And tell me how proud of it you are.
Me. 62 years. As long as it keeps on ticking, I’m proud.
Seriously? No upgrades, augments, removals or additions?
I’m 45 and I don’t think my knees or hips will last that long. And my memory will probably degrade over the next twenty years.
You go girl!
A 1940s era Sterling Siren Model “F” factory siren. This siren spent decades outside of a Long Island, NY firehouse, acting as a street clearing siren to allow fire engines to exit the station unimpeded during an emergency. It was decommissioned a few years ago and popped up on eBay, and I was able to get ahold of it for cheap as the seller didn’t know its worth. Model F sirens are very hard to find, as they haven’t been made since the 1960s, and the need for street clearing and fire sirens have lessened with the advent of pagers. I believe there are less than a dozen left in service across North America.
Mine is in very good running shape, despite its age. I lubricated the bearings recently (brass sleeve bearings) and let the motor break in. It isn’t quite as loud as my Federal Sign & Signal Model “L” (built in the 1960s) but still packs a punch. I usually set them off with the city sirens every Monday. It does need cosmetic restoration, as the paint is badly weathered and the projector has some dents in it, but it won’t be hard to fix up.
https://youtu.be/KvsGiL15g1k?si=ZgheNIH-fqOHJXnJ
My Model L is on the left, and my Model F is on the right.
Your neighbors must love you.
They’ve never complained, and I’m respectful with them. So I think them and I are cool lol
Your city has sirens that go off every Monday?
It’s relatively common in small towns. Some towns with volunteer fire departments will have a siren they use both to call all available volunteer firefighters and to announce the need to shelter for a tornado. They used to sound it at noon every day and my wife (then girlfriend) used it as an alarm clock when she worked 2nd shift anytime she slept in too late
About 5 years ago they stopped sounding it at noon, and honestly I’m not sure when the last time i heard the sirens was since tornadic storms are becomes much less common here and the firefighters have become increasingly reliant on their radios instead. I kinda miss it. There’s a quaintness to just listening for the noon whistle to tell time
Which country are you in? Not a thing I’ve heard of happening here in the UK
Canada. It’s not really a thing in the UK. Fire sirens/noon whistles are mostly a North American/European thing.
I have my grandparents gramophone.
We pull it out each year to listen to their old Christmas records.
It’s become a tradition that my university age kids still look forward to.
Not at all impressive, but to maximize interactions on a newborn thread:
It’s probably my PS3, which I would have gotten Christmas 2008. I recently started sailining the seas, and the most convenient way to watch those videos is to burn them to a disk, and so the PS3 is really just a glorified DVD player (can’t even be bothered to use it’s blue ray functionality)
Similarly, my PS2 which I got for Christmas in 2003 is still running strong, I replayed Simpsons Hit & Run recently and it the console plays as well as it did when I first booted up.
It also has the honour of being the last device I own capable of playing DVDs since my PC’s optical disc drive died.
Same here. While mine is connected, I have no reason to use it with newer consoles in the same cabinet.
I still listen to my music using a 160 GB iPod Classic. Apple struck gold with that clickwheel. Carrying around a dedicated device for music just for that elegant one-thumb control I don’t even have to look at to use is still totally worth it to me.
I could use it through my back jeans pocket. It was great!
In public would it just look like you’re caressing your own ass?
I still keep mine in my car. Have you seen Dankpods mod them with terabyte micro SD kits? Stuff is amazing.
I did it to mine. It’s fantastic.
If I could get Spotify and FLAC files on this then I’d be in heaven
My original NES and game cartridges. Still work great, although retired as collectibles in favor of emulators now.
I got lucky with mine. I started having issues with mine around 2000. I lived in Washington, only like an hour from Nintendo of America. At the time, Nintendo still serviced all their old consoles up to and including their current consoles. (This would change in 2006, with the Wii, when they started releasing old games digitally, it was game-over for their long-term servicing of old consoles.) So I took mine in, and if I recall correctly, it was about $50 to get all my games professionally cleaned and for the console to be cleaned, fixed, and sent home with new power supply and controllers.
It’s been a champ ever since.
I wish I had known about that. The cleaning accessories I’ve found over the years have kept it going without issues, but I definitely would have sent mine in for a preventative professional cleaning and refurbishing if they found anything wrong with it.
I remember being a bit surprised when I found out about it, but it also seems to be that a lot of people didn’t know about this service, despite it being something Nintendo seemed to pride themselves in for a long time. Maybe they just didn’t publicize it widely enough?
I never heard anything about it. I definitely would have sent in the NES, SNES, and N64 for servicing if it was on my radar.
