Tokyo's "Extinct Media Museum" is quite nice, brings up many memories (phun intended..)
@globalc just looking at these images makes my bones hurt ("I was there Gandalf, I was there 3000 years ago...")
@globalc genauso stelle ich mir @leyrer Wohnzimmer vor ;-)
@citizenk4te @globalc wenn ich mit fr. Kondo verheiratet wäre. ..

@leyrer @globalc Frau Kondo nimmt das nich mehr so ernst...die hat jetzt 2-3 Kinder und wurd gefragt warums bei ihr nich mehr so hübsch aussieht und sie so ganz cool (kein scheiß jetzt) "Ich hab Kinder und was besseres zu tun als aufräumen"...

Lieb ich :D so ganzes Leben Kohle mit gescheffelt und dann häää du hast echt wenig zu tun xD Genius, einfach Genius...

@citizenk4te @globalc ohh sehr schön. Damit ist sie gleich doppelt sympathisch

@globalc @Binder the first time I went to Tokyo (c. 1992), we went to the Sony offices, where they had an exhibition of storage media of the past, present, and (near) future. The future media included a variety of tape formats, including some absolutely tiny ones that were approaching SD card size. They were also heavily touting Minidisc, which was already being sold in Japan, but hadn’t yet reached tve US. (They also had HDTV CRTs!)

I really wish we’d gotten MP3 players that used tiny cassette tapes!

@josh0 @globalc @Binder There was DAT, which was smaller than the compact cassette, but still quite a bit larger than the minicassette. Minidiscs were absolutely fantastic, though, it's a real shame they didn't catch on much outside Japan. Sony's NT digital cassette was about the same size as a normal-sized SD card in two dimensions, probably about equal to a stack of three. It was marketed for taking memos, though, not for listening to music. And, again, didn't catch on.
@StarkRG @globalc @Binder yes! The NT! That’s the one! I remember being very impressed by it at the time, even though it already seemed obvious that cassettes were on their way out. One friend of mine in California did end up getting a minidisc player, but the only way to use it for music was basically to record an album into it from his computer, so it really functioned more like a very limited MP3 player (which was still pretty nice in those pre-iPod days). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NT_(cassette)
NT (cassette) - Wikipedia

@josh0 @globalc @Binder Yeah, I think part of the reason Minidiscs got so popular in Japan, beyond just generally being awesome, was the existence of CD rentals in the same fashion as movie rentals (in fact, they were usually available at the same locations). Given how early MP3 players had relatively limited storage, a portable minidisc player with a small collection of discs was generally the better option. The Creative Nomad Jukebox might have been the only pre-iPod device with decent space.
@josh0 @globalc @Binder Oh, yeah, Wikipedia says the NT was introduced in 1992, that's early enough that it could have taken a sizable chunk of the market, had Sony pushed for that. Portable CD players were still kinda shit at that point and even in-car CD players were fairly rare and also still kinda shit (they hadn't really worked out how to do read-ahead anti-skip very well yet)
@StarkRG @globalc @Binder I very clearly remember my first portable cd player. It was a Sony Discman, and I waited until such a thing was available for $100 (this was probably ‘96?). It was basically unusable for any use case beyond sitting still somewhere.
@StarkRG
The fact that copying mini-discs with consumer tech did automatically degrade the quality of what was stored digitally and could have been copied without loss.. this was always a "yes, that's capitalism" example for me.
@josh0 @Binder
@globalc @StarkRG @Binder my friend’s mini disk player and PowerMac both supported TOSLINK, which helped a lot with the quality, but still.
@globalc @StarkRG @Binder it appears that autocorrect cannot decide on a consistent way to spell ‘Minidisc’…
@josh0
Coming from Sony, it's of course meant to be spelled in Katakana :)
ミニディスク
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9F%E3%83%8B%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF
@StarkRG @Binder
ミニディスク - Wikipedia

@globalc @josh0 @Binder Minidiscs used lossy compression, similar to MP3s, so I wouldn't go crediting capitalism for that. It was decent enough, though, better than the bitrate people often used for MP3s.
@StarkRG @josh0 @Binder
Hm.. ok.
Reading up a bit on it, lossy compression indeed.
Maybe it was a design decision somewhere in the hardware to have copies go through the encoder again instead of just writing down what was already coming from a minidisc.
@josh0 I haven't been to that Sony-tech place in a while.
Another fun thing around workman is that Sony also brought out own rechargable batteries, form factor similar to chewing gum. On the right here:
@globalc AutoCAD LT! I worked on that!
@globalc @ltning check the 3rd picture!
@semanticfire @globalc OH WOW !!! All those pics .. *sigh*

@globalc
Jesus.

