Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting) and Jack Nutting (not hosting)

Topic: Virtual retrocomputing

For things you can’t physically interact with, how would you like to see or experience retrocomputers? What’s important to you for, say, an internet-accessible museum? Photos, movies, emulation? In-browser? Documentation? “Everything, all the things” is a possible answer, but realistically, what would you use, and what might the use case be? What is frustrating about existing online repositories you’ve used? Is there anything that you’d find more useful than things you’ve seen already? There’s a lot of possible information, maybe too much to really digest in one place.

Topic and feedback notes:

• Homebrew Club (augmented reality iOS app)
• Hidden Powers of the Model 100 (Christopher L. Morgan)
• Pete Foley reminiscing about a RISC-based implementation of the 6502 nearly created within Apple

Retro Computing News:

• Atari800MacX 5.0 released (brings sound back in newer Mac OSes X)
• ContrAlto emulator (LCM+L)
• IRATA online
• Robert Justice on cross-compiling Apple /// drivers, Apple /// copy-protection
• Kevin Savetz’s 10-line basic tool for helping write 10-line basic games
• Preserving a floppy disk with a logic analyzer and a serial cable

Vintage Computer-related Commercials:

• Amstrad PCW-8256
• Xerox Alto

Retro Computing Gift Ideas:

• John Aycock’s “6502: The Card Game”

Auction Picks:

• Paul: Run a Raspberry Pi using your Apple II as… a… power supply?
  • Pi1541 kit
  • Amstrad e-mailer plus
  • Amstrad PCW-8256
  • Be a computer literate
  • NeXTstation TurboColor simplified
  • SOL-20
  • PDP 11/440

Closing discussion notes:

• Busting legends of the QWERTY keyboard
• TextWare’s FITALY stamp
• Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Goodish s01e01 (poor copyright-robot-dodging version)

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

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

Topic: Bring on 2019

What plans are on the horizon for 2019? [Perhaps the same question as “What didn’t you manage to get to in 2018?”] There are some new products, new archives, any plans about things that are newly available as of 2019? Can we make it through this without making the New Year’s Resolution joke? No? Yeah, I didn’t really think so.

Topic and feedback notes:

• Pods (WordPress plugin)
• Juiced.GS
• Gaming Patreon at PAX East 2018 (Polygamer podcast)
• Epic Apple II versus Commodore 64 Chess Match
• Chicken Lips Radio podcast
• Next Without For podcast
• Drop /// Inches podcast
• Transporter Lock – A Star Trek: Discovery podcast
• Strong Bad draws a diskette
• Accenture demos the “Pocket Supercomputer”
• Pocket Supercomputer video demo
• Video search makes phone a second pair of eyes (New Scientist)
• Puma is rereleasing its classic 1986 RS-Computer running shoe (The Verge)
• Puma Shoes for the Apple II (Apple II Bits blog)
• Apple II papercraft design
• Electronics is Fun
• Plipbox design and firmware
• C65 classroom computer prototype

Retro Computing News:

• Apollo Guidance Computer Restoration (YouTube playlist)
• Restoring an Apollo Guidance Computer (Hackaday)
• Charles Mangin releases DROPBLOCKS and BLOCKCHAIN
• BLOCKCHAIN on Internet Archive
• Freeload/Ocean Loader tape speeder-upper-and-protector
• C74-6502, a 6502 in 7400 series logic chips
• Forum comments about C74-6502 project
• flashx20 for HX-20
• Blurry photo of TRS-80 DVI in action

Vintage Computer-related Commercial:

• Radio Shack TRS-80 Computer Commercial (1978)

Retro Computing Gift Ideas:

• Robot Odyssey I: Escape from Robotropolis (Fred D’Ignazio)
• Hear also: Fred D’Ignazio interviewed on ANTIC

Auction Picks:

• Earl: Commodore PET 4032
  • See also: Perspectives on PET
• Ken: Puma RS-Computer (2018)
  • Snake Byte
• Paul: ALF’s Apple Music II demo record
  • 3M Whisper Writer 1000
  • Memorex banner paper
  • Commodore plus/4 and printer
  • ZX-80s, ZX-81
  • Jingle Disk 1986 (Apple/PC)
  • Jingle Disk 1985 (Apple/C64)
  • See also: Jingle Disk video on YouTube

Closing discussion notes:

• Blake Patterson’s helping of 8-bit holiday cheer

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, and Jack Nutting

Topic: Feedback

Lots of feedback (mostly links people sent in), so we go through some of that.

