Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Ken Gagne, and Jack Nutting

Host’s Topic: Funding retrocomputing projects

When you get a new idea for something related to retrocomputing (new electronics, new cases, coffee table books)—and it’s a great idea—but you can’t fund it all yourself, what are the options? Thinking back on such projects, what seems to you like it’s been most successful? What would you try (or never try again)?

Retro Computing News:

• Virtualbasic.org
• Alamogordo dig sales exceed $100K
• 8bit Generation on Kickstarter
• Happy 20th Birthday Win95
• Happy 20th birthday Atari Jaguar CD!
  • RetroVGS
  • Jaguars at the dentist
• Quinn prepares to look at the IIc Plus ROM code the hard way
• The Byte Works Opus ][ (Software, Source) now available from Gamebits
• Uthernet II preorders were open

Vintage Computer Commercials:

• Windows 95: Multitasking
• Thomson MO6
• Guide to Windows 95 with friends

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Start button shirt

Auction Picks:

• Jack: Atari joystick belt buckle
• Ken: Microzine 8+9
• Paul: ZX-81 kit
  • Thomson M05

Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X – link
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Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), and Earl Evans

Host’s Topic: The end of retrocomputing

We here on the speaking end of these microphones have a pretty similar timelines with computers, having been young and eager when computers were just entering the “personal” era. No doubt a part of the current interest in re-exploring that time is nostalgia. Will people who were 10 in 2003 (Bart Simpson aside) play around with old Dell Windows boxes when the mid 2030s roll around? Did people who were 10 in 1920 seek out old standing mixers to play with in the 1960s? The time we focus on is generally the point when the technology was new and changing and finding itself, isn’t that going to be the time “retrocomputing” will always focus on? What for you lies outside the bounds of the hobby interest—too new, too widely available, too closed, too …? to “feel like” retrocomputing? It’s not about who can play or what anyone calls it, but what personally is the endpoint of your own interest?

Retro Computing News:

• Radio Shack Microcomputer trainer pages
• GMC-4, modern RS Microcomputer trainer clone
• Retropie 3
• VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL MIDWEST 10 August 29-30, 2015, Elk Grove Village, IL
• ECCC – Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention
• New Vintage Style 64C Computer Housing Case – Red
• Brand-new colored keycaps for your Commodore C64
• C64 reloaded (motherboard from Individual Computers)
• Surfing the internet with a Model 100
• Commodore PET in JavaScript, along with chiclet keyboard layout!
• Saving 25,000 manuals from Manuals Plus
• Ongoing, amazing PDP-12 restore effort happening at the RICM, Rhode Island Computer Museum

Vintage Computer Commercial:

• TRS-80 Color Computer 3 vs. shortwave radio

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• iRecorder (iPhone dock/speaker in cassette player form factor

Auction Picks:

• Earl: Televideo 920C with second page of memory installed
• Paul: Lear-Siegler ADM 3A terminal
  • Lot of 20 Atari 400/800 cartridges. And some other stuff.
  • SX-64 with Prophet MIDI synth
  • HERO 1

Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X – link
Show audio files hosted by CyberEars

Listen/Download:

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Panelists: Earl Evans (hosting), Ken Gagne, Paul Hagstrom, and Carrington Vanston

Host’s Topic: Second chances

If we had a time machine – What do you wish you’d done “back in the day” in the computing world, and is there a chance you can catch up and do it now in the retrocomputing hobby?

Retro Computing News:

• WDC 6502 and 65816-based development boards
• Amiga Turns 30:
  • ArsTechnica series
  • Guardian article
  • Jay Miner interview
• How “two bored 1970s housewives” helped create the PC industry
  • Vector Graphic Vector-1 computer
  • Vector-1 on eBay
• Retrochallenge 2015/07 ends
  • Tezza’s newly-mobile-friendly site
  • Earl’s Forth for Commodore 128
• Charles Babbage Institute
• PiDP-8/I kits
  • PiDP forum
• Apple IIgs bounty:
  • Apple IIgs System 6.0.2
  • GS/OS 6.0.2 hard disk image for Floppy Emu
  • Space Ace for the Apple IIgs
  • BurgerLib
  • KitchenSink
• Leadlight Gamma released for Mac/PC
• Sleepaway camp for Apple II fanatics, Motherboard Radio (Jason Koebler)
• History of Icons

Vintage Computer Commercial:

• Remington Rand UNIVAC

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Green Computer Power Button Keychain

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: The Apple Boogie
  • Story on Apple Boogie on The Next Web
  • Download the songs
  • Blue Busters video
• Carrington: Outbound Laptop
• Paul: Radio Shack Science Fair Microcomputer Trainer
  • Science Fair Microcomputer with more beat up box
• Earl: Bell Teletype Model 26
  • Wikipedia says it’s from 1946

Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X – link
Show audio files hosted by CyberEars

Listen/Download:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed