Retro Computers

A radio that combines the design language of old American muscle cars and the spacerace. The top is forest green with tailfins, the bottom is ivory white, and the front is shining silver, on a silver stand. Up top we find a single antenna, a red power/volume dial, and you turn the 'intake" of the rocket to change the stations (the tuning display is immediately behind the engine, incoporated into the body).

The Sharp Tranket transistor radio (1960)

In this EXTREMELY text- and font-dense ad, a Commodore 64 is a computer flying to space, and the red Action Replay cartrige is a shuttlecraft about to dock with it. Headings include "WARP 25 BREAKS THE 5 SECOND BARRIER!!!" "PLUS UNIQUE CODE CRACKER MONITOR" and "POWERFUL DESIGN WITH ON BOARD L51 LOGIC PROCESSOR CHIP"

Total Back Up Power Takes A Quantum Leap!

A video game screenshot of a jungle level. A feline pirate in blue outfit dashes at an orange canine, his sword knocking the dog off the screen. Below, another dog and crates lie in wait; to the top right, four coins and a chalice float waiting pickup; above, a coin and a lizard statuette float. The top left reads 105415 treasures, 1 tesla coil; the top right reads 52 hearts, 14 shots, 2 lives. There is a checkpoint with a cat-skull-and-crossbones flag on stage left.

"Join forces with Captain Claw, the greatest cat pirate ever, to challenge the Cocker Spaniard Armada! Embark on an epic quest to recover the lost gems of the Amulet of Nine Lives." (Source.)

A portable television, in a very 'space age' case: the top is ivory but the sides and frontispiece are cherry red. Twin antenna sprout from the back, a silver tilted carry handle sprouts from the top, and a huge silver grille allows both airflow and speaker. There are a bare minimum of controls on the top of the device itself: an on/off push toggle, a silver tuning dial, a rotary display behind a glass window for current station, and recessed plastic wheels for h-hold, v-hold, brightness, and volume.

The Sharp TRP801 (1960)

On the left, the article title "INTERIORS: Opening up the 520ST" by Jack Powell, Antic Technical Editor. Center, the backplane of the 520ST. Right, the motherboard of the 520ST. The center and backplane are joined by lines indicating connectors, while the callouts label each chip, its manufacturer, and its purpose.

Ever wonder what was inside your $5,500 microcomputer? ANTIC Magazine has the skinny

A man counts on his digits to get to base 16. On his left hand, he has labeled the digits A to E; on the right hand, he has labeled the digits F to 3. His left foot is labeled 4. His right foot is labeled 5 to 9. He exclaims, "That's 16!"

There's more than one way to learn how to count in hex. (Source.)

A magazine article for the game Temimu. Top left, it gives the name, the review ("Daruma fighting!"), the controls (one player on the keyboard, one player on the controller); it states that the game works on the MSX and MSX2 with 8K RAM. Top left, it gives a screenshot of two bird-looking things, P1 in yellow and P2 in white, facing each other; P1 has 10 points of life, P2 has 10 points of life. The short Japanese description describes our heroes, the play mechanics (two players jockey to a distance where they can use specific fighting game moves). Image right, the three special moves our heroes can use are depicted, top to bottom: Power Bomb, Brain Buster, and Back Drop.

Are they birds? Bottles of soy sauce? Snowmen? Daruma dolls? Who knows! In Temimu ("I can't see my hands"), a MSX fighting game in BASIC, use the Power Bomb, Brain Buster, and Back Drop to drop your opponent to 0. (Source.)

Up top, a two page comic. A samurai in plaid looks at his CRT, showing he has fired a rocket in a Quake-like FPS killing his foe, and says: "[HP] takagawa: GG". His foe in the next panel grey floral looks at his CRT, showing he has been exploded, and types: "[HP] hero-hito: FT! you have so dishonored me." Down below, the text reads: "Concentrate. Channel. Frag. Chill out. Happy puppy has thousands of playable demos, not to mention reviews, previews, and cheats--perfectly suited for your average samurai. (Other people like Happy Puppy too.) In the bottom right, the logo of Happy Puppy - indeed, a happy puppy, with red eyes, a smug grin, floppy ear, and a patch over one eye - is surrounded by the url happypuppy.com and the slogan, "it's all games". Far bottom right, the URL games.theglobe.com appears.

