How sad...
 

I had what I would call my first decent computer about 10 years ago. It was an upgrade from a 486DX4-100 overclocked to 133 and in comparison it hauled!

The computer was as follows:
AMD K6-2-350 overclocked to 495(could never break the 500MHz barrier)
64MB PC100 SDRAM
10GB 5400 rpm ATA-66(watch out!)
RivaTNT 16MB 90MHz overclocked to 130MHz

I needed water cooling to achieve those numbers and the video card still ran hot.

Well, I got a new cell phone about 2 weeks ago and this is its specifications:
800MHz ARM11 Processor
288MB RAM (not sure of speed but I know it is DDR at 8.5Gbps while PC100 was ~1.8)
512MB Internal Flash ROM and an 8GB MicroSD card until the 32GB is available Q1 2010

It also has a dedicated video processor in the cpu running 133MHz. It can do 9 million triangles per second while the TNT did 6 million(without overclock).

Easily 1.5-2x the performance in a package that fits in my pocket.

My current desktop cost me about as much to build a year ago, has all air cooling, and sucks maybe 1/2 as much power both when under full load and when idling than the k6-2 system did:
E6550 Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz @ 3.23 GHz
4GB PC2 1066
150GB 10,000RPM Raptor system drive and 500GB storage/document drive
GeForce 8800GTS 650MHz @ 750 w/ 512MB DDR2

Blows my Atari 800 out of the water, that's for sure

(1.99 kHz, 48kB ram, ~96k floppy drive plus tape drive) (but it has FOUR joystick ports!)

-BC

All that power, and I bet it's still slow to boot up and load apps.

My first PC was a Pentium 100 running Windows 95. I had upgraded the memory to 136 mb (system max), a 32x CD ROM, and a 3 gig hard drive. My new cell phone blows that out of the water too.

HTC Pure: Processor 528 Mhz, 236 Mb Ram, 8 Gig storage card, Windows Mobile Professional Version 6.5

Then again, if we compare that to my Commodore 64, then that's a HUGE difference.

You can compare these to your Commodore 64 :)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ia_5110.jpg%5D

My phone is the Moment from Samsung. It runs Android and is shockingly quick at everything I've thrown at it so far. I'm used to my Q which had delays and lockups every time I tried doing stuff on it like watching videos and playing games. Stupid WM5. The fact that they NEVER upgraded that phone to WM6 even though the hardware was essentially the same as the Q9 series which did come with it was enough to make me not want a Motorola again.

Win Mo 5 wasn't bad on my HTC Tilt. Then again that phone was so hacked and running a custom OS (as all my phones eventually do), I often said if someone put a "normal" version of Windows on it, it'd blow up. There's a lot of support for hacking all the HTC devices, and I had seen where someone had modified a version of WinMo 6 to run on my Tilt, but I was happy with WinMo 5 as I had it setup that I had no reason to do it. If you check the Motorola hacking websites you may find someone cooking WinMo 6 for the earlier Q models.

I was very big on hacking my Motorola phones. I hacked my V551's (I have 2), all of my V3's (I have 5 or 6), My V180, my A845, and my mother's old L2. Motorolas are great for their build quality, hackibility, and signal strength. I would upload the phone's OS to my computer, make changes with a hex editor, then upload it back to the phone. I had the full test & engineering modes enabled on all the phones. Its really fun to call 611 to report a network problem, and tell them "The tower that uses control channel 0632 is down". Then the CS rep always wants to know how I know. I just tell them its complicated, but just put the info on the ticket, along with my cell number if your network techs have any more questions... ;)

I had no issues with their build quality. After 2 years the only issue it had was that the HV circuit for the backlight got so loud other people could hear it when I was using my phone so I swapped it out.

My problems were mostly software and a lack of hardware capability. I really wanted to have a single device for everything but calls wouldn't come through at times when playing MP3s, I couldn't just plug in headphones without an adapter, no WiFi, the OS had problems multitasking and the hardware had just as much trouble keeping up, and even though the SD slots were identical between it and the Q9 there was not even a simple update to allow SDHC cards to be used in it so you were stuck with 2GB of storage... Not that much space when you start really using it!

