Hi, Benj here. People send me stuff all the time hoping I’ll post something about it on VC&G, but each item alone rarely warrants its own post. There is a solution: a regular compressed news and links column. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for, well, almost 9 years now.

So I finally got around to it. (Just in time for blogs to become thoroughly obsolete, natch.) Newsbits could become a weekly thing, or I’ll just post them as news collects. I’ll feel it out as I go along.

News & Links

• Vintage Computer Festival East 9.1
  April 4-6, 2014, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, New Jersey

  “Vintage Computer Festival East is a hands-on, family-friendly celebration of computer history. Activities include a book sale, classes, consignment sale, exhibit hall, food, lectures, museum tours, prizes, vendors, workshops, and more. (Why “9.1”? We skipped 9.0 in 2013 due to damage from Hurricane Sandy.)

• Second Edition of “Atari, Inc.” Possible
  Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel are working on a second, revised edition of the epic Atari history book they released in 2012. More info as it comes along.
• Surfing Modern Web With Ancient Browsers
  Awesome technique renders pages as image-mapped GIFs.

  “Webrender.py came to life. It’s a cgi-bin application that resides on a machine in the middle. It renders a gif image and spits it out to the browser together with a simple web page, containing a URL and search input boxes plus the gif and image map.

• The Temple Operating System
  The demo video for this Judeo-Christian-inspired homemade operating system will blow your mind. (via Antoni Sawicki)

  “TempleOS is an x86_64, multi-tasking, multi-cored, public domain, open source, ring-0-only, single-address-map (identity mapped), non-networked, PC operating system for recreational programming. I capped the lines of code at 100,000, so it will never be an ugly monstrosity. Currently, it is 81,489. Since God’s temple must be perfect and we have 1,000 years in mind, I do not promise that anything is future-proof.

Echo Box

Here are some products, creative works, and upcoming projects seeking support. No endorsement from VC&G is implied.

• Nova Phase
  A downloadable comic book with NES-style pixel art graphics.
• donkulous DONKEYS (iTunes Link)
  “We’ve just released a new free iOS game, donkulous DONKEYS. It’s an unapologetically hard but insanely addictive retro arcade game, inspired by Bill Gates’ first one-and-only DOS game.
• Armiga Project on Indiegogo
  “Wouldn’t it be great to be able to use all those aging Amiga disks again? Maybe the original Amiga is a bit big and video quality not so good… A smaller version, with modern connections would be awesome, isn’t it? That’s what we’ve done: take modern technology and make it work with good old floppies.

Submit News

If you want me to include something on a future Newsbits column, send me an email with “[Newsbits]” in the subject line. My email filter will route it directly into my brain.

May the Clone Wars begin.

Here’s another obscure IBM PC clone from the depths of time, the Canon Personal Computer.

As I mentioned in a recent RSOTW, it was pretty easy — even within a few years of the IBM PC’s release — to undercut IBM price-wise by integrating ports and peripherals directly into the motherboard of a competing computer.

Note that the Canon PC used an Intel 8086 CPU, which packed the full 16-bit data bus (verses the 8-bit bus on the IBM PC’s 8088).

Discussion Topic of the Week: Canon is best known for its imaging products, but it made computers too. Can you think of any other companies best known for something else that made a PC?

“Whispering is for gutless weasels.”

In the early-mid 1990s, Sega experimented with a few electronics items that veered away from mainstream console gaming. Case in point, the IR 7000 PDA, seen here (and don’t forget the Sega Pico).

I’ve never owned an IR 7000, but I have to admit that I wanted one badly back in the day. The thought of sending secret wireless messages to other kids in class (I was 13 at the time this came out) excited me.

Discussion Topic of the Week: In your opinion, what was Sega’s weirdest product?

“Children everywhere will be crushed and digitized by the trophy of power.”

There’s a certain ultra-rare golden NES cartridge out there that originated at Nintendo World Championships 1990. Here’s an advertisement for the event itself on the back of a vintage Nintendo Power magazine from 1990.

Kinda makes you want to go back in time and attend, doesn’t it? Call 1-900-HOT-4NWC to find out more!

Discussion Topic of the Week: Video game competitions: interesting or boring? Debate.

“The complete professional solution at an unbeatable price.”

I’ve never owned a Visual 1050 Personal Computer System (seen here), but I have an old Visual brand terminal that uses the same (or a very similar) keyboard. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I see this, because it’s a distinctively wide, flat keyboard.

The 1050 sported a Z80 CPU and ran the CP/M operating system, the grandfather of MS-DOS. Curiously, even though CP/M was a popular platform for business computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I only have a a handful of pure CP/M-based machines in my collection. (My favorite such machine is probably the Kaypro II.)

In regard to the chart in the advertisement above, it’s interesting to note that it was pretty easy to undercut IBM, price-wise, not long after the IBM PC came out. Fast advances in IC design allowed computer makers to inexpensively cram more functions (think serial, parallel, game ports, disk controller, graphics card, etc.) directly onto motherboards instead of offloading them onto separate plug-in cards. While the 1050 was not an IBM PC clone, true PC clone makers took advantage of this effect to hollow out the inside of IBM’s hold on the PC market from the bottom up.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you have a favorite machine that runs CP/M?

Plays the 200 variations of Tetris that Pajitnov rejected.

I must admit that I wanted this “Pro 200 Super Electronic Handheld Gaming System” upon seeing it in 1998 — even through I knew it was almost certainly a piece of junk. Not to play it, per se, but to collect it and to admire its gloriously gimmicky nature.

If history is any guide, I’m guessing that the Protech Pro 200 didn’t actually ship with 256 (or even 200) built in games. Rather, it likely contained 250 variations on a handful of distinct games — like most “1000-in-1” cheap off-brand multicarts from back in the day.

16 years since its release, I have still never played the Pro 200, so I can’t say if it had any play value. I did find this commercial on YouTube though.

Has anybody out there played one of these?

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the cheapest, crappiest piece of video game hardware you’ve ever bought (think peripherals too)?

tap tap tap…tap tap…tap

In the early 1990s, a kid in my neighborhood had his own Sharp Wizard (we all thought he was rich or spoiled — probably both), and it was one of the most incredible things I’d ever seen. It was a tiny electronic organizer with a full QWERTY keyboard that one could have mistaken for a pocket-sized PC.

That same kid later offered to sell his Wizard to me, but my dad turned him down because he was asking too much. So I’ve never had a Wizard of any model in my collection. I did buy a NES advantage from him for $7 though.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the smallest device (from the pre-smartphone era) you’ve ever used for word processing?

The princess has lost her floatation powers…and Yoshi loves bongs.

My mom saves everything. Case in point, I ran across a mountain of mid-1990s coupon flyers — the kind that arrive stacked in an envelope through the mail — at her house this afternoon while I was looking for some old papers. This particular 30-cents-off coupon for Kraft’s Super Mario Bros. Macaroni and Cheese from 1994 caught my eye. It measures 4.5″ x 7.5″ (for those of you at home keeping notes).

I’ve never eaten Super Mario Bros. mac and cheese, but I bet it was every bit as delicious as the regular noodle variety. And besides — there was an adventure in every bowl.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever eaten any food products based on licensed video game characters?

Just in time for Sochi. Sorry for the page fold.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite winter sport(s) video game? This is mine.

“Stickybear,” in retrospect, is a kinda disgusting name.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite educational video/computer game of all time?