Digging around my old tech drawer

14/03/25, 11:53am

I tend to collect any and all old and usually no longer working technology I come across. I've had this habit for many years now and somehow a lot of my friends and relatives found out over time (most likely because I wont shut up about it) so I've gotten a lot of obsolete technology and random dead old phones that used to belong to them as a gift over the years. I wanted to show off some of those little devices here since I find them very interesting and I'm sure someone else will share the sentiment. Much to my disappointment, a lot of these don't actually work for various reasons, but I love owning these little pieces of history either way since it has led me to find and learn a lot of new things about devices that were used before I was conscious or mature enough to use a cellphone. Anyway! I don't want to make this preamble any longer, I'll go directly to the gizmos.

Cellphones
I'm going to start with these because 3 out of 4 don't work and I'm still mad about it. I've gotten all of these as gifts from relatives and I'm beginning to have the feeling that they are using me as a phone garbage disposal. Still! Going through the whole “does this 10 year old piece of plastic still work” experimentation was really fun even though most of the time I came out disappointed. I had to search far and wide for some of the chargers of these things and for once in my life I actually did put good use to the box of random cables I keep in one of my drawers.

Pink Nokia 6131

This phone has seen better days. I wanted this one to work the most since I was really looking forward to being able to use the camera (I like experimenting with old and frankly shitty cameras from time to time and have collected a lot of those over the years as well. Will probably make a blog post on that some other time) but alas, it doesn't even turn on. I'm not sure if the thing is charging at all. There's a lot of things that could be causing this but I am not taking the time to test. Sorry. It's a gorgeous phone either way.

Nokia 7230

This one doesn't work either. It charges, the keyboard lights up and everything, but it seems the screen is completely broken. When I first tested this thing out I started clicking random buttons and a ringtone blasted through the loudspeaker. It scared me badly. The slide thing is incredibly cool though, and for some time I used it as some sort of stim toy.

Samsung Galaxy J1

This is how I got it. I seriously feel bad for the guy. No back cover… I haven't even tried to charge this in fear the poor thing will explode in my hand. This is the only one of the phones I do remember having used at least once. I'm pretty sure I used to play a Littlest Pet Shop Java game on this one that was pretty fun (NOT talking about the Gameloft one).

Samsung E1150

And finally… the only one that works. I am not very excited about this one in particular being the only usable phone. Just look at the specs of this absolute beast of a phone:

It doesn't even have a camera. I cant put an SD card on it to at least listen to music through really shitty speakers. Doesn't have any sort of external connection. It has a grand total of two (2) games: Super Jewel Quest and Sudoku. It only has a headphone jack and a charger slot, that is literally it. It's frankly depressing. I still like the guy though, I even took the time (5 minutes) to change the background and layout of the home screen. That is pretty much all you can do - clearly a phone that's designed to do only the essential: It takes calls and sends texts. That's about it.

CASIO gadgets
I've always really liked this brand mostly because I find it really funny that they've made practically any technological device you can think of. I remember once joking around with a friend about this and we ended up finding out about the existence of the CASIO Loopy, which is one of the weirdest and most obscure videogame consoles I've come across, I think.
Anyway, I own a bunch of CASIO stuff. Here's some of my favorites:

Casio fx-82D

This thing is pretty old. Announced in 1989, if I'm not mistaken. If you put the case in front of a source of light, you can kind of see some old notes that I'm assuming are either a cheat sheet or just normal math operations done on the case (and some words here and there), but I can't tell much since it has since smudged a little and there's a lot of stuff written on top of the other.
I guess what I consider interesting about this isn't exactly the device itself, but the signs of a previous owner LOL

Casio PB-120

This thing is absolutely gorgeous. Unlike the previous one, it hasn't been touched whatsoever, and since I got it with a sleeve and everything it actually smells just like new. Which is kind of a weird thing to say. This was one of the very first devices I got as a gift.

Casio SF-5590SY

Now THIS is a beautiful device. Like seriously I couldn't stop staring at it when I first got it.
It's a digital diary launched in the late 1990s (Around 1996 if my memory doesn't fail me?) It used to belong to my mom and she had to explain what the thing was because I've never come across one of these before. It's in impeccable condition, and although the keys feel a bit flabby and the thing is a bit too big, I've always wondered how it would feel to actually use it. The thing is that, since it is a 30 year old device, it uses button cells as battery and I'm a bit wary about them LOL It's a completely unfounded prejudice but I got it from my mom. What can I say? Plus I'm not sure how accessible these things are nowadays, I've certainly never come across one in the wild.

Extra
Mini wireless optical mouse… thing?

I felt like a dumbass at the time but I genuinely hadn't ever seen one of these before. I had no idea they existed and felt like a mouse amateur afterwards.
I guess I'll explain for anyone that hasn't seen one of these before either: Its a wireless mouse but it doesn't work via bluetooth, instead you have to open it up like it's some sort of transformer, get the USB stick out of it (in this one by pressing the button that's under the wheel), connect it to your PC, and then you can kind of. Just use it. It does require some AAA batteries of which I only had two almost dead ones that lasted for about 5 minutes before the mouse stopped working, but either way it felt a bit laggy/unprecise to me. I still find it really cool because 1) it got me to learn something new and 2) it really does look like a transformer.
Also, if anyone is able to provide any sort of insight into what exact model or brand this thing is, it would be very much welcome. The logo is from a medical insurance company, that's all I've got.

Well, that's about it. I definitely have a lot of other stuff I could talk about (and I've been considering rewriting my videogame collection blog for some time now) but these are by far the coolest items I own. To me, at least. Perhaps I'll make a separate section on my site's blog for tech stuff eventually if I write more of these, but for now this will have to do.
Any other additional info/fun facts/whatever else on any of these devices is always welcome and I'd love to hear about it!
I'm leaving it off here :-)