Neat.
I have a hand-me-down NES from a relative that sadly passed away, console works a treat but at some point within the past decade the cartridge batteries went flat. Finally have the gamebit driver to replace them but the gear is all packed away at the back of my storage cupboard…
A pocketwatch manufactured in 1889. I keep it running as a memento mori: the watch may outlive the watchmaker. Build things well – they may be all people remember you by, one day.
I also have a slide rule at my desk at most times, to remind me of false-precision.
I guess the oldest though, is a Wu Zhu coin from the Three Kingdoms period (currency is a technology, too?). I keep it to remember that all empires arise from chaos, and must return to it; that all assets eventually have no value. That the things that endure, are stranger currencies still.
You’re the badass stoich character from fantasy stories!
“I keep the relics of my ancestors to remind me we all die”
Certainly, no one would accuse me of insufficient gravitas.
My paternal grandmother’s KitchenAid model K mixer she bought just after my grandfather returned from WW2. She gave it to my mother in the late 70’s because she wanted a new one and the damn thing showed no signs of dying. My mother gave it to my wife about 15 years ago for the same reason.
We’ve bought some new accessories but that fucking zombie mixer will outlast the roaches.
Those old KitchenAid mixers are beasts. I think they were still made by Hobart at that point and really built to last and easy to fix.
Might be worth regreasing it, iFixIt has some good guides on that.
I have a General Post Office model 711 telephone. I installed a microcontroller into it and it’s now the keypad for my home alarm system. It’s also hooked into Home Assistant so I could have it for other things if I wanted.
That is just brilliant!
Thanks. It has occurred to me to add a voice assistant to the phone as well but I’m not sure I’d ever actually use it.
Not tech exactly, but does a 22yr old Vicks inhaler count? It’s somehow stuck around through every move, and I can still use it when I have a stuffy nose. It’s kinda nuts…
I got a fountain pen with my initials on it from my grandfather. We have the same initials.
My late version (early 90s) Quad 34 preamp.
It’s a brilliant and somewhat unique design. The eq is part 8 pole tilt filter and part lift/step filter with adjustable turnover. This enables you to position the audio in a very precise and uncoloured way, much like changing your seating position in an auditorium. If you like bass you don’t sit at the front!
It has a true mono selector, high and low frequency filters for radio and vinyl subsonics respectively, a modular phono stage for MM or MC turntable cartridge type, and the volume gain stage is accurate between channels to around a tenth of a dB, which is about ten times better than is generally accepted as adequate.
It’s power is so efficient that it never gets even warm and it’s audio design has a quality that is similar to the way valve equipment sounds.
It’s a very special part of my system which drives my active speakers. They are pro audio which have a very accurate response compared to consumer speakers. The Quad gives them something special to reproduce which, with a lot of CD sources imparts a bit of character that’s musical and very pleasant.
If it ever needs servicing, I can take it to the Quad service centre where it was made in Huntingdon near Cambridge, a couple of hours drive away.
I’m very proud of my Quad 34, I wanted one for many years and was fortunate to be able to find a good one I could afford at the time. I expect it will outlive me, along with my speakers and a few other bits and bobs I’ve collected over the years. It’s the oldest bit of technology I have that I use regularly. I have a film camera that may be older but I don’t use film any more and I thought the Quad would be more interesting.
Thanks for asking and I hope you find this worthy. I’m happy to answer any questions about all this if anyone feels compelled.
A Galaxy S5690 Xcover phone from 2011 as reserve phone, software modded to be nice and fast. Not ancient, but as a reminder of what you could do with 200MB RAM (300MB is reserved for system) and 150MB internal storage. Btw, standby time is measured in semesters.
My dad is farmer, he has a water pump from 1971 still in use.
AKAI S-1100 sampler. It is still in mint conditition, released in 1990. It was a studio standard in those days. I don’t use it that much these days, but the time stretch on that machine is amazing. For Jungle and Drum & Bass it’s an essential piece of hardware imo. The Prodigy for instance had two of them 1100’s in the studio and on tour if irc.
Until recently, my daily driver laptop. ThinkPad x200s from 2008. When covid hit I started using my desktop and a month ago I tried the laptop and it doesn’t turn on anymore :(
Nowadays nothing noteworthy… maybe my smartwatch, Samsung Galaxy Watch 1.
If it’s not just the battery finally giving out, it might be the thermal goop on the CPU / GPU. Late IBM Thinkpads could eat fans annually. Early Lenovo models can’t be all that different. Thermal cycling is a rude source of stress… as is the sudden end of routine thermal cycling.
