There’s a little bit of Clive in every box.

The Cambridge Z88 (1987) was a slim, diskless, battery-sipping laptop computer similar to the famous TRS-80 Model 100.

Interestingly, former VC&G contributor Gnome wrote about this machine for us in 2006. He makes specific note of the Z88’s relationship to Sir Clive Sinclair of Sinclair Research fame.

I don’t have a Z88, but I love laptops in this monolithic, almost slate-like form factor. If you have one you’d like to get rid of, I’m all ears.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever owned a laptop with a non-folding screen (i.e. not a clamshell design) like the Z88 above? What did you like or dislike about it?

My latest PC World article celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Milton-Bradley Microvision with a look back at handheld game systems of the past. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Thirty years ago this fall, Milton Bradley released the world’s first handheld video game system with interchangeable cartridges, the Microvision. Prior to 1979, handheld electronic games were stuck with one predetermined game (or set of games) per unit. After the Nintendo Game Boy debuted a decade later, the market for cartridge-based handheld devices exploded, inspiring hardware vendors both prominent and obscure to release gadgets for playing multiple games on the go.

I spent quite a bit of time hand-crafting the slides (and writing the text, of course), so I think it’s one of my better slide shows. I hope you enjoy it.

As a side note, the anniversary of the Microvisions’s release was actually last month (November 2009), but due to delays in PC World’s publishing schedule, my article was pushed back until now.

Jason Scott is a singular fellow. He’s the man behind the BBS Documentary, the upcoming Get Lamp documentary (on text adventure games), and creator of textfiles.com. He also spearheaded a recent attempt to archive all of Geocities before Yahoo took it down recently.

This fellow historian, friend of VC&G, and archivist extraordinaire recently lost his long-time job as a system administrator. Like many who have found themselves unemployed recently, the situation inspired a little soul-searching from Scott, who realized his stressful years as a system administrator had worn down his health.

Something important dawned on him: he already spent so much of his spare time and money on his main passion — preserving and documenting computer history — why not try to do that full time?

That’s where the Jason Scott Sabbatical fund at Kickstarter.com comes in. Scott is seeking donations from people around to globe to fund a 3-4 month sabbatical wherein he can focus on his history and archiving work full time. So far, hundreds of people have chipped in (including myself), but he still needs more donations to push him over top of the hill.

I can honestly say there’s no one else out there like Jason Scott, and we will likely never see another single individual so fiercely (and I mean fiercely) dedicated to preserving the overlooked backwaters and forgotten alleys of our digital history. Scott’s goal is a worthy one, and he does monumentally important work that future historians will thank him for.

This sabbatical concept via Kickstarter is a somewhat radical idea, I know. Some of you will have doubts about it — for example, if he will spend the money properly. But I don’t fear that outcome: that’s for Jason Scott to sort out, and for his own conscience to live with.

If you contribute a modest amount, you have little to lose. If he blows the cash, so what? But if you contribute and Scott does what he promises to do, I predict that history will have a lot to gain — not only in terms of added, productive years on Jason Scott’s life, but in countless terabytes of priceless historical data that will serve as the foundation of our ancestors’ understanding of the past.

As a historian, I need Jason Scott to continue his work. As a human with a responsibility to the legacy of your species, you need Jason Scott to do his work. Please consider helping him out.

Four years ago today, I posted my first (somewhat awkward) entry on this blog. I was new to blogging then. Heck, blogging was new to blogging then. Or at least it feels that way to me now.

I was by no means an early adopter of blogging in general, but quite a bit has changed in the “blogosphere” (I die a little every time I say that term) over the last four years — years that have seen a choice few video game and gadget blogs consolidate power with very influential voices in their respective communities. They’ve gone from sloppy wannabe video game/gadget press to actually absorbing, replacing, and becoming the video game/gadget press in some respects as traditional print magazines continue to fall by the wayside.

Where’s VC&G in all this? Heh, I don’t know. We’re no powerhouse, but we (I say “we” in the most singular sense of the word) have an impressive Google footprint in the video game and computer history realm. It’s a bizarre feeling when I’m researching my freelance articles and I come across multiple links to VC&G posts or images from Retro Scan of the Week on every Google results page. I have to avoid quoting myself.

At the end of the day, Vintage Computing and Gaming is still an enthusiast blog that’s not updated very frequently (since 2007 or so). But at least we’re still here after four years. That’s a long time to consistently maintain any blog, and I’m proud of that much.

I like the stability and consistency that VC&G provides in my writing life, and my regular readers (that’s you) feel like old buddies to me now. Thanks for continuing to humor me in moments both odd and insightful.

On another note, I honestly never thought I’d keep the same theme and site design for this long. Back in 2005, I used to plan site redesigns for my websites every few years, but this layout served the blog so well that I just said, “What the heck. If it works, keep it.”

And now, some statistics. There are currently 491 posts and 5,165 comments on VC&G. That’s an average of 3.5 comments a day since November 2nd, 2005, and a whopping 10.5 per post. Not too shabby. Keep it up!

Discussion Topic of the Year: Share your favorite VC&G moments. If you had no nominate a post or two for a hypothetical “Best of VC&G,” what would they be?

[Editor’s Note: This was part of an April Fools gag. Ulaf is still not amused.]

HELLO AGAIN VINTAGE SUPERFANS. RECENTLY, THE BENJ DECIDES TO HAND ULAF THE RAINS OF THESE BLOG POST. SO ULAF CONVERT SITE TO THE FAVORITES OF ALL THE WORLD’S KRELZ, GARDENSING. AND HENCE: VINTAGE COMPUTING AND GARDENSING.

TO STARTS US OFF, MY MIND WILL SHARE WITH YOU EASY THREE TIPS TO THE BETTER GARDENSING.

NUMBERS 1:
DO NOT EAT THE VEGTABLES BEFORE THE GROWING.

NUMBERS 2:
THE DIRT IS NOT FOR THE EATING, BUT FOR THE GROWING.

NUMBERS 3:
THE WORMS ARE FOR THE GROWING, AND THE EATING IF YOUR MIND LACK EXCELLENT NUTRIMENT.

THAT IS ALL FOR NOW. STAY TUNES FOR MORE GARDENSING TIPS AND TRICKSTERS FROM THE WHIRL OF ULAF.

FOR COMPUING AND GAMINGS TIPS, CONSULT HOW TO BEAT THE VIDEO GAMES, THE ULAF CLASSIC. SOON ULAF WRITES “HOW TO BEAT THE VEGETABLES” FOR YOUR MIND TO CONSUME. UNTIL NEXT TIME THIS IS ULAF SAYING BE THE MASTER.

ULAF FANS UNITE! READS ULAF ON THE TWEETER: @ulafsilchov

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