It was probably because it didn't get much of a following though. With other brands out there being more capable at the same time and the Q9 coming out not too long after people didn't even bother messing with the Q and I don't see it ever happening. Especially with open source operating systems out there coming into play for phones now.

Me too. Although I believe it's quite possible to create a decent all-in-one device, it seems that nobody really wants to do that.

First and foremost: Calls and texts must come through. I must be notified of them and be able to accept them without canceling whatever else I'm doing or muting it while it still runs; the process must be suspended, and resumed when I'm ready.

Connectors and interfaces (physical AND software) must be standard. I don't mind using a 3.5mm->2.5mm adapter for my earphones; it can stay stuck to the end of the cord permanently for all I care. I hate proprietary connectors and platforms.

Interface must be convenient, intuitive, and easy to operate by feel. This is a large concern when using a phone as an mp3 player while driving.

Battery must support everything for a decent run time.

Those are a few concerns I can remember off the top of my head.

haha we currently have sittin in our basement a 086, 186, 2 286's and about 2-3 486's, P1 166mhz, P2 300mhz, and a p4 2.4 ghz.

we have this weird thing that it says its a "computer" that hooked into your TV as the monitor. its about the size of a DVD case. haha has an add on ram pack in the back that boasts its 16mb add on capability. :D

I'm sure if I dug around my parent's basement I could find an 8086 and an 8088.

I might have all of you beat...my first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. With a whopping 4k (yes, K) memory, <1 MHz processor, no hard drive, storage was on audio cassettes. 64X128 pixel video resolution. Just barely fit in the trunk of a '49 Ford. Cost more than my HP laptop. Eventually traded it for a McKay Dymek shortwave receiver, which I sold about 10 years later on eBay for $400. About the same time, I found a similar computer, about 2 generations later, sitting on someone's curb.

Ahhh, progress...

My first computer was an Apple ][gs. 4mhz, one huge whole megabyte of RAM (an inconceivable quantity at that time; nobody could figure out what anyone would do with that much), color monitor probably about equivalent to EGA, 3.5" futuristic electronic-ejection floppy, 5.25" floppy, and a mouse that never got used because no applications supported it.

There was essentially no operating system as we know it today. Each program came with ProDOS on its disk and booted on its own; you could not exit a program and get to the OS, all you could do was shut off the computer. If you knew the key combination to press before it started booting from a disk, you could get into the ROM's BASIC interpreter which had no access to the floppy drives so you couldn't save anything. It came with a "System disk" that had something more resembling a modern OS on it, but every time we booted from it, it destroyed the disk (even if we write-protected it), which stunk because it was pretty cool...it had a GUI as later seen on Macintoshes, as well as a paint program and a system tour program that was setup as a game complete with animation and sound. It also allowed you to use a BASIC interpreter that could access disks.

I can remember when we bought our Commodore 64, the computer and cassette tape drive cost about $700. The Commodore monitor was around $250 I think, and the 1541 floppy disk drive was about $300.

My Dell Inspiron 1525 SE laptop I bought last year was $699 on sale. The only upgrade I did to it so far was I purchased the Dell internal Bluetooth card for $20.

Hey, that's my old phone!

haha thats everyones old phone but id be damned if you couldnt break em...

I can honestly say I've never owned a Nokia. All my phones have been either Motorola or HTC, with the exception of an LG CU320 that was such a POS that I took it back after 26 hours and exchanged it for a Motorola. My dad had a TDMA version of that Nokia on AT&T Wireless for years though.

I too have never had a Nokia. First, a cheap basic Verizon-branded Qualcomm that had a cover that flipped over the keys. I lost it a few months after I got it...I left it on my lowered tailgate and drove off. Then I had a Motorola V60i, then a Motorola V710, and now a Samsung M500 (all pocket-sized flip phones).

I don't change phones often.

That's what I'm saying. Those were one of the best cell phones I ever owned. I'd love to get another one.

