Our hospital is finally switching over to digital x-ray. This transition is bitter-sweet to me. The machine in the image above is a Toshiba DST-100A, one of the last machines that I trained on when I was an x-ray student. The Toshiba was the first x-ray machine installed when the hospital was first built back in the 80's. It's a real workhorse. I rarely ever had to call this machine in for maintenance. But now replacement parts no longer exist for the Toshiba. I knew all the ins and outs of this x-ray machine. So many quirks came along with it. Over time parts started breaking (or were no longer available). You had to compensate for certain luxuries that were no more. That meant you had to think and be aware of everything you were doing on that unit. I liked that. I felt like I had total control over this machine. In return, it produced some of the most amazing images that will never be again in the analog world. The detail I was able to get was phenomenal. All the techs would comment. You could see the striations of bone formation in the bone, the term we techs use as trabecular patterns. It just popped off the film.
It looked old, console looked very complicated next to more modern LED lit touch screen units but we got along very well. I'll really miss the Toshiba. Farewell my friend.