"Concentrate. Channel. Frag. Chill out." (Source.)

Top, the "Elite" logo - a gold aguila with silver wings and helmet behind the word "ELITE." Left is a screenshot for the BBC Micro B and B+, and right is a screenshot for the BBC Master; both show the player, a first person spacehip, focusing on an enemy ship with stars flying in the background; gauges appear in the bottom left and right, and the now industry standard isomettric radar on the bottom of each screenshot shows the player is surrounded. Below is dense copy, describing the complex aspects of gameplay (exploration, combat, trade, and quests); below that, the Superior Software logo (a red and white interlinked pair of Ss), the Acornsoft logo (an egg), and an order address (mail and phone only) are listed below.

"Elite, the widely acclaimed 3-D space game, is the highest selling game ever published for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron..."

In the center of the screen, a rabbit samurai raises his sword and prepares to attack a rhinoceros in a forest; snowy mountains are in the background. Up top, we see the samurai's face contorted into anger, while the rhino says: "All those who challenge me die, ronin..." The corners of the screen give the player's money (3 ryo), Karma (4), the Player's health (9/10), and the enemy's health (8/10).

Usagi Yojimbo (Firebird; C64, 1988)

I did not mean for this bot to be timely

A shelving unit holding a small rough-hewn electric appliance. In comparison to the card catalogues behind it, it's a tiny device, no longer than a desktop radio of the era; documents produced by this 'electric telescope' could be reviewed on the desk itself.

Hypertext was a product of the 60s... because its spiritual and technical precursor, the Mundaneum institute's Universal Decimal Classification, was functionally destroyed by the Nazis razing Belgium in 1940.

about to send me back to Gopher

In light of this update, it's vitally important to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Speech Foundation, and other equivalent orgs in your countries.

Granted, I still have to put a disclaimer on external links warning that Bluesky is injecting trackers...

bsky.app/profile/eff....

■2025年12月9日
おはようございます🌞
今日は「マウスの誕生日」です🖱🐁

これはパソコンの方のマウスの誕生日ですね。昔はボールマウスと言ってマウスの下にうずらの卵位のボールが入っていて、それを回すことによってカーソルの操作を行っていました。　なので回すたびにゴロゴロと振動がありました。

このボールゴム製なので回しているとゴミが付くんですよね。なので時折ボールを取り外して付いたゴミを取り除かないと効きにくくなるんです。

その後「光工学マウス」と言うのが出て、マウスの下が赤や青の光で操作できるようになりました。昔は裏を見ると凄い光で眩しかったですが今のマウスは光を出さないので安心です🖱

Up top, the title 'CREATING ADVENTURE GAMES ON YOUR DRAGON 32'. Below, 'By Clive Gifford'. Clive himself signed below, writing "Best Wishes, C. Gifford." Below that is the protracted font which reads "Interface Publication," and the graph-paper-book logo Interface was using at the time.

In the Internet Archive's stacks, I occasionally find obviously secondhand books, such as books with a card protector in the back, or handwritten notes. This is probably the first book I've found that was signed. A tiny act of kindness, now posterized. (Source.)

A mecha equipment screen. Image top left, a picture of the pilot, wearing a grey jumpsuit and blue accents, gold earrings, a black headband, and a white bob cut. Bottom left her name and rank (Anita Shefeeld (sic), ARMY Cpl.Sgt.) and her scores (such as "Adj. to-air +6" and "Adjusted AP 15"). Cneter is the robot itself, deliberately evocative of the design of a late 80s to early 90s jet, with a 'canopy' style helmet and two large 'jet' intakes; a railgun of some type is on its right shoulder, and a missile pack on its left shoulder. The right hand column shows the current equipment in dense type; the two hand slots show silhouettes of the weapons. The bottom right gives stats for the X3A mecha as a whole (such as "Durability 60, Land defense 40"); the bar at the very bottom has the game logo (POWERDOLLS 1994 Kogado Studio) and the options 'Select' and 'Done'.

