Category Archives: Nostalgia

Retro games on display

Speaking of old video games, for those in Melbourne, check out the installation in the Degraves Street subway at Flinders Street station at the moment. It features images of, and actual, Nintendo NES and Game & Watch systems. Plenty of 80s games nostalgia.

Ten years ago…

Yesterday, I bought a computer. With a bit of luck it’ll be ready on Saturday.

As it happens, it’s not quite ten years since I bought my first “new” PC. (Before that I’d used 8-bit computers and an aging 286.)

Just for a little nostalgia, here is part of the advert from the company I bought it from all those years ago, the now defunct Rod Irving Electronics, of A’Beckett Street in Melbourne. This is from the 6th June 1995 edition of The Age “Green Guide”.

The system I bought from them was the Pentium 60 on the right hand side. I’m sure you’ll be impressed at the spec, as well as the marketing. (At the time, the Australian Peso was worth about USD0.60, by the way).

Rod Irving Electronics catalogue from 1995

This computer was finally disposed of in rather spectacular fashion in 2003, though the speakers and that mighty 4x CD player still work (currently stored as spares).

Dan Bricklin on the pod

Back in 1979, a couple of guys called Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston wrote the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc, which almost single-handedly launched the mass sales of microcomputers (in particular the Apple II) into businesses and onto people’s desks.

Dan has gone on to more innovative computer stuff, including one prototyping product I remember from my interface designing course days at university, called Demo.

Bob Frankston has an article about how he wrote Visicalc: One of the early applications for VisiCalc was my 1979 tax form. I created @lookup for that purpose.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post, Cam and Mick at G’day World have wangled an interview with Dan Bricklin. Some of the topics include Visicalc, podcasting and video blogging, tablet PCs, and software (and data) that should last 200 years.

Check it out.

Old game remakes

Gyruss (the original)All the joys of nostalgic old video games without the guilt of not really owning those MAME ROMs you’ve downloaded: www.remakes.org. New versions of all the classics from your childhood: Elite, Lode Runner, Gyruss, Lemmings, egads even Lazy Jones.

You know, it always puzzled me why they didn’t just let us play MULE in high school to learn about economics.

Damn. No Frak!

Gatesy-baby! Argh! My eyes!

Well, I think we now have proof that Bill Gates is not a crazed megalomaniac billionaire. If he was, he’d have had all copies of these pictures destroyed, and anybody involved killed.

Bill Gates in Teen Beat, 1985Bill Gates in Teen Beat, 1985

Apparently these pics were taken for a magazine called Teen Beat, around 1985.

(Via Monkey Methods, whose commenters are debating whether it was 1983 as first claimed, or if the fact that there’s a Mac in the background means it must have been after 1984.)

Update 19-Oct-2005: Snopes says these were publicity shots taken for the release of Microsoft Windows in 1985.

SysRq

Ever wondered what the SysRq key does? Turns out it’s a kind of convoluted programmable key that hardcore programmers can commandeer. From the sounds of it’s it’s just as “programmable” and useful as the old function keys were on the Commodore 64 and Vic-20… eg not very much at all.

There’s also a less geeky explanation from the Straight Dope people, which goes through some of the other lesser-used keys too, including the mysterious Scroll Lock, which does have a modern use, at least in Excel, and Break, which when pressed with Ctrl will amongst other things stop execution in the VB IDE or batch files in DOS the command prompt.

Me, I wish the Insert key could be abolished. I don’t think I know of a more annoying toggle.