My phones (in the order I got them)

1. TDMA Moto StarTac
2. TDMA Moto V60t
3. GSM Moto V551
4. GSM HP iPAQ hw6515 (Windows Mobile 2003 PDA phone, made by HTC)(bought from friend)
5. UMTS LG CU320 (returned after 26 hours)
6. GSM Moto V3
7. UMTS Moto A845 (bought on Ebay)
8. GSM Moto V180 (spare phone, given to me by my niece when she got a new one)
9. UMTS HTC Tilt (Windows Mobile 5 PDA phone)
10. GSM Moto V551 (spare phone picked up on Ebay, I love hacking V551's This one is currently running a custom OS that makes it look & behave like its running Windows XP.)
11. UMTS HTC Pure (Windows Mobile 6.5 PDA phone) (Current daily driver)

Thrown in there are several GSM Moto V3's that friends & family have given me. I've refurbished several of them myself. I also ordered some OEM housings from Hong Kong in colors that were never available here in the US. I now have Moto V3's in bright red, apple green, black, dark blue, and I have spare housings in pink and silver.

I also built some custom accessories of my own. I took an old brick phone and put a circuit board from an old bluetooth headset in it so I can walk around talking on a brick phone (Analog is long dead!) Fading Out
Analog Cellphone Users Are About to Lose the Signal By Kim Hart Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 19, 2008 and I've also built a Western Electric G3 handset with bluetooth circuits in it. https://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/mo...html#post95143

Suffice to say that I'm addicting to collecting old cellular and landline telephones.

Kinda makes me want to start a thread about how much I prefer the analog service...

https://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/ge...rk-turned.html

This is where we said our goodbyes, and tracked the analog shutdown.

speakin of old phones, i remember when i was little we had a digital phone and an old rotary dial phone. lightning hit our house and fried the TV, digital phone, but just made the rotary phone ring really loud lol. still works to this day! We had a service guy out a while back and his cell phone was dead and he had to call back to the office. he asked if he could make a call and we let him handed him the old rotary phone and he was like woa i havent seen one of these in years! lets see if i remember how to use one lol.

now i do have a question about them: is there a way to clean them? my grandmas phone she doesnt use it but about 3 times a month (its in the basement on a desk, only uses it if it rings while shes down there) its pretty crackily sounding. i hit the hang up lever where the phone sits a few times and that seemed to help. could i just take it apart and clean off what i assume is corrosion buildup on the hang up part but is there anything else i can clean?


haha my uncle had one of those old nokias pictured above and the only thing that killed it was the lawnmower:P

i currently have ye aincent LG UX145BKwas the penny phone like 3-4 years ago so it was outdated then)

before that i had a nokia 6210 and somehting else that was older...

ive only had nokias and LG's ive killed them allbut my current one off with water...

1st phone was in the washing machine for 20 minutes, second was i dropped it in a clean toilet (fell outa my sweatshirt pocket), phone worked battery was dead, only worked on a charger. phone after that i belive it still works just the screen is scratched to hell.

I personally like the nokias more, seem more stable and can take one hell of a beating before they die. my current phone randomly turns off.

Probably some carbon buildup on some of the switches. "Electrical Parts Cleaner" could probably be used (available at many automotive stores), but the disassembly & reassembly are up to you...

-BC

Man, I'd love to have old 8086, 286, 386, and 486 systems still. They are all sold as 'vintage' when you can find them now and are stupidly expensive. I've only had 386 and 486s before but knew people with the 8088, 8086, and 286 machines.

Back to phones, I used to have a Nokia 7110. I loved that phone to death but hated Cingular and just had to have the camera in my phone, which I never used because the quality was abysmal at best. No idea where it is now. This is my 3rd city since I had that phone and it is long gone by now.
https://www.robgalbraith.com/imgs/fog/nokia_7110.jpg
(Not a green phone, it's the image, phone was black)

My new phone is doing everything I wanted my old phone to. Messaging works perfectly while using media and on a call. It just works. Kinda nice.

CLR also works wonders on old contacts if you remove the switch from the unit. We had some power windows we couldn't get working reliably at all because the switches kept overheating and CLR stopped that.

Most often just a quick spray of contact cleaner will take care of things, but DO NOT USE WD-40! WD-40 will solve your problem in the short term, but it will come back with a vengence once that WD-40 attracts & collects a bunch of dust in the mechanisim. If a rotary needs to be lubricated I will use clock oil, and lube it drop by drop exactly where it needs lubrication, just like if you were oiling a clock.