Power Dolls (DOS, 1994)

A verbose advertisement for Magellan 2.0 from Lotus. Down below is dense ad copy. Up top is a picture of a businessman in striped shirt and tie sticking his head into a computer monitor.

You always find something in the last place you look. Unfortuantely, the average hard disk has about 20,000 places.

"If you do need to post messages, you should try to adhere to the basic rules of journalism. Keep Your Message Brief. Researchers tell us the average person's attention span is only about 30 seconds. IN print, that means only 75 words! That may not sound like much, but think about it. We live in a world of 30-second messages. the world of television and radio revolves around the 30-second commercial. Just think of the lasting impression these short clips have on our lives. Who can forget "I can't believe I hate the whole thing," "Where's the beef!", or "You deserve a break today." The bottom line is, if you can't say it in about 75 words, you don't udnerstand what you want to say."

300 characters isn't a lot, but the people of old BBSs made do with less. (Source.)

Someday I need to do a Battletech deep dive.

Tech used to have an aesthetic and didn't track your spending habits

Up top, a drawing of a poster a politician, eyes covered by PCBs and mouth filled with a keyboard, posted on a brick wall, behind a trash can. Beneath, the title: "Computers in Congress" The article follows.

"If you write your congressional representative these days, your reply may come from a computer..." (Source.)

A dark blue screen, with little white bubbles floating up. Screen left, a blue dolphin swims. In the middle of a screen, a shark hunts fish, while screen right, a red splotch (coral?) awaits the dolphin if they keep swimming right.

The Dolphin's Rune (Admacadaim; C64, 1985) (Source.)

A magazine ad showing the Hyper7. It's a dedicated word processor all-in-one, with a PS/2 keyboard, a monochrome backlit LCD monitor device left, twin vertically mounted 3.5" floppies device right, and a thermal printer device rear. The screen on the device shows a multi-application operating system, including word processor, spreadsheet, rolodex, drawing program, graphing program, disk utility, telecommunications terminal, and tutorial. The only thing it's lacking is a way to program on the thing.

Word processors used to be an appliance. (Source.)

A top-down RPG. To left, a depiction of a village. To right, headshots and statistics for party members Trelain, Junara, Mahmud, Thal'Kan, Lucina, and Suela, all of which are some combination of blue, yellow, and grey. Bottom left are the movement buttons and a Help button. Bottom center are various controls.

The Aethra Chronicles: Celystra's Bane (DOS, 1994)

A list of the largest US ISPs from May 1996. The full table includes Subscribers, Signups/Week, PHone Nubmer, Home Page, Montly Fees, and cost per hour. The top ten are Netcom, Spry Net, PSINet, Global Network Nav, Concentric, EarthLink, IDT Corp, Internet America, TIAC, and Mindspring.

It is now believed that there may be hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet

An ad from the classifieds section of the August '85 issue of Computer & Video Games. It reads, "BUSINESS opportunity for quality Games Software Programmer. I have an idea for an original computer game, but not the knowledge to program it. Help me out for 50/50 split on profits. Apply in writing to Computer Game...." And then the rest of the address, which has been edited out of the image so we don't innundate the new tenant with the hundreds of programmers leaping to take 50% of the profit of an 80s computer game.

"BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY for quality Games Software Programmer..." (Source.)

Printed in the August 1983 issue of Compute!, a photograph of a blue and white gameplay screen for the VIC-20. Ladders climb up and down, and platforms run across a brick wall; up top is a timer, a score field, and a high score field. At the very bottom of the screen, the titual 'Dragon' looks more like a gecko, while the presumed goal is up a ladder to the right.

"Here's a short but exciting game for the VIC-20..." Programmed by Steven R. McCloskey, Dragon was a minimalist take on Pac-Man, changing it from a game of clearing the board before you're hunted to chasing down food before you starve. (Source.)

An ad from the Feb 1976 issue of Byte Magazine for The Intecolor 8001, a complete 8080 system with keyboard, monitor, modem, bell, AND manual, for JUST $1395 plus $15 shipping.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!