Shame that old technology becomes worthless

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Sadly, progress makes old technology obsolete…

Generally true and not always a good thing.

When I first got into RC model boats in the 1970s you could buy the new proportional multi channel radio sets which, for most of us, simply operated a servo on each channel. Electronic speed controllers were rare and very expensive, over £700 in today’s money, so many of us depended on ‘Bob’s Boards’, resistance boards which fitted on top of a servo which was equipped with wiper arms.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306158433158

They were remarkably effective with the right motor/board combination.

When I built my Isle of Wight Ferry Shanklin in 1981, I wanted to mix the twin screws and rudder so that when the motor stick on the TX was in neutral, moving the rudder stick one way or the other would result in the screws rotating in opposite directions thus spinning the boat on its axis which was great for steering competitions. I managed this with a combination of several microswitches, cams on the servo arms and two relays. All this was done using two channels and worked beautifully. Recently I came across the wiring diagram I developed and couldn’t make head or tail of it with my now aged brain.

These days you can buy mixers or they are built into the TX electronic functions so you just have to try to understand the instructions.

The point is that back then most things were electro-mechanical so we all actually understood how it all worked and the principles involved in achieving what we wanted. These days it is read the instructions or watch the Youtube video. You no longer know how it works, just that it (sometimes) does so you are now just a consumer rather than a maker. This sort of thing now applies in most areas of our lives, how many of us know what goes on inside all those mysterious boxes under the bonnet of our cars? Back in the day I converted one of mine from conventional distributor to electronic ignition using a DiY kit bought from the local motor factors. If your headlight fails now you cannot just change the bulb, the front of the car may have to be dismantled and a new unit costing the thick end of  £1,000 installed which has to be calibrated by a dealer. Progress?

My job for today? Trying to work out why my Windows 11 PC will not update to the latest version and fails every time I try. I can get into some of the update log files but not all and the information presented might as well be in Chinese. I think it might be down to an audio driver conflict but Windows won’t let me update the drivers. So I have now gone as far as I can and am making an appointment with the local computer support people which won’t be cheap but at least I have done a lot of the groundwork for them. (sigh!)

Colin

 

 

 

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

The whole resolution / pixel count / sensitivity / dynamic range issue is very blurred (pun intended) A big issue is marketing based purely on pixel count. If you keep the same sensor size and increase the number of pixels there are compromises elswhere. There has to be “dead” space between each pixel increasing pixels creates more dead space. You also need more room for the connections to the pixels. More subtle is that the pixels must be smaller. This makes them less sensitive and also reduces their dynamic range. There is a reason whyprofessional 35mm Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras use “full frame” sensors (sames size as 35mm film) while the consumer versions use smaller and cheaper sensors. This also has to do with compatibility with “film” lenses.
Modern signal processing is so good that a loot of the issues with sensors and lenses can be compensated for by processing the raw data. This is how cellphones can use such small lenses. The distortions and colour abberations of the lens are measured and the data is used to correct the image. They are probably desigined for processing rather than being as good as possible. A known constant relatively large “error” is easier to correct than a variation around “perfect”.
Modern so called mirrorless digital cameras with interchangable lenses use this technique as well. The processor in the camera can tell what lens is fitted and make the corrections. All progress but a lot of professionals still use medium format 4×4 or 6×4 cm cameras and lenses designed for “120 ” roll film with large digital sensors.

Robert.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

A very good friend of mine is a professional photographer.  He used to be the ship’s photographer when I was a young engineer 35 or so years ago.  He does a lot of work with professional bodies related to photography and has been the president of the London Portraiture Society.  He told me he once attended a lecture given by a very eminent chap from the industry who was explaining the dangers of transience of technology and how this relates to archiving of data.  Obviously we all see improvements in file types and then the upgraded software required to run them and, consequently the latest hardware required to run the software.  He was pointing out that far too frequently there is never enough built in reverse compatibility to ensure that we will always be able to read files created by long since redundant software and hardware.  We are even seeing an effect at a different level of this right now as many Windows 10 users are being told that their machines are not capable of running Windows 11.

Anyway the main theme of the lecture was the fact that he was advocating that the only way to effectively archive pictures and documents was to store them as hard copy.  He was even suggesting that the pictures we take that are particularly valuable to us should be printed out and stored in albums.  When you think that during our lifetime we have seen the passing of vinyl records, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes, video tapes in both Betamax and VHS format, DVDs, etc… it certainly does make you think about how we store and access pictures and data.

Interestingly I have just purchased a copy of a ship’s drawing from The Royal Museums Greenwich, of a ship I first went to sea on in 1977.  Despite the fact that I have purchased a digital copy this was only possible because the original yard drawing is stored at the museum as a hard copy.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

You still have to be careful though. Documents need to be printed on archival quality acid free paper, preferably with laser printers for longevity and then kept in the dark.

If you have any older books or paperbacks the chances are that they are already turning brown or yellow after just a few years.

Light itself is a problem. UV light can break down almost anything given enough time and even artificial light can cause fading on pictures in museums for example or the ancient cave paintings. The messages on the Voyager spacecraft were gold plated copper for longevity.