Western Electric really made them right. Back then you didn't own your phone, you rented it from the phone company. If your phone broke it cost them money to put a man in a truck and drive out to your house to fix it, so they made sure they put a good phone in your house. They were designed to operate an average of 25 years before they were expected to need any service at all. Not like today. Your phone breaks after a year or two, you throw it away and buy a new one for $10.

Here's a pic of some of my phones at one of the collectables shows I do on occasion:

https://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...4e667f4f2f.jpg

This one is one of my favorites though: Its a 554/2554 hybrid phone.

https://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...6cb6fa267c.jpg

As of maybe 5 years ago I was able to get 8088 - 80286 machines for free (or nearly so), though I no longer remember where. It should still be possible. Cruise the "free stuff" section on Craigslist every day.

I recall a little over 20 years ago getting our first 8088 computer...installed a 300 baud modem to call up our local BBSs...thought we were really stylin' when we installed a 20 meg hard drive and 1200 baud modem! My wife actually went to work for a BBS as a chat hostess...back when people were charged by the hour to go online! Don't remember what happened to that machine...I think it went to Goodwill or something...

When I was a kid, our phone was the kind with a straight cord...didn't even have a curly cord like phones do now, or like the phones I saw on TV. Also had the legend: "WAIT for Dial Tone" above the phone number...CHurchill 9-3313. Strange how I can still remember my old phone number from when I was five years old, and the license numbers on the cars we had then, than I can remember such things now.

Sounds like a Western Electric 302

https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...29819749e8.jpg

and here's the dial center you described:

https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2059/...e1ab8d0d58.jpg

I had a phone like that in high school (though it was a slightly different Nokia). To this day it's the best phone I ever had, I wish they still made 'em like that for sim cards. My home phone is a red rotary Ericofon :)

What's sad is the way the new stuff is practically pushed on you.

Look at the picture in post # 25. Top shelf between the clear 2500 and the translucent blue 2500. I think you will see something very familiar. The rotary Ericofones were extremely well made, but the touch tones had a design flaw in the switch hook mechanism and was prone to breakage.

They did make GSM models of those Nokias. My sister had one. She dropped it in the toilet at work one day and it actually worked better after she dried it out. She used to always sound muffled and tinny before, but after "the incident" she was always loud & clear. Take a look on Ebay, I'm sure you can find one for not much $.

-Jay

Nice! My Ericofon is sadly a bit staticky, I bought it that way, but so far there are otherwise no problems. I'm just happy we have an exchange that supports the rotaries.

Hmm, didn't know that about the Nokia. Does that mean it would work with Verizon? How would I go about activating it? I found the one I had on Wikipedia, mine was actually a 6190, but like everyone else says, that damn thing was impossible to kill, plus had a screen that wouldn't wash out in the sun and I loved to play snake on it. It did everything I needed it to and nothing I didn't!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110 (scroll down just a bit; no wonder I don't see the 6190 much, it was a "business" phone!)

Today's cell phone has more computing power than the moon lander.

Verizon and Sprint are CDMA.

I don't know if Verizon is like Sprint on this one but if it wasn't badged as a Sprint phone they can't/won't activate it. It HAD to be a phone made for Sprint. One of the drawbacks of CDMA service. Well, that and they can dictate what plan you are on based on your phone.

Nice thing though is since you can call a phone in stolen and they flag the ESN so it is worthless for anyone trying to activate it you can get insurance for that unlike ATT and their iPhone.

AFAIK, if you activate it with their customer service call center instead of a store, they will activate another carrier's CDMA phone.

Interesting. I may try that...

Well, I googled around and it sounds like hit-or-miss...some people claim they've done it, others claim that they were told that their phone is not a Sprint-branded phone and that was the end of that. Mostly I'm finding people who want to activate Sprint phones on Verizon, though.

Uh-oh...big brother is watching me:
https://www.sprintusers.com/slight-paranoia/

Yep, that looks pretty much like I remember it...but ours wasn't quite so shiny...