I've used most of those.

@globalc
With that last photo gosh. Last night I was looking at FiiO's offerings to see if they had anything I was looking for and saw a photo with what I thought was someone holding a Bluetooth tape player/walkman in modern retro styling like the last photo.

Unfortunately it was just an MP3 player built to look like one. Cute, but kinda sad to see after getting my hopes up!

@globalc oh cool, the Japanese version of Macintosh System 7.5, KanjiTalk 7.5 is a nice thing to see. also OS/2 is a fun one, too. and check out that wall of floppy disks!
@globalc @uliwitness huh, was Macintosh System Software branded as Macintosh Talk in Japan?
@chucker
Wow, indeed, it's what they called the Japanese version of the whole operating system of what we now call "Mac OS classic". In 2001, Mac OS X followed.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97Talk
@uliwitness
漢字Talk - Wikipedia

@globalc @chucker Interesting! I knew the language subsystems were called KanjiTalk etc. But that's news
@globalc I really like that design of the Walkman to help you listen with another person! I have a headphone splitter cable, but it's lacking the independent volume controls and microphone, and we're running out of new devices with headphone jacks...
@skyfaller Comes back now with the bluetooth standards made for multiple listeners at the same time.. fun to see such features implemented initially which then vanished for some reason.
@skyfaller @globalc
The volume sliders on the TPS-L2 are Left/Right, applied equally to both of the headphone outs.
The design was based on an older mono voice recorder, with an external Mic input socket next to a mono headphone out. They replaced the recording capability with Stereo internally, and used the same case.
The built-in mic was used by a talkback feature, enabled by the orange button.
On later Walkman models, the orange button was moved to a 'mute' on the headphone cable.
@skyfaller @globalc
But independent volume controls for individual headphone outs is an excellent idea.
I've never seen it done outside of a dedicated headphone monitor mixer. And those are usually not cheap.

@dec23k
Thank you - I was jumping to conclusions in assuming these were volume sliders.

If implemented nowadays, I would guess they would distribute the signal via Bluetooth Auracast to multiple devices, and these would then have their own volume control.
@skyfaller

@globalc @skyfaller
Slight correction to my earlier reply: they were just volume sliders (one L, one R). I shouldn't have said 'balance' as that's usually a different control.

I was going on a memory of using one of them (with one pair of headphones).

@globalc oh this is hella cool, where is this museum?
@mrmandolino Central Tokyo, Otemachi: https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/otemachi/ .
It's not huge, but quite nice.
Extinct Media Museum Tokyo Official Page:「絶滅メディア博物館」公式ページ : Extinct Media Museum Tokyo

What is the Extinct Media Museum ?The Extinct Media Museum (Tokyo,Japan) is a private museum that collects and exhibits media and media equipment that have died out or are dying out in the process of evolution based on the belief that all media other th

Extinct Media Museum Tokyo
@globalc That place is so cool, I went there last month and donated my Nokia Ngage :D
@globalc I must have an entire wing devoted to the AOL CDs they would send out in their heyday. Maybe cover the floor and ceilings with them?
@mrbruno Can't remember having seen them - but yes, that was "a thing" in Europe where I grew up. People having huge amounts of these. Will ask Japanese colleagues if they can relate. Some things went very differently in Japan, for example Yahoo Japan did very well compared to the global org, and was quite long much more known than Google.
@globalc Technology from more civilized times.
@pythno I 'm wondering sometimes what was different in the time of playing Commodore Amiga and C64, playing games with friends in front of the computer. Waiting for the game to start was a factor.. maybe even moving the floppy physically into the system, not sure.
@globalc and I have and STILL USE some of the media on that wall of frames ;o)