Nothing lasts forever. The only realistic way to maintain digital records is to refresh and store all data regularly, converting the format as necessary, when new storage media is developed. Obviously the cost of storage has reduced massively in recent years but there is still the issue of data being copied but the computer language used can no longer be deciphered.

It isn’t just a problem in the computer age, the Linear A baked clay tablets used by the Minoan civilisation have still not been deciphered despite decades of effort by scholars. It took the discovery of the Rosetta Stone to enable ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to be read.

Colin

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, talking about old tech, I came across a bit of new old tech, I bought this iomega CD/RW external drive around 2002/3 ish.

It measures 140mm x 190mm x 50mm approximately, and weighs just under 1.5 kg. Compared to this fairly new Liteon DVD/CD external drive, which measures 140mm x 140mm x 12mm approximately, and weighs just under 200 grams.

The iomega needs a mains supply via a combined 5 & 12 Vdc. L.P.S., and a USB data lead whereas the Liteon just needs a USB lead from a Laptop/Desktop, for its power and data. The iomega still works fine, but what a palaver it is now to connect it up.

Regards Nick.

[Richard Simpson]

On Richard Simpson Said:

… he once attended a lecture given by a very eminent chap from the industry who was explaining the dangers of transience of technology and how this relates to archiving of data.  Obviously we all see improvements in file types and then the upgraded software required to run them and, consequently the latest hardware required to run the software.  …

Anyway the main theme of the lecture was the fact that he was advocating that the only way to effectively archive pictures and documents was to store them as hard copy.  He was even suggesting that the pictures we take that are particularly valuable to us should be printed out and stored in albums.  …

Yes, advancing digital storage methods are a major problem!   Not because supporting old formats is technically impossible, but because budget holders choose not to.  They argue that customers should pay to reverse engineer the necessary software, if they really need the information.  Expensive, so rarely done.  The reason is cost.  The information is not available to anyone with a casual interest; we’ve lost it.

Another problem is forcing costs up.  It’s that the volume of information needed to describe technology is growing like Topsy.

In warship engineering, the RN had what they called a Ships Cover.   This was the document set describing a warship, or a class of warships.  The Ships Cover for HMS Victory, that vessel being very simple by modern standards, could be folded up and stuffed into a suitcase.  Conversely, the Ships Cover for a Polaris submarine is huge: the missile alone is described in about 1200  3″ thick manuals, and these do not cover the warhead.   I imagine the design of the subs Reactor, Turbines, Hull, Fittings, Ventilation, Control Systems, Electrics, Communications, Surveillance, Food Storage, and Air are similarly gigantic.

HMS Victory’s crew slept in hammocks slung wherever there was space, the ship was unheated in the arctic and uncooled on the equator.  Pooing in the heads, open to the elements and in public.  Plain food and dirty drinking water,  poor ventilation, lit by tapers, etc.  So primitive that most of the ship and fittings can be described with a few drawings, some words and a good model.

Modern warships provide bunks, temperature control, privacy, proper sewage,  good food, clean water, stabilisers, electric light, telephones, entertainment and much else besides.   These are all defined in engineering terms, and the total volume is enormous, far too big to archive in paper form.  A Polaris missile is orders of magnitude more complex than a 32lb ship’s cannon…

The last individual with a reasonable grasp of all engineering may have been Edison circa 1890.  Since then all engineers are specialists.   Thomas Sopwith considered himself lucky to be designing aircraft at a time when he could do most of the work himself.  After about 1916, aircraft design required increasingly large teams of specialists, and tons of paperwork.  Designing a modern fast-jet is beyond most aerospace companies and in Europe requires an international consortia.   Very few nations can afford them either! B2 Stealth Bombers cost over $2bn each, and that aircraft’s current refurbishment programme has a $7bn budget.

Like it or not, modern engineering isn’t simple.  Hankering after past simplicities does no good, old methods were replaced because they couldn’t  cope.  The answer isn’t what I was taught 50 years ago, and pre WW2 methods are hopeless.

Dave

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

I’m not hankering after old technology just concerned abou the removal of perfectly good technology (CD-ROM and DVD-R) with no suitable replacement. Even with modern large image files they are still usable for archive purposes. They have long life and are relatively rugged. Putting it on a “spinning rust” hard disk in some unknown datacenter is not a good idea in my opinion. For important stuff I have backups on hard disk, flash memory and optical disk.
Was bitten by the Western Digital hacking and that was my hardware in my house…

Robert.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

It has been said that the whole Bible can be stored in 5 megabytes, so why do todays files take up gigabytes and a pc is useless without terrabytes of storage. The archives at the museum seems to be wasteful in this way with digitising archives. When I wanted to store a manual, I set up a digital camera on a copying stand and set the resolution to the minimum, about 1 megapixel which was as low as it could go and got the manual easily on a CD. Not anywhere near as good as I would have liked, as an A4 of text would be only about 10Kb. The archive is scanning at hundreds of times that resolution and cannot see the waste.

