costing about £6 and a handful of components from CPC.
It's gone bonkers!

 

[presta]

I used the 9826 to control this HP8505 network analyser among other things. The price was about $56,000, including over a $1000 for a pair of 24" APC-7 test leads.

I don't know how much our HP8568 spectrum analyser cost, but it seems that they were selling a retro-fitted upgrade for it at $40,000:

 

[slowmotion]

I used the 9826 to control this HP8505 network analyser among other things. The price was about $56,000, including over a $1000 for a pair of 24" APC-7 test leads.

View attachment 502195

I don't know how much our HP8568 spectrum analyser cost, but it seems that they were selling a retro-fitted upgrade for it at $40,000:

View attachment 502196

You can probably buy a £10 app for your smartphone that has all the functionality of that ^^^^^^^^ stuff now.
It's why my partner and I folded up our 35 year old company three years ago and walked away. We'd had some good times, had a lot of fun and made some clever stuff in our day, but there was no way we could compete with the advance in technology.

 

[ColinJ]

You can probably buy a £10 app for your smartphone that has all the functionality of that ^^^^^^^^ stuff now.
It's why my partner and I folded up our 35 year old company three years ago and walked away. We'd had some good times, had a lot of fun and made some clever stuff in our day, but there was no way we could compete with the advance in technology.

I got into electronics as a teenager because I could build things that were twice as good for half the price. By the time I finished my electronics degree it was already obvious that hobby electronics was pretty much dead and software was the thing of the future. In fact, my final year project was my last electronics design!

When I was a teenager I told a friend that by the time we were old men we would be able to buy something that fitted in suitcase that would let us record and watch TV shows, create, store and play music, include an advanced calculator, be able to store many encyclopaedias worth of information etc. and would only cost about £25,000. He laughed at me because it seemed like an impossible fantasy. The smartphone came along 20 years sooner than that, for a hundredth of the price, and I hadn't even thought of mobile phone networks or the Internet!

It is pretty scary to think what will be possible in 50 years time...

 

[Shut Up Legs]

<pedant> terra = planet earth, tera = trillion </pedant>
So, terabyte.
I'm enjoying this nerdiness!

Not to be confused with tebibyte (for those of us who use powers of 2, not 10).

 

[wheresthetorch]

My work used to use MP76, but the lack of KIPs meant only GS applications would run, as long as through a Sigma portal. How we laughed when one of the guys tried to use a counterflux via the 47T loop!

 

[DCBassman]

Not to be confused with tebibyte (for those of us who use powers of 2, not 10).

Blimey, no idea about powers of two...

My work used to use MP76, but the lack of KIPs meant only GS applications would run, as long as through a Sigma portal. How we laughed when one of the guys tried to use a counterflux via the 47T loop!

Ok, first prize! Even if total made-up nonsense, the nerd-speak contest is done!

 

[Moon bunny]

Not to be confused with tebibyte (for those of us who use powers of 2, not 10).

Sounds like a good name for a cat.

 

[presta]

You can probably buy a £10 app for your smartphone that has all the functionality of that ^^^^^^^^ stuff now.
It's why my partner and I folded up our 35 year old company three years ago and walked away. We'd had some good times, had a lot of fun and made some clever stuff in our day, but there was no way we could compete with the advance in technology.

For audio maybe, but not RF. You need pretty serious performance for RF design. You can get quite cheap adaptors to turn your laptop into a scope off Amazon, but the specification is pretty poor compared to professional stuff.

 

[presta]

I got into electronics as a teenager because I could build things that were twice as good for half the price. By the time I finished my electronics degree it was already obvious that hobby electronics was pretty much dead and software was the thing of the future. In fact, my final year project was my last electronics design!

When I was a teenager I told a friend that by the time we were old men we would be able to buy something that fitted in suitcase that would let us record and watch TV shows, create, store and play music, include an advanced calculator, be able to store many encyclopaedias worth of information etc. and would only cost about £25,000. He laughed at me because it seemed like an impossible fantasy. The smartphone came along 20 years sooner than that, for a hundredth of the price, and I hadn't even thought of mobile phone networks or the Internet!

It is pretty scary to think what will be possible in 50 years time...

Nowadays making electronics stuff at home is more educational than practical. Anything that's useful enough to be worth making will already be mass produced cheaper, smaller and better than anything you can make. The first thing I ever made was a rain detector, you can even buy those now.