Vintage gadgets
If you only had an Apple-cat II to connect to the Internet, it would take you 400 days to download a DVD – here’s a collection of some really cool vintage gadgets.
Even though these two Epson printers have roughly the same size, the modern one is light years ahead of the old matrix printer (check out the enlarged print quality in the background above. Even though the quality of the printouts was bad, it was very fascinating to be able to print stuff in your home. The Epson FX-80 had a resolution of 240 x 240 dots per square inch (a quite high resolution at that time. Most of the matrix printers only had a resolution of around 62 dpi. The printer cost around $400 at that time.
To the right is a modern Epson printer for $99, capable of 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi and ultra fine 3-picoliter ink droplets.
Epson FX-80 [atarimagazines.com]
Epson Stylus Photo R220 [Epson.com]
To the left you can see one of the most classic modems ever – the Novation Apple-Cat II. It was capable of transfering data through a telephone line at 1200 bits per second – which was very fast at that time (early 1980s). It would take around 100 days to download 1 Gigabyte, hehe.
Novation CAT [Wikipedia]
The IBM 5150 to the left was introduced on August 11, 1981. It had a 4.77 MHz processor, 16K of RAM and stored data on 360KB 5.25-inch drives (optional) or cassette tape. It was capable of producing graphics in 320×200x16 colors / 640×200x2 colors or monochrome 80×25 text only. The base price was $1,565. To the right is one of todays top models, the Alienware Aurora 7500 running on a dual core Athlon 64 X2 4600+.
IBM PC [Wikipedia]
Alienware Aurora 7500 Desktop [alienware.com]
Back in the early 1980s, the Sony FX-414BE was one of the coolest gadgets you could own – it could play compact cassettes, play radio, and it had a built-in TV. Even today this one would be quite cool to carry around. Today an iPod video and a nice dock would do – even though you can’t watch live TV with the setup.
Sony FX-414BE [thevintageknob.org]
Intempo iDS-02 [advancedmp3players.co.uk]
The Sony SL-8200 was introduced in 1976 for $1295 and was a advanced Betamax video recorder. It was capable of recording up to 2 hours on one tape. It didn’t have any audio or video inputs, and the timer was optional and had to be mounted on top of the machine. The timer was capable of recording one event during the coming 24 hours. To the right is Sony’s new Blu-ray recorder BDP-S1, capable of handling resolutions up to 1920×1080p and features all available bells and whistles – but this one is only a player.
Sony SL-8200 [thevintageknob.org]
Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray home player
The coolest thing you could have in a car in the end of the 60′ and to the mid 70’s was the 8-track tape stereo, which could play the popular 8-track cartridge (surprise! hehe). In the US you could buy 8-track cartridges until the mid 80’s so it was quite a longlasting format. The 8-track was created by Bill Lear in 1964.
Above you can see one of the top models – the Pioneer QP-400 from the Quadraphonic 8-Track Car Decks page:
Quadraphonic 8-Track Car Decks [members.cox.net]
Today you can find tons of different car entertainment system, but let’s just take an example. Here’s the Pioneer AVH-P7500DVD an in-dash DVD receiver with 7″ LCD touch screen (which is retracted into the dash when it’s not used) and capabilities of delivering a stunning audio (and video) experience.
Pioneer AVH-P7500DVD [pioneerelectronics.com]
In the end of the 80’s the most popular removable storage media was the 5 1/4 inch diskette, capable of storing 360 KB (later 1200 KB). If you compare that to a big compact flash card of today, you could store close to 25 000 diskettes on ONE 8GB CompactFlash card…
The 5¼-inch minifloppy [Wikipedia.org]
SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash 8GB [Sandisk.com]
On the image above you can see a Bosch transportable phone to the left. It’s from the end of the 80’s and weighs 5.2 kg – 11.5 pounds (!) and has the following dimensions height: 26cm width: 23cm depth: 12cm. To the right is one of the smallest mobile phones of today – the Motorola RAZR V3 – weighing in at 95 grams (3.35 ounces). That means that you can carry around with a plastic bag containing 54 RAZRs instead of one Bosch SE OF7. And if we look into specifications the old brick phone can’t match anything…!