Topic and feedback notes:

• PC Classic
• Doors and Dungeons Gaming Podcast
• TRS-80 Prototype tape system
• If PHP were British
• GuruNet for the Amiga
• Stagecast Creator
• The Coming Crisis in Home Computers
• How to design an 8-bit Z-80 computer, part 1
• How to design an 8-bit Z-80 computer, part 2

Retro Computing News:

• Walk Around an 80s City with LASERDISC! The Domesday Project
• Mini vMac for iPad
• ISS astronaut finds NASA floppy disks in space
• Mac Portable ejects a disk in space
• No Such Thing as a Fish, episode 243
• 1987 Ardent Titan Graphics Supercomputer
• COBOL all the way down
• Bill Godbout, early power in S-100 design, passed away
• George Keremedjiev, founder of Bozeman, MT’s American Computer Museum passed away
  • See also: Floppy Days episode 5
  • See also: Retrocomputing Roundtable episode 177 (Aug 26, 2018)

Vintage Computer-related Commercial:

• Prodigy

Retro Computing Gift Ideas:

• TRS-80 shirt (Radio Shack)
• The Almighty C shirt (Commodore)

Auction Picks:

• Earl: Commodore 2031 Computer Single Disk Drive
• Paul: Slomo ZX Spctrum Pacesetter
  • CoCo mini disk drive with poncho
  • Miniature PowerMac 8500
  • CompuServe Starter Kit
  • PDP 11/35 system
  • Turtle Tot Educational robot
  • SEGA SC-3000
  • See also: SEGA SC-3000 survivors

Closing discussion notes:

• #tweetcart
• VidHD orders open

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

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

Topic: OK. OK. What’s next?

How do you pick what to do next with your retro computer hobby and collection? Free time can be unpredictable, and sometimes projects get started and then stuck in limbo. Also, related – what is your “white whale” project that you’d like to do “someday” but you know in reality you might never get to it.

Topic and feedback notes:

• GATE (in modern macOS, try Gate.app/Contents/MacOS/Gate\ Release from Terminal to run)
• Robot Odyssey I emulated online
• The Hardest Computer Game of All Time
• Let It Beep (Welcome to Macintosh podcast)
• 1995 One More Thing interview with Jim Reekes

Retro Computing News:

• How many computers are in your computer?
• Atariprojects.org
• Eric Raymond’s Things Every Hacker Once Knew document
• KbooHK WDrive floppy emulator
• Call-A.P.P.L.E. review of KbooHK WDrive
• How big is the Atari 8-bit community?
• Sonore Model 100 software arcive
• Apple II disk server
• Apple II game server

Vintage Computer-related Commercials:

• Honeywell Computers – Automated Office
• Prime Computer

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Digirule2

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: Apple II Interface Accessory Function Strip
• Earl: Commodore calculator
  • Much cheaper Commodore calculator
• Paul: ET-3400, EWA-3400
  • Sears Telegames System heavy 6 with box and everything
  • Exidy Sorcerer lot
  • Tandy 200
  • Mailstation Mivo 100
  • Mailstation 150
  • See also: Mailstation info pages
  • See also: Mailstation Yahoo group
  • See also: The Only 8 Gadgets You Need (Forbes)

Closing discussion notes:

• Mosaic 1.0 turned 25 years old

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Michael Mulhern, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Getting and Regretting

What vintage computer did you get… and regret?

