Technology that you have bought that went nowhere...

[taksraven]

Come on, we've all done it at some stage I'm sure. Most tech-fanatics at some stage have purchased some piece of tech that went on to a premature demise. Maybe it was a games console? Maybe a Beta video machine? Maybe it was even more obscure than that? Maybe, just maybe, you really like the machine despite the fact that it looks like nobody else does.

For me, an early example would be my Amiga 500. Now it certainly was a popular machine for quite some time and I even upgraded to a A2000 at one stage, but there was a point during the 90's when the old Amiga started to look a bit folorn. Fewer and fewer games releases and a decline in the availability of upgrades meant that it did not seem to be viable to keep the machine and it was time to cross over to the dark side and get a PC.

A classic later example was my N-Gage phone. My N-Gage was a second generation one. They were trying to improve on the first one by getting rid of the "side talkin" and by making the memory-game card slot more accessible, but they made the mistake of getting rid of USB connectivity and making it a mono-sound unit instead of the stereo which the first one had. I still really liked it though and used it for a number of years. (I even had to endure the WSOD at one point, doh)

Taksraven

[VFTF1]

The last piece of technology I had that went nowhere was my ex-girlfriend. Ironically, she was a newer model. I got rid of her and upgraded to a slightly older and used version and beyond the usual bumps in the road associated with this type of product, she's been working perfectly for five years now.

Pete

[taksraven]

The last piece of technology I had that went nowhere was my ex-girlfriend. Ironically, she was a newer model. I got rid of her and upgraded to a slightly older and used version and beyond the usual bumps in the road associated with this type of product, she's been working perfectly for five years now.

Pete

Too bad about the old one. Marionettes Inc usually provides good products. Or did you make the mistake of going with Delos? (Never a good idea)

Taksraven

[Vile]

I bought a DVD player. Man, can you believe how hyped those things were? Now you can't get the discs outside a museum, it's all protoculture now ...

Oh, wait, wrong timeline!

[F-ZeroOne]

I had one of the original Rio 500 MP3 players. It could hold about an albums worth of tracks and I never actually got it to work until just before I got rid of it, when a patch came out.

I also had a DVD/LD combo player, which seemed like a good idea at the time. I still have half of Kimagure Orange Road on LD and the other half on VHS...

Regards the Amiga (and the Atari ST), I'm not sure I'd say they went "nowhere", exactly. I always got the impression that the 16-bit computers were much more popular here in Europe, whereas the US tended to be more focussed on consoles like the NES at the time. The Amiga and ST are regarded with some of the same fondness here that the NES is...

Edit: sorry, re-reading the original post I see that you mention the Amiga 500 specifically rather than Amigas generally...

Edited August 23, 2009 by F-ZeroOne

[Mechwarrior]

Well, I have a Star Wars Laser Disk on my wall and what is left of my Segway i took apart a year ago. I kinda liked thought those were gonna be bigger, you know.

[Ghost Train]

This:

Phone was decent.... the games, not so good. They are still developing games for it, it just never really took off.

[derex3592]

Pioneer LaserDisc Player, and Star Wars-The Definitive Collection Box Set. All CAV discs. 1 movie--6 sides..LOL! Lots of flipping and disc changing, but STILL the only way to watch the non "special edition" ORIGINAL version of the 3 films.

Edited August 23, 2009 by derex3592

[Excillon]

I bought some lame Tiger handheld console in like 1997 that sucked ass. I'm awful about buying crap that doesn't take off. My history (and most of this is still sitting in a closet):

Turbo-Grafx 16

Turbo-Grafx Nomad

Sega Game Gear

Tiger console (don't remember the name right now)

Sega Saturn

Nokia N-gage

Hd-dvd player

and that's not including music gear I have bought that's absolutely useless now like Drum machines, sequencers, etc.

[anime52k8]

Two words: MiniDisc Walkman...

[eugimon]

Two words: MiniDisc Walkman...

they seemed like such a good idea at the time.

[Ghost Train]

I still have 2 MD players. I use it once in a while and have had people ask me what it is.... being the attention-whore that I am, I'd say it has achieved its purpose.

[Einherjar]

The Atari Lynx. I couldn't find any decent games besides the ones that came with it, Mrs. Pac Man and California Games. It was also tough finding and paying for D Batteries to run the thing. The same with the Game Gear.