Dick van Toorenburg’s transportables [samhallas.cwc.net]
Motorola RAZR V3 [motorola.com]
When you look into the segment of small Kitchen TVs, the race is actually quite even. Here’s an old 7 inch kitchen tv from 1978, and a modern 7 inch flat screen from Audiovox. Sure, one screen is flat ant the other one is fat – but since they are so small the difference isn’t that big. I guess many actually would prefer having the old JVC Model 3100D (left on the image above) since it’s so much cooler.
Television History 1970 to 1979 [tvhistory.tv]
Audiovox VE-706 7 Inch Ultra-Slim [plasma.com]
One of the hottest early gaming platforms was the Atari 2600 which was introduced in 1977. The initial price was $199 and at the release day you could purchase 9 different games. It could display graphics at a resolution of 160 times 192 pixels with up to 128 colors (4 colors per line) – it had a RAM capacity of 128 bytes – yes bytes – but the cartridge could hold up to 32kilobyte.
Today you can purchase the ‘Atari classics – 10 in 1 joystick’ for $7.99…
The Atari 2600 VCS [ataritimes.com]
Atari classics – 10 in 1 joystick [jakkstvgames.com]
Another way of doing the comparision is to compare actual games from now and then – and even though many of the old games are funny and playable, the graphical side can’t be compared at all. The screenshots above come from the Activision game ‘Tennis’ and ‘Top Spin 2′ for the XBOX 360.
Tennis for the Atari [ataritimes.com]
Top Spin 2 for the XBOX 360 [xbox.com]
for more Gaming – now and then comparisons, check out my article Gaming – now and then.
Just reading the tagline on the box of the Casio IF-8000 makes me smile:
Write it! Store it! Display it again! – I mean…WOW! ANother funny thing with the Casio IF-8000 is that it’s supposed to be some kind of organizer / calendar gadget – but it doesn’t have a built-in watch. Bummer.
If we do a comparison with today’s personal organizers, we can of course choose whatever model, and it would be lightyears ahead of the Casio, but one cool thing is that the old Casio IF-8000 is really small. Smaller than the organizers of today! On the right hand side you can find one of Nokias latest phones – the E61.
Casio IF-8000 Touch Screen Computer [pocketcalculatorshow.com]
Nokia E61 [infosyncworld.com]
Imagine yourself going to a very important meeting to do a grandiose sales presentation and say the following sentence:
“Wait, I just have to rig my portable computer” – and now it’s gametime for the Osborne I, hehehe!
The Osborne I weighed over 30lbs, but had a 3 inch screen, dual floppy drives and a modem. 20 years ago you would have to pay near $2000 to buy one of these.
On the right hand side is the latest portable computer from Apple – the MacBook Pro:
Osborne I Portable Computer [pocketcalculatorshow.com]
Apple MacBook Pro [Apple.com]
I haven’t played ‘Star hawk‘ from Mattel, so I really don’t know if it’s any good. But what I do know, is that I would choose to have the Playstation Portable any day of the year. Ok, but I admit that it would be quite cool to play a nice game of Star Hawk on the subway. Hehe.
Mattel Starhawk for sale [pocketcalculatorshow.com]
PlayStation Portable in action [Engadget]
The difference between the left and right watch ain’t that big. Sure, today you can buy watches with MP3, GPS and other built-in technologies but my point is that a watch is still a watch. No big difference other than design. The left watch is one of the first LCD watches from 1972. It’s original price was $200. On the right is a watch from the Danish designer Rosendahl for $185.
1972 Gruen Teletime LCD Watch [pocketcalculatorshow.com]
Rosendahl Wath II [thinkgeek.com]
On the left side you can see a true classic – the Sony Portapak CV-2400 which was marketed as “The world’s most advanced battery-powered videorecorder and hand-helt tv video camera” – which of course was true back in 1967. It was introduced for $1250 (an enormous amount of money at that time). You could record up to 20 minutes of near VHS quality (220 lines). On the right side is one of the smallest camcorders of today – the Sony DCR-PC55E.
Sony CV Series Video [vhsequipment.com] (scroll down!)
Sony Announces World’s Smallest miniDV Camcorders [esato.com]
If you haven’t checked out these funny Top 10 lists before, have a blast. You can easily spend half an hour browsing through these gadget Top 10 lists. Have fun. Here’s the best of the bunch. (Strange title, ey?)
