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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

1991 home video demo of an Etak, in a custom housing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHCCjlSWbHE?t=1m50s

(Bet they didn't think at the time that techies of the future would be watching it in 2024 on the ubiquitous global data network.)

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We had a ubiquitous continental data network back then. You can see it in operation in the old historical film, "You've Got Mail". The floppy installation disks were so plentiful they probably form a sedimentary stratum future geologists will use to identify the era.

Yeah, I was thinking the people who were showing this advanced tech thing were also likely the ones who could extrapolate where online was going.

But did they imagine that many techies a few decades in the future would be interested in the home video they were making?

only as much as you think Kubernetes will be a historical fascination 200 years from now.

That was 1995. In 1991, we had the ubiquitous intercontinental phone network, but overseas connections were >$1/minute and data rate was only 9600 baud.

Stretching the definition a little, satellite TV had been a thing for years by then. Neiman Marcus was selling satellite dishes in 1979.

Satellite TV, being unidirectional, can hardly be called communication.

There was a satellite ISP for a time. The satellite box had a modem in it and your outbound traffic went out over the modem and the inbound traffic came down to the dish.

One-way communication is still communication. Broadcast TV is still used today.

Still, email and usenet sort of worked. I have sent my first international email in 1993, from a school lab in my home town in Siberia. In larger cities, I bet there were ways to do it even earlier.

I just love the look of vector displays and I wish they were more common still today. Such a cool aesthetic!

Me too. Atari, toward the end, had even mastered color vector displays that look excellent!

Look for clips of "Star Wars" in action.

The 70's was anni interesting time. Atari was employing dynamic vector displays capable of real time motion.

Tektronix was using vectors with their storage CRT tech. Basically the vectors got painted onto the tube phosphors, thus displaying the image without the need to refresh.

4k resolution (vector coordinate space) ended up being a thing!

https://youtu.be/f8I8TtK_6sw?si=LQ1sZK6jt0QKhMNX

I played Star Wars at a Chuck E Cheese as a kid. The cabinet was impressive too; done up like a cockpit with a flight yoke.

Yep! That remains a top arcade experience.

Your last line immediately made me think. probably in near future, techies of the future would say something similar about our achievements, maybe gpt, or 4 qbit quantum computer.

...and enjoy such a cute and naive retro technology. "Ah ! Good old times".

PCs and their games from the 90's are already retro gaming.

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