I’ve now put in place a nice discussion forums system, with forums for various, specific vintage computing platforms as well as some that are more general in nature. Have a look and please register and take part. For the moment, the forums are “open,” in that registration is not required to post. I hope these forums will grow into an engaging and amusing place of discussion.
The address is easy to remember: forums.bytecellar.com
I don’t often scour eBay for Atari items. I never really spent much time with Atari 8-bits, sadly (they were precursors to the Amiga, you know)—my 8-bit days were mainly spent with Apple II’s. I did use and enjoy some of Atari’s 16-bit machines, though. I got an Atari 520ST back in late 1986 and had much fun with it. I was a loud member of the “Amiga vs. Atari ST” geek war, even. Ended up with a Mega2 ST in 1989, but it didn’t have quite the same soul. I don’t picture setting up a vintage Atari rig, as I moved to an Amiga 2000 after my Atari days and with the Amiga being a sort of “superset” of the Atari ST (similar capabilities, software library, etc.), it doesn’t seem worth the deskspace that I don’t even have to begin with. Still, I found a vehicle with which to get a little of the good ole’ nostalgia going.
I ran across an eBay auction for a set of STart magazines the other day. Bid and won. There were a number of Atari ST magazines out when I was an ST user. STart was the finest. The 8 issues from ’88 – ’91 that are on their way to me will be most interesting to dig into. I haven’t touched an ST since I sold that Mega2 fifteen years ago. I wonder how much I’ll remember?
Ran across an incredibly interesting site the other day: Guidebook, the graphical user interface gallery. It’s basically a collection of info and detailed screenshots that effectively take you on a tour of various GUI’s that have existed over the last 20 years or so. It’s a great find and browsing it is time well spent for those who may not have had the opportunity to spend time with some of these OS’s and their interfaces which all, for their part, contributed to the current look and feel of the interfaces which are used by OS’s today. And strictly speaking, it’s not all graphical interfaces, as there are plenty of screenshots of various systems’ command prompts.
I have used some of the OS’s featured on this site, but not all. I have also spent time with GUI-based OS’s that are not represented by this site. But it’s a great collection and it really does take me back. Sweet nostalgia.
This one meanders.
A great site I recently ran across is Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories. It’s “a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling.” Currently it hosts stories about the creation of the original Macintosh—and there are quite a few, and by rather notable names from that era. The primary author is Andy Hertzfeld, a key member of the original Macintosh team (who later left to found General Magic). Most excellent reads.
Well, I spent much time reading the above stories a month or two ago, then I lost the link and couldn’t remember the name of the site. So I tried to google my way back and in doing so I ran across Differnet.com, Andy’s own homepage, of sorts. On this page I clicked one of the many links and it lead to the homepage of Caroline Rose. She is an interesting piece of Silicon Valley history. She is apparently one of the most gifted technical writers of our time, having been principal author and editor of all three volumes of Inside Macintosh, having established and been manager of NeXT’s publications department, and having received acclaim for many other pieces of technical writing. Further searching lead me to this recent article from MacMinute that gives us Caroline’s thoughts on Apple’s and its current OS, Mac OS X (which she documented in its earlier state, when at NeXT!).
And the last step of this wandering post comes from my search to find the explanatory link for General Magic, above. It turns out the article is hosted on the site of Tony Fadell, lead designer of the iPod who has notable experience in the handheld industry, having contributed to some early, pioneering designs. These designs include the Philips Nino, which I used to know a thing or two about, as well as the Philips Velo-1 and the Sony MagicLink PIC-1000 (a device using General Magic’s “Magic Cap” OS)—all of which I am lucky to have, at one point, owned. (I was all about PDA’s for a while.)
So many connections – James Burke would be pleased.
I recently saw and won an auction on eBay for two Amiga posters from the 80’s. One was a “2010: The Year We Make Contact”-themed poster (popular movie, 1985 I believe) and the other is an Amiga Developers Conference poster featuring a scene from the famous early Amiga app, “RoboCity”.
I grabbed them from a Commodore ex-employee and had the latter framed and hung it in my new basement computer room.
Good stuff!
INDEED it’s an odd thing. I spend some time every couple days browsing the vintage computer sections of eBay and I found a set of refrigerator magnets that bore the images of 80’s advertisements for Commodore computers. A strange find, to be true. But that’s doesn’t get to what’s most odd at the core of this post. You see, I added these magnets to my refrigerator when I received them a few days ago, but what was there to begin with is even more odd.
You see…we have a cat, and as a gag we were given a set of cat “bottom” ‘fridge magnets. Yes, illustrations of variosu cats’ hindquarters. Humorous stuff if taken at the right moment. Well, now our ‘fridge is basically a medly of cat butts and Commodore ads. It really has to be seen to be truly pictured…
So I won an auction for a keyboard that was originally part of an original Macintosh (128K).
I’m an old (and new) Mac nut and have a Mac Plus that I keep in use as well as an original Macintosh (128K) that I keep in a Willow tote/storage bag. That original Mac, and I think it is something like the 1942nd to roll off the assembly line, based on the serial #, I bought used from an old-machines listserv reader. It came with a Mac Plus keyboard, with the number pad—not an actual Mac 128-style keyboard. Well, my Mac Plus’ keyboard recently has had a key failure (the ‘s’ key) and I’ve pulled the Plus keyboard out of that storage bag and am using it with the Plus now.
So I’ve kept my eye out for an actual Mac 128 keyboard and found a Mac 128 keyboard, System Saver fan, and mouse bundle. But I was outbid. This was one of the few auctions that I bid early on and did not stick around to bid, in person, in the last 30 seconds of the auction. Sadness. But I found another keyboard a few days later, cheaper, but with no fan. It had a $10 BuyNow option. I bought then. It’s on its way. I still need a fan for my rather hot Mac Plus tho. Original form-factor Macs tend to overheat, the CRT’s flyback being the item to fail in most cases, apparently. You’ve got to stay on top of these things.
So here it is. Blake’s Vintage Computer Blog. I did a MovableType install for a project at work (via Internet Archive) and it was not too painful, if time consuming (many a blog setup on that server), and had me coming away fairly fond of the tool. And I spend lots of time messing with old machines. So, I’ll talk about some of that here and fancy that there are those that might care to read it. That seems to be the plan.
I suppose one other thing to point to in this first post on this Vintage Computer Blog is … The List.
Oh – I run iPod Hacks. That site gets a little more traffic than I picture this one ever seeing. That’s probably for the best.