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June 10th, 2006 09:56
Nice list there, very interesting =)
A.H
June 10th, 2006 13:12
nice to see all the old crap!
June 10th, 2006 15:52
[...] [...]
June 10th, 2006 16:38
I think I still have a bunch of those things… I have a sega master system, and a crush-your-laptop. Windows 3.11 had a hard time running on that thing, but I loved it because it was the first time I could play civilisations 1 without a big hulking machine.
June 11th, 2006 03:51
Holy cow, the laptop! ah ha ha!!!
June 11th, 2006 16:13
uhh that post reminds me about good old times..
the old portable computer looks really funny and I still have my old tetris and an old casio calculator very similar to the picture
June 12th, 2006 02:49
I had that old epson dot-matrix printer. It was about the loudest thing in the world, would wake my dog up in the basement when i printed on the second floor!
June 12th, 2006 12:23
Lmfao!! Nice xD Love the old laptop xP
June 12th, 2006 12:28
I wonder what our kids will think of the dual core pc and mobile phones available today, 20 years later…
June 12th, 2006 12:54
After 20years the right pictures will replace the left pictures, and will be saying how we viewed them on LCD screens.
June 12th, 2006 12:57
Haha I love that stuff. I am only 19 years old, but my dad bought all that retro stuff and kept it. Turns out Im a techy now, and Ive used a couple of those (still have the dot matrix printer). And in 20 years, well dual core cpus will be like that old laptop. AMD is designing an 8 core cpu, and a 4 core cpu could be on the way by the end of next year
June 12th, 2006 14:14
The chick holding the CV-2400 is totally hot.
June 12th, 2006 17:28
2000 dollar lap er, cement block vs the mac book pro, it’s nice to get a flash from the past, some are cool and others, it’s just fun to see how much we’ve progressed. should be interesting to see how far we get in the next 30 or so years
June 12th, 2006 17:57
Ahhh, I love the old days, it was so less competitive back then, and we wasnt so “I need that phone” or “I must have a playstation” it was a case of if you got one you were talk of the land – ohhh how I miss that
Great collection of items. I used to have one of them IBM computers, they were incredibly heavy, but I had fun dismantling it, as you do when your younger 
June 13th, 2006 02:08
Of course back then $2000 could buy you a nice car. So would you like a car or a luggable?
June 14th, 2006 05:05
“The chick holding the CV-2400 is totally hot”
Yah, but like all things, she is now on the left side. wonder who is on the right side?
June 14th, 2006 09:12
I remember seeing a floppy disk that was bigger than 5 1/4″. Can anyone remember exactly what the size of the bigger ones are?? (I think about 8-9″)
June 14th, 2006 15:27
Haha, this stuff is so old that it’s so cool.
June 14th, 2006 23:10
Yeah there is bigger floppydisks than that, atleast for the C64 we had in our home, dun remeber the size but they were huge and “floppy
…It’s quite cool to see old the old shit compared to the new, like it 
June 14th, 2006 23:57
[...] Vintage gadgets Tag: Gadgets | Posted on 06.10.06 | [...]
June 17th, 2006 13:24
June 23rd, 2006 12:54
With the watches, you can probably go back further.
LED was the order of the day in the 70s, LCD came
out a bit later and was popular in the early 80s.
LED looked better, but ran out of power pretty fast.
Wolfie!
August 13th, 2006 17:28
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January 22nd, 2007 10:05
[...] Segnalo da Fosfor Gadget un bellissimo post che mette a confronto i più sofosticati gadget di oggi con i loro antesignani di qualche decennio fa. [...]
January 22nd, 2007 13:07
[...] read more | digg story [...]
January 30th, 2007 00:11
[...] Vintage gadgets [...]
February 1st, 2007 23:08
The original floppy disks were 8″. The screen on the Osborne I was 5″, not 3″. I know this because I worked at a ComputerLand store [nationwide chain which also sold Apple II's and IBM PC's, the 5150], and we sold a lot of them to writers because it came with WordStar and SuperCalc (think Word and Excel’s grandparents). You could hook an external monitor or 300 bps modem to it, too!
May 29th, 2007 08:17
That backs back some memories. I worked part time at a lawyers office that had these old Osborne computers out the back gathering dust.
November 1st, 2007 18:21
Very good work
January 7th, 2009 10:03
We have the same content n_0