Topic and feedback notes:

• LowEndMac’s Road Apples
• Our Founder
• Docubyte
• Macs in Austria need a home

Retro Computing News:

• The Adventures of Captain Midnight: an Early History of Pay TV Scrambling (Paleotronic)
• Ken Sherriff – Fixing an IBM 1401 printer
• Paul Allen obituary
• Virtual BASIC
• Magic GOTO (for Apple II)
• Slammer (for Apple II)
• VIC20 full motion video (192×160 12fps)
• Jan Derogee’s page
• Internet Archive now does Commodore PET
• Retrochallenge results
• Inside NeXT book

Vintage Computer Commercials:

• Apple Macintosh Quadra
• Palm VII
• I’m a Mac

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Floppy disk clocks
• Floppy disk note pads

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: Macintosh Quadra 630
• Michael: Fujitsu FM R-30 FD
• Paul: Megabucks from your microcomputer
  • See also: Megabucks from your Microcomputer (review)
  • Not actually a TAM
  • “Sinclair ZX Spectrum”
  • Alcatel Telic
  • Apple’s best cable ever

Closing discussion notes:

• Judge John Hodgman talked a little bit about Dark Castle

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Jack Nutting, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Playing today’s games in 1000 years

To what extent should “we” expect to be able to play the games of today in 1000 years.
What challenges might there be? To what extent can the experience survive? Is there anything
we can do to make this work?

Topic and feedback notes:

• Playing today’s games in a thousand years
• Crypt of Civilization
• The Long Now
• Oldenburger Computer Museum
• HCC computer club

Retro Computing News:

• Conserve the Sound
• CHIP-maker NTC now defunct
• Gigatron, TTL microcomputer
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• 1959 Wurlitzer Sideman
• Mr Wonderful helped kill the educational computer games industry [AV Club]
• The rise and fall of The Learning Company [Theoutline.com]
• Apple Logo source code on github (within the PDP-10 ITS repository)
• Tweet: Lars Brinkhoff found the source code and compiled it.
• Tweet: Lars announces GitHub location.

Vintage Computer-related Commercial

• 3M Diskettes

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Cubetto: Screenless Coding Toy

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: Basic BASIC-English Dictionary for the Apple, PET, & TRS-80
  • Or buy it on AbeBooks for $1100.99
• Paul: Romantic Robot Multiface 1 for ZX Spectrum
  • Interview 20 plus network tester
  • Calmpute for the IBM PC
  • People Didn’t Punch this tape
  • New Apple II clone case
  • Hot Wheels PC
  • See also: PowerBook 170 JLPGA
  • 8” 3M diskettes

Closing discussion notes:

• Assembly Lines video podcast
• Michael Harrison 1982 interview with Steve Wozniak

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

September 30, 2018. Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, Michael Mulhern, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Having no topic didn’t help

In an attempt to keep the time under control, we skipped the host topic. Spoiler: It didn’t work.

Topic and feedback notes:

• EEVblog visits the Australian Computer Museum site, part 1
• EEVblog visits the Australian Computer Museum site, part 2
• ob. Omnivore link
• Halfway to telecommuting
• Restoring a ThinkPad 701 using CF media
• Jason Scott will come help image big Apple II disk collections
• S-80 Retro

Retro Computing News:

• Playing today’s games in a thousand years
• Federico Faggin: The Real Silicon Man
• TRS80 images online by Peter Cetinski
• Retrobrite with blue LED bulbs?
• The history of a security hole
• C64 emulation joins the Internet Archive
• Emulate ZX Spectrum on emulated Commodore 64 on emulated DOS on emulated Windows on Linux
• Two-bit history on where VIM came from
• Two-bit history on what Ada Lovelace’s program actually did

Vintage Computer-related Commercials

• Colossus – The Forbin Project trailer
• Epson HX-20
• WarGames trailer

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Trifecta of computer nuke movies:
  • Colossus – The Forbin Project
  • WarGames
  • Terminator
  • See also: Apple II Bits blog on the Terminator’s 6502 code

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: “Vintage” “Antique” “Intel CPU” Display
  • Apple “Notebook” Floppy Disks
• Earl: Vintage IBM Model 5140 Convertible Laptop Computer with Printer WORKING!
• Michael: Computer Peripherals That You Can Build
  • “Hirigana” (really, Katakana) Mac 128/512 Keyboard
• Paul: Two Xerox 820-IIs
  • Victor 9000 (probably needs new keyboard pads)
  • Letter quality GE printer (with Commodore/Atari adapter)
  • MT-Mac Apple II clone
  • COSMAC Elf
  • Analog Joystick adapter
  • CoCo 1

Closing discussion notes:

• Melaleuca deanei

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

This is the annual group “megapodcast” recorded at KansasFest, from July 2018. The event draws quite a few podcasters, so we all sit in a room and talk for an hour.

