Category: Retro Computing History
It is well known the myth (or truth!?) that Steve Jobs stole all Xerox ideas of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) from its Xerox Alto computer. Although the whole story is debatable, it is a fact that the Xerox Alto was the precursor of the user interface we still use today, almost unchanged. It was published earlier this month of…
Although I believe there is healthy competition among many retro news sites (with some exceptions), I also believe that the retro community is too small for divisions and as for websites, the more the merrier. With some delay, It has come to my attention that the ‘Retro Computing News’ website is closing shop, probably for good. Stuart Williams explains.. Due to…
Arstechnica UK has published a 2-part article telling the complete story of the IBM PC. The first part was published back in June and the second and final part on July 31st. The massive 8000-word article goes deep in the history of the computer that, despite not being the most exciting and capable of its time, caused the demise of…
The Crash Annual 2018 Kickstarter smashed it’s goal target within a day! For those of you that aren’t so Speccy savvy, Crash was a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress. At time of writing the Kickstarter has reached…
Granit Falls, a city in the state of North Carolina was the center of a massive loss for the retro computing community. A warehouse that was being rented out for storage units and also held some small businesses, was also the home for the “Save the Machine Computer Preservation Group” which was consumed by the flames yesterday – luckily no one was…
Glen Hewlett has been publishing an extensive 25-part article about his quest to convert the Z80 arcade version of PacMan to the Motorola 6809, allowing it to run in the TRS-80 CoCo. Well, he finally was able to finish the task, and you can download and play it. You need a 512K CoCo3 to play it though (or any CoCo3…
Retro-gaming hitting the major outlets again. This time BBC News has published an article, written by Jennifer Scott, about the revival of retro-gaming. Blaming pure nostalgia or even to show off (?) the games to the children, more and more people are going back and playing old games. Old games availability is not necessarily new, but it is undeniable that…
You may know that Information technology pioneer Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext”, but did you know that he also got a TON of junk mail? Throughout his life and career, he made a habit if checking reader service cards — those cards you could send in to get more information from vendors and advertisers — and received thousands of…
Alexey “alsp” Spirkov has started to ship SDrive², a disk emulator for Atari 8-bit computers that uses a microSD card as storage media. The device connects directly to the Atari SIO port and it is available in kit format or fully assembled unit, including a nice 3D-printed case. The kit is sold for US$15 and the fully assembled for US$50 + shipping,…
Amicast is a podcast about the Amiga, covering everything about the platform, past and present! Today’s show is all about guest star Jarlath Reidy. Jarlath is from Ireland and he is one of the guys behind Amiga Ireland Meetup. Other Topics: Amiga history Odyssey and Vampire exclusive software. Amiga Ireland Podcast Website: Amicast