[Gubaba]

I still have 2 MD players. I use it once in a while and have had people ask me what it is.... being the attention-whore that I am, I'd say it has achieved its purpose.

Hmmm...I kept using my first generation iPod until late last year, and I've even had people ask me what THAT was...

[JB0]

Virtual Boy.

...

Does it count if I got it on clearance?

[Keith]

32X...which did have the odd side effect of actually clearing up some of the normal "static" in the genesis/sega cd picture output. I had enough fun with my Saturn to warrent that purchase despite the outcome.

Edited August 24, 2009 by Keith

[nugundamII]

Yeah my car when i found out the company was releasing a newer model of my car next year

[eugimon]

pst, they do that every year.

[HappyPenguins]

I bought a wireless modem to sync with my 360 once and it never worked at all

in fact I ended up having to cancel my wireless internet and exchange it for a cable modem instead.

I've also had bad luck with a brand new scanner/printer/copier I got for christmas. It just stopped working one day and I could never figure out why.

[anime52k8]

I bought a wireless modem to sync with my 360 once and it never worked at all

in fact I ended up having to cancel my wireless internet and exchange it for a cable modem instead.

I've also had bad luck with a brand new scanner/printer/copier I got for christmas. It just stopped working one day and I could never figure out why.

ugh if were going into electronics that just don't work...

a little over two years ago, my old computer died so I decided to build a new one, it took about a month to do and from the first day I had it I had nothing but trouble, my hard drive crashed and lost all its data about 10 times in less than a year, I finaly had to take it in to best buy to have them run a diognostic and it turns out the 150 gig 10,000rpm drive that was brand new top of the line at the time I bought it was defective...

buy the time I got a replacement part and everything put back together, I had gotten a laptop and all but given up using the desk top. It's still just sitting in my room waiting to have the rest of it's software reinstalled.

biggest waist of money ever.

[HappyPenguins]

ugh if were going into electronics that just don't work...

a little over two years ago, my old computer died so I decided to build a new one, it took about a month to do and from the first day I had it I had nothing but trouble, my hard drive crashed and lost all its data about 10 times in less than a year, I finaly had to take it in to best buy to have them run a diognostic and it turns out the 150 gig 10,000rpm drive that was brand new top of the line at the time I bought it was defective...

buy the time I got a replacement part and everything put back together, I had gotten a laptop and all but given up using the desk top. It's still just sitting in my room waiting to have the rest of it's software reinstalled.

biggest waist of money ever.

They certainly don't make computers like they used to, my old compaq presario lasted a good six years before the power pack died, and being it had been abused by UPS when I had it shipped to me from CA, it was pretty much damaged so I ended up buying a new computer only to find out it was installed with Vista and not even a few months later the second disk drive just broke for some strange reason. My boyfriend even had the same problem with his new computer, second disk drive just stopped working.

It seems the desktops are just built half-assed on purpose today, while the laptops are far more reliable. I love mine, I bought it about two years ago. It's an Acer brand and it also came with vista, but I love it I've only had to replace the fan in it once it because of a dust problem but other than that no problems at all *knock on wood*

one thing I don't like about vista is it already has a tablet function installed so when installing another like my wacom graphire it seems to interfere and cause it to screw up, but lucky I found how out how to fix that by downloading and installing a special driver that's compatible with vista.

[areaseven]

I bought my Sega Dreamcast on its launch date of 9/9/99. Yes, it was a hit at first. Then, after just two years, Sega pulled out of the home system industry and put the DC on final clearance.

On top of that, I also bought the keyboard, two VMUs and a fishing rod controller for it.

[JB0]

32X...which did have the odd side effect of actually clearing up some of the normal "static" in the genesis/sega cd picture output.

I can even tell you why!

All other things being equal, longer cable runs and more connectors will only make things worse. It's logic. BUT... all other things are not equal in this case.

Lot of Genesises... Genesii... MEGADRIVES had a poor NTSC encoder chip that generated a very crappy composite video signal(The older models with the headphone port usually had a good chip, later ones... not so much).

The 32x, however, had a quite nice NTSC encoder. And due to the way the 32x worked, it had to take in raw unmangled RGB input from the Genesis so it could mask parts out and overlay it's own graphics. The 32x's TV encoder had to be active even if you weren't using the 32x hardware, since it didn't actually pass the composite video line through.