This year’s podcast involves surprisingly little discussion of the KansasFest event itself (which is an annual gathering of Apple II enthusiasts, along with some others, for almost a week of “retrocomputing camp”). It is held at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, where everyone lives in a dorm room, socializes in common areas, goes to presentations held in the basement, participates in various events, works on projects of their own or observes projects others are doing.

We discuss the event itself, play a version of “Celebrity” with figures from geek culture or computing history, hear stories about kidnapping and comedians, and generally have a grand time.

There were three microphones in the middle of a room (though we really only used the audio from one of them), and the audio quality is what you would expect from a microphone in the middle of a room full of talking and laughing people. Also, this same audio appeared on the Open Apple podcast feed, so if you heard it there already, you are excused from listening to it again (unless you want to).

The participants were (clockwise from Quinn):

• Quinn Dunki (Open Apple)
• Carrington Vanston (Retrocomputing Roundtable, Eaten By A Grue)
• Paul Hagstrom (Retrocomputing Roundtable, Drop III Inches)
• Ken Gagne (Retrocomputing Roundtable, PolyGamer, Transporter Lock)
• Steven Weyhrich (Retrocomputing Roundtable)
• Charles Mangin (How II)
• Kevin Savetz (ANTIC, Eaten By A Grue, Tech Enthusiasts Hour)
• Chris Torrence (Assembly Lines)
• Jason Scott (Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It)

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

Panelists: Michael Mulhern (hosting), Earl Evans, Paul Hagstrom, and Jack Nutting

Topic: Museum, private collector, or hoarder?

So, are you a museum, a private collector, or a hoarder? Really?

Topic and feedback notes:

• Australian Computer Museum Society collections faces bulldozers
• Australian Computer Museum Society – Last days of the Villawood Storage facility
• Atari Store: Breakin’ the Borders, Beyond the Borders books

Retro Computing News:

• Making DOS and CP/M 5.25″ Boot Disks with Commodore 128 and 1571 Floppy Drive
• Omnivore 2
  • Omnivore: rewind
  • Omnivore: memory accesses
• Retrochallenge 2018/09
• Graffidisk
• Applesauce
• Retro-uC, your favorite instruction sets on custom silicon
• The Prehistory of PowerPoint
• Andromeda Yeldon tweets a tour of a computer museum in Bozeman, MT
• American Computer and Robotics Museum on Twitter

Vintage Computer Commercials

• Compaq Portable II
• Epson computer
• Compaq Deskpro

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• 64GB Pentode radio tube flash drive

Auction Picks:

• Earl: Epson MX-80
• Michael: 20MB HDD
• Paul: Canon X-07
  • Lexis Nexis terminal
  • Unitech Data Phone
  • Seiko RC-1000
  • See also: Seiko RC-1000 information
  • See also: Seiko UC-2000 at in exhibit.com
  • dBase II keychain

Closing discussion notes:

• Mastodon

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Jack Nutting, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: What we’ve done on our summer vacations

This time we talk a bit about what we saw on our various recent excursions, primarily KansasFest, also a little bit more from the college reunion that was the backdrop for episode 174.

Topic and feedback notes:

• KansasFest YouTube channel

Retro Computing News:

• 51nb motherboards for ThinkPad notebooks
• ThinkPad 25th anniversary model
• MITS Altair in-browser simulator
• Two histories of Myst
• General Magic documentary (article, FastCompany)
• General Magic documentary (official movie site)
• A developer’s introduction to General Magic and Magic Cap

Vintage Computer Commercial

• IBM ThinkPad

Retro Computing Gift Idea:

• Retro AirPods

Auction Picks:

• Carrington: Applesoft source printout
  • Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar magnets
• Jack: Atari trucker cap with a difference
• Paul: DOS New Complete Reference book, searchable
  • Apple III Plus
  • TRS-80 IQ Builder cassettes
  • SGI Indy Case
  • Commodore phone
  • TRS-80 Model 16

Closing discussion notes:

• Apple ][ and early PC in Lego

Feedback/Discussion:

• @rcrpodcast on Twitter
• Vintage Computer Forum
• RCR Podcast on Facebook
• Throwback Network
• Throwback Network on Facebook

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