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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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This was pretty fun to watch. But also kinda hearbreaking. That thing isn't going to last forever. The longer this goes the less excited I am about someone figuring out how to make CRTs as a boutique thing for nerds, but it's also a thing that should happen, even if I'm past my personal vinyl moment where I would overspend like crazy for it.
They don't have to figure it out. It's well documented.
My understanding is there are no new tubes/screens being produced anywhere. The figure out part is the industrial production, not the technology. But hey, if there are any production lines still in operation I'd be very curious to learn about them.
Just like floppy disks and VHS tapes. Every 3.5" floppy that will ever be made has already been made.
I thought there was like one place making them, but maybe they're only packaging and shipping old ones?
But yeah, man, it's weird that we resurrected vinyl but those things are just lapsing despite retro tech fans having become a fairly large group. I suppose it's easier to manufacture replacements out of new tech than it is to build the legacy stuff, so it's all Goteks and memory card adaptors for a lot of that stuff.
Maybe it's the matter of vinyl consumers being a larger group than floppy disk consumers?
I enjoy going to music concerts, and in the case of smaller scenes/bands i always buy a vinyl (and most of times a t-shirt) to support the band directly. I don't even have a vinyl player at the moment - long story - but I have a collection of 300+ records.
If I recall correctly it is also very cheap to produce in terms of tools and machines needed, the pipeline being all analogue and mechanical?
I am also a retrocomputer nerd, but I guess the number of indie game developers that target floppy disks as the distribution medium for their next game are fewer by number compared to the musicians distributing on vinyl?
Floppy disks are still used in industrial automation. If something works, you don't mess with it until you need to. The thing with floppies, is that there are lots of them floating around, and they last a long time. You can also write different information to them.
I've got a couple of 8" floppies near my desk that aren't used for anything anymore, but I bet they still work. So even though there are no floppies being produced, the existing supply of floppies will last a heck of a long time.
Yeah, that's the thing. Pressing a piece of plastic with some sharp grooves in it is one thing, but once you get into TVs or magnetic storage things get hard pretty fast.
And since most of that is digital anyway you can instead make a cheap adaptor to use a modern solid state device that will do the same job objectively better. There's just no upside to it beyond nostalgia.