Hi!
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
@Pepijn Yes! not weird tech but a sweet story. Here goes:
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@Pepijn how about, my 87-year old dad uses software he wrote himself on a BBC micro, and hardware he soldered himself, to make the church pipe organ play tunes that are too difficult for him to master. He's been doing it for over 20 years. If you want the full story, it's here, in 3 parts! https://cazmockett.com/?s=Ernie
@cazmockett o m g I actually read your story a great many years ago, way before we connected here!
Is he still doing it?
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
When I worked on maintenance team for senior homes, we had this in one of the boiler rooms (I am short and the wire is exactly at neck height for me - so I always had to beware of it.
But there is good reason for it being present, there's a lead link at one end and a pulley and weight ; if a fire starts the lead would melt, and then the weight pulls down the lever and shuts off the gas supply to the building (to prevent gas feeding the blaze)
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@Pepijn Yes! not weird tech but a sweet story. Here goes:
My dad was a techy, he was part of the team that built the radiotelescopes in Westerbork in Holland. So his work was already amazing. (Picture: him at his work, a place of magic for me.)
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My dad was a techy, he was part of the team that built the radiotelescopes in Westerbork in Holland. So his work was already amazing. (Picture: him at his work, a place of magic for me.)
At home he made us into techies as well. I have fond memories of the ZX Spectrum with the rubber keys. I felt so cool writing basic! (Ok copying it from a magazine).
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@cazmockett o m g I actually read your story a great many years ago, way before we connected here!
Is he still doing it?
@Pepijn yep! And that's WILD!!
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When I worked on maintenance team for senior homes, we had this in one of the boiler rooms (I am short and the wire is exactly at neck height for me - so I always had to beware of it.
But there is good reason for it being present, there's a lead link at one end and a pulley and weight ; if a fire starts the lead would melt, and then the weight pulls down the lever and shuts off the gas supply to the building (to prevent gas feeding the blaze)
@vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de @Pepijn@mastodon.online Simple, yet clever - and fail proof. I wonder why they hang it at neck height, because in case of fire the temperature would be the highest closer to ceiling. But maybe the purpose was a natural selection of careless maintenance operators
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When I worked on maintenance team for senior homes, we had this in one of the boiler rooms (I am short and the wire is exactly at neck height for me - so I always had to beware of it.
But there is good reason for it being present, there's a lead link at one end and a pulley and weight ; if a fire starts the lead would melt, and then the weight pulls down the lever and shuts off the gas supply to the building (to prevent gas feeding the blaze)
@vfrmedia Interesting! And thanks for the photos as well!
I love it when complex "if and then" situations are solved down to a solution that is as minimal as that. -
@vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de @Pepijn@mastodon.online Simple, yet clever - and fail proof. I wonder why they hang it at neck height, because in case of fire the temperature would be the highest closer to ceiling. But maybe the purpose was a natural selection of careless maintenance operators
maybe because you *have* to keep an eye on it, and it encourages maintenance staff to check that its usable (and not block the wire with any items).
The same area is shared with the 400V three phase incoming service cable (which isn't as common nowadays - instead the gas and electricity supplies are in different parts of the building)
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
@Pepijn I’ve been inside a Soviet submarine. There were a lot of valves and zero screens (that I could see). I discovered that Soviet submarines were not built with 2m tall Dutch girls in mind.
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At home he made us into techies as well. I have fond memories of the ZX Spectrum with the rubber keys. I felt so cool writing basic! (Ok copying it from a magazine).
In our garden we had some huge antennas. Probably about 10 meters high, next to our house. It was the era of illegal radio stations, so every once in a while a special police car would slowly drive past our house.
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In our garden we had some huge antennas. Probably about 10 meters high, next to our house. It was the era of illegal radio stations, so every once in a while a special police car would slowly drive past our house.
The joke was that we were only receiving, not sending. So we laughed a lot. And the best part is that the antennas had such a small task: we received data from weather satellites that would tell us if we needed to pack our raincoats to school.
We had a weather app before there was proper internet! He is dead now, but sometimes I still hear him laughing.
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
While starting Uni (2006!), I was a part-time IT labourer at my former school. There were computers for programming classes, and I think they had 32 MB RAM at that point. Sometimes Windows OS would stop booting on them, and I would come with my personal handy LiveCDs collection. Linux LiveCDs (Knoppix, Slax) were cool, but didn't boot on 32 MB as I remember. But FreeBSD one, called Frenzy, booted, and I could inspect the hardware condition, mount disk, repair filesystems (FAT and NTFS).
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@Pepijn I’ve been inside a Soviet submarine. There were a lot of valves and zero screens (that I could see). I discovered that Soviet submarines were not built with 2m tall Dutch girls in mind.
@venite I've visited a Dutch navy submarine, am just 190cm and had a similar feeling. I'm amazed people working in these things don't end up wearing full body armour.
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While starting Uni (2006!), I was a part-time IT labourer at my former school. There were computers for programming classes, and I think they had 32 MB RAM at that point. Sometimes Windows OS would stop booting on them, and I would come with my personal handy LiveCDs collection. Linux LiveCDs (Knoppix, Slax) were cool, but didn't boot on 32 MB as I remember. But FreeBSD one, called Frenzy, booted, and I could inspect the hardware condition, mount disk, repair filesystems (FAT and NTFS).
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The joke was that we were only receiving, not sending. So we laughed a lot. And the best part is that the antennas had such a small task: we received data from weather satellites that would tell us if we needed to pack our raincoats to school.
We had a weather app before there was proper internet! He is dead now, but sometimes I still hear him laughing.️@astridpoot That's both awesome and super sweet. Thanks for sharing both the words and photos!
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@astridpoot That's both awesome and super sweet. Thanks for sharing both the words and photos!
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
@Pepijn Probably the oldest technology item I have personal experience with was a positive-ground Motorola tube- based two-way radio, older than I am (so pre-1964). This was back in my days as a radio technician, late 80s or very early 1990s.
The owner got mad when my employer cancelled the annual fixed-price maintenance contract. But we had no choice, because the last time we repaired it under the contract, the replacement component required was the last one. In the world.
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Hi! Can we entertain each other with our fun stories about the oldest or weirdest tech we've come across?
Please boost for science or cows or something. TELL US YOUR COOL STORY!
@Pepijn Different story: from 2003-2005 I worked for a large junior college. One day I was the security rep accompanying an inspector of some kind (I forget who he worked for) and one of our network engineers in our main, very old, and small, data center. He notices a device in tge bottom of a rack. “Is that really a Bay Networks router?”
“Yup.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s part of the network core.”At that point Bay Networks had not existed for over a decade.
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The joke was that we were only receiving, not sending. So we laughed a lot. And the best part is that the antennas had such a small task: we received data from weather satellites that would tell us if we needed to pack our raincoats to school.
We had a weather app before there was proper internet! He is dead now, but sometimes I still hear him laughing.️@astridpoot that is next-level fixation with the weather