[Bo’sun]

On Bo’sun Said:

Morning All,

The same situation also applies “wet (traditional)” photography.  Yes, digital photography has a lot to offer, but it’s all too easy to go snap, snap, snap and just pick the best image(s)…..

I agree although going snap, snap, snap with digital technology is of course very cheap. But I think the more important consideration here is what actually happens to the photos that survive the delete option. What I’m referring to is the general trend that those photos remain either on a digital device or in the cloud somewhere rather than manifested as a physical photograph as a permanent image. I really think a majority of photos will in the future, in effect, end up dying with their creator. What impact does that have on social history records down the line?

Andy

[Andy_H]

On Andy_H Said:

On Bo’sun Said:

Morning All,

The same situation also applies “wet (traditional)” photography.  Yes, digital photography has a lot to offer, but it’s all too easy to go snap, snap, snap and just pick the best image(s)…..

I agree although going snap, snap, snap with digital technology is of course very cheap. But I think the more important consideration here is what actually happens to the photos that survive the delete option. What I’m referring to is the general trend that those photos remain either on a digital device or in the cloud somewhere rather than manifested as a physical photograph as a permanent image. I really think a majority of photos will in the future, in effect, end up dying with their creator. What impact does that have on social history records down the line?

Andy

The counter-argument is that cloud storage is much better.  Most old photos end up in a skip after spring-cleaning or house-clearance.

I have paper archive experience and they are not good.  Difficult to index and retrieve from, especially anything off the beaten track. Require trained staff, not bored students doing holiday work.  Best suited to researchers who want to pull and review a subject, not good for casual enquiries.  Access restricted because the installation is vulnerable to fires and vandalism.  Stuff gets lost in the system when mistakes are made.   Very expensive.

Computers are superior.   The servers are secure, no visitors, and content can be made available to the public via the internet.  Though improved by metadata, “This photo was taken at Auntie May’s wedding in Jan 1943”, content is indexed automatically, not by a librarian.  Pattern recognition is used to find images and text strings.  Artificial Intelligence is extra good at advanced searches, and getting better.  Cloud storage is dirt cheap,  so maybe data retention will improve.

Digital information can also end up in a skip!  When a firm closes down, like as not all their paper records are destroyed, and memories disappear with the staff.   Computer records share the same fate unless someone deliberately archives them.  Archiving computer data used to be prohibitively expensive, there is hope because now it’s affordable.

The main problem isn’t technology, it’s whether anyone takes the trouble to keep copies.   Looking back on my long career, I doubt there is much evidence in the archive I did anything.  Reason being the organisatiom only kept records as necessary to do the job, and for about 5 years after in case something went badly wrong.  Detail not kept beyond that, only the big or controversial decisions.

Amusingly, my employer fell for a report saying they could radically cut HQ staff in droves.   Result, 5 years of severe corporate Alzheimer’s!  The stripped team couldn’t comprehend why many policies, budgets, and objectives had been set.   Led to several embarrassing dislocations.  Remove apparently an useless project only to discover a year later that other priority projects depended on it, making it necessary to start again.  Huge waste of time and money.

Simple-minded reorganisations risk losing vital information.   It’s a big problem.  Many examples: the BBC emptied their programme archive and reused video tape to save a few bob, not realising that the dumped programmes were worth hundreds of millions.  Kodak owned many of the basic patents covering digital photography; they decided to sell them because they were a film company.  Disaster – the public wanted digital!  Hard to understand why these bad decisions were taken; the future was fairly clear.  Possibly because senior decision makers approaching retirement are 20 years out of date.

New technology is far from perfect, but it takes over because it has advantages.   Unfortunately, something is always lost, and the transfer can be painful.    As I get older I wish they’d leave well alone!   Quite often the advantages don’t apply to me.  Change is inevitable though.   When Britain’s currency went decimal (a good thing), I remember an old lady on the bus saying “they should wait until all the old people are dead“.  The idea is attractive, but unachievable.  Though good change benefits the majority,  there are always losers.

🙁

Dave

 

 

 

[Colin Bishop 2Participant @colinbishop2]

Ah, Decimal Day! At that time I was a cashier on the counter of the Midland Bank in Leatherhead, Surrey before I changed careers. Certainly a day to remember. But things were different then. Our bank manager could add up columms of £ S P in his head and the calculators were mechanical with handles like fruit machines. Beautifully engineered though…

There is a big problem with digital storage in that it is so cheap that no one thinks anything about it so in the future, finding the valuable stuff will probably be akin to finding a needle in a haystack but ten times worse…

Colin

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

My wife worked at Barclays Bank at about the same time, same town!  Now aint that strange.

Bob

[Colin Bishop 2Participant @colinbishop2]

That’s a coincidence! All the big banks were in the town and co operated with each other. On occasions if one was a bit short of notes then of of the others would help out. I used to walk round with a small case full of banknotes chained to one rist and with a wooden baton stuffed up my other sleeve.

A good example of old technology being used to transfer funds….

Colin

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