So if you had a 32x hooked up, you essentially replaced your Genesis' TV encoder chip with a much nicer part as a side-effect.

If people had known this, I think a the 10-buck final clearance 32x'es would've sold a lot better.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

[F-ZeroOne]

I bought my Sega Dreamcast on its launch date of 9/9/99. Yes, it was a hit at first. Then, after just two years, Sega pulled out of the home system industry and put the DC on final clearance.

On top of that, I also bought the keyboard, two VMUs and a fishing rod controller for it.

Tell me about it. I had Samba de Amigo for the Dreamcast, with the maracas and everything.

I sold it them for a lot less than they go for now...

[Agent ONE]

- Turbo graphix-16

- Sony Vaio touchscreen ultra portable computer with the thumb keyboard

- Game boy advance, the super small one. (I loved it so much, why did the DS beat this thing?)

- Nokia communicator (I used it for a year and loved it, but the rest of the world didn't) I could actually touch type on that thing.

[eugimon]

I loved the turbo graphix 16, my friend's dad worked on the localization for the US market so we got to play a lot of the games before they got released.

[Einherjar]

In a music store long ago, they were giving away free DVDs in a strange vacuum sealed packaging. I got one but eventually forgot about it. When I rediscovered this recently I noticed that it said "8 hour DVD" on the packaging. I did some research and discovered that it was a Flexplay DVD, or a self destructing DVD. Once I open the seal, the DVD will start to turn a different color until it can't be read by a player. So this technology really isn't going anywhere but the trash unless I find a work around.

I heard they're still making them in places like Staples for movie rentals.

Edited August 24, 2009 by Einherjar

[Ghost Train]

In a music store long ago, they were giving away free DVDs in a strange vacuum sealed packaging. I got one but eventually forgot about it. When I rediscovered this recently I noticed that it said "8 hour DVD" on the packaging. I did some research and discovered that it was a Flexplay DVD, or a self destructing DVD. Once I open the seal, the DVD will start to turn a different color until it can't be read by a player. So this technology really isn't going anywhere but the trash unless I find a work around.

I heard they're still making them in places like Staples for movie rentals.

Very secret-agent-ish...

[Noriko Takaya]

My laserdisc player. Sure, they have been around for years, but damn that DVD format.

[Noriko Takaya]

In a music store long ago, they were giving away free DVDs in a strange vacuum sealed packaging. I got one but eventually forgot about it. When I rediscovered this recently I noticed that it said "8 hour DVD" on the packaging. I did some research and discovered that it was a Flexplay DVD, or a self destructing DVD. Once I open the seal, the DVD will start to turn a different color until it can't be read by a player. So this technology really isn't going anywhere but the trash unless I find a work around.

I heard they're still making them in places like Staples for movie rentals.

Oh, Flexplay DVD's are still in use to this day. Rent a movie for five bucks, open it up and you have 2 days to watch it before the adhesive inside interferes with the laser in your player.

[anime52k8]

Oh, Flexplay DVD's are still in use to this day. Rent a movie for five bucks, open it up and you have 2 days to watch it before the adhesive inside interferes with the laser in your player.

What kind of sick F*ck invents something like that?

[Beltane70]

I've been pretty lucky in the technology department. The only thing that I've owned that didn't go very far was my PDA.

I think I'm one of the few people here that doesn't consider the TurboGrafx-16 as a machine that went nowhere. That's probably because I had actually bought the Japanese PC Engine DUO and had a friend that could readily get me the Japanese games for it.

[Golden Arms]

Ditto on the Sega Dreamcast. I still have it along with about 12 or so games.

[Kanedas Bike]

...guess I was the only dummy that bought a HD-DVD player for my 360.

Can't bring myself to sell it, even though I don't watch the small handful of movies I bought.

-b.

[areaseven]

In a music store long ago, they were giving away free DVDs in a strange vacuum sealed packaging. I got one but eventually forgot about it. When I rediscovered this recently I noticed that it said "8 hour DVD" on the packaging. I did some research and discovered that it was a Flexplay DVD, or a self destructing DVD. Once I open the seal, the DVD will start to turn a different color until it can't be read by a player. So this technology really isn't going anywhere but the trash unless I find a work around.

I heard they're still making them in places like Staples for movie rentals.

That sounds so much like the DiVX garbage Circuit City sold back in 1999. Look what that got them. Oh yeah, that's right! Circuit City went under already.