Some of you might remember the Apple IIc teardown I did for PC World back in March. Now it’s June, and my workbench is back in the spotlight again. This time I dissected the venerable TRS-80 Model 100 laptop computer, which happened to turn 25 this year. Below, I’ve posted an excerpt from the slideshow. I hope you enjoy it.

Twenty-five years ago, Radio Shack released the first wildly successful laptop computer in the United States. The TRS-80 Model 100 was simple, rugged, plentiful, and reliable, selling over six million units during its eight-year life span. With ample battery life, light weight (about 3 pounds), compact size, instant-on capability, and a small suite of built-in applications, the Model 100 served as the portable computing workhorse of its day. Bill Gates’ also ranks it as one of his favorite computers of all time, in large part because he and a friend wrote the firmware it uses.

The transistor — need I say more?

Let’s give a big round of applause to the electronic component that made our current computer revolution possible: the transistor. Here’s an advertisement from RCA touting the benefits of solid state transistor technology from a time when it was still novel. 55 years later, we’d be cramming 300 million of these onto a single piece of silicon smaller than a penny. And Microsoft Word still runs slowly.

Discussion topic of the week: What was your first computer’s CPU clock speed?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

It should come as no surprise to my regular readers that I like to foster a sense of community around Vintage Computing and Gaming; I believe that the main strength of any publication lies in its readership, and VC&G is blessed with an exceptionally intelligent, resourceful, and creative one.

As a historian, I like to help people reconnect with and rediscover the past. But I can’t do it alone — we need to stick together. That’s why I’m announcing a new contest to promote activity on the VC&G Discussion Forum, an oft-neglected part of the site. Anyone can enter the contest by registering for an account on the forum and posting.

[ Continue reading Win a Free NES DVD Player and More » ]

Click above to see the full ad.

In this week’s Retro Scan, we’re looking way back to 1953. Many computers in the 1950s used monster magnetic drum storage units, like the one you see above, as working memory — ala RAM — until the faster and more adept core memory came along. Using technology similar to a cylindrical hard disk, these beasts were understandably slow compared to their non-mechanical successors.

If anybody out there ever worked with one of these, we’d definitely love to hear from you.

Discussion topic of the week: How much RAM did your first computer have?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

Vintage computing shows up in some of the unlikeliest places. And in this case, it saved the day.

According to a recent Associated Press article, a 340 megabyte 2.5″ Seagate hard drive from the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia survived the craft’s fiery break-up and crash to the earth back in February 2003.

A data recovery service called Kroll Ontrack managed to recover most of the data on the drive, which dealt with an advanced xenon experiment. Oddly enough, Jon Edwards of Kroll credits the formatting and data storage methods of the MS-DOS operating system for allowing him to recover the data:

However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives as other approaches do.

Three cheers for the FAT file system. I guess that NASA (or the experiment’s designers) kept their drives pretty well defragged.

It’s amazing Kroll recovered any data off of the platters at all, with the drive’s external case scorched, its dust-proof seal compromised, its heads driven into the platter surfaces, and its internal components desoldered by the intense heat.

I’ll wager that the platters were composed of solid aluminum, like hard drives of old. If the disk had been a more recent model — you know, the kind with platters made of glass — the fragile discs might have been shattered from the stress of the explosion and hard landing.

Researchers recently published the recovered data from the shuttle’s xenon experiment in a science journal, as was originally intended. It’s satisfying that some good science came out of Columbia’s last mission, proving that the crew’s tragic journey wasn’t completely in vain. For that, in a strange and lucky way, you can thank Microsoft.

A couple weekends ago, I made the requisite annual trek to RARSfest, my local hamfest of choice, which takes place on the NC State Fairgrounds. You might remember my in-depth slideshow on a similar hamfest adventure two years ago. Well, this year I decided to take a few shots of the ‘fest again, and I thought you might enjoy them. So hop in the HamCar, and we’ll take a quick ride through RARSfest 2008.

[ Continue reading The 2008 Hamfest Report » ]

They put that blue streak there for a reason.

It may seem like online dating is a new thing, but it stretches back farther than you’d think. Case in point: American People/Link, an early dial-up relationship service using Teletext — a much hyped (but little used) online graphical display technology at the time. I’m not sure how successful the service was, but that guy looks pretty happy. If anybody out there ever used People/Link, we’d love to hear from you.

Discussion topic of the week: Have you ever dated someone you met online? Beyond that, how have computer networks changed your social life?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

Hot off the virtual PC World presses comes my latest volley of vintage nostalgia. This time I covered celebrity computer endorsements.

William Shatner, Alan Alda, Bill Cosby, Isaac Asimov, and other celebrities promoted certain brands of PCs in the early 1980s, and this PC World slideshow surveys the topic well, with eleven scans straight from the vintage source material. And just to warn you: any references you see to man-boobs came directly from the Great Editors in the Sky, although my original text was no less wacky. After all, if it’s good enough for Shatner…

Front cover of Supercomputer by Edward Packard (1984)

While looking through some old boxes a few weeks ago, I stumbled across my brother’s large collection of vintage Choose Your Own Adventure books. These books, as a series, were very popular in the early 1980s. Bantam published over 180 different Adventures from 1979 to 1998.

Each Choose Your Own Adventure book is similar to an adventure computer game. You read a few pages, and then you’re faced with different paths that your character can take:

If you free Danny from the barn even though Uncle Grog might catch you, turn to page 23.
If you give up and throw your SuperTorch in the hay, turn to page 40.

The outcome of the story depends on your choices, and every book contains multiple endings.

One book in my brother’s set stood out from the rest: Supercomputer, by Edward Packard (1984). It’s an interesting artifact of the popular conception of computers at the time, echoing common 1980s fantasy themes involving 500 lb. CRT-display machines achieving sentience, starting a nuclear war, or simply doing all your homework.

[ Continue reading [ Retro Scan of the Week ] Choose Your Own Adventure » ]

Yes, the last two posts on VC&G were April Fools’ gags. The first was a legitimate TRS-80 scan that I manipulated to look freaky. I posted it on the 31st because that was the closest Monday to April 1st (I post a new Retro Scan of the Week every Monday). You’ll notice that the ad reads “Radio Snack,” so that should be the warning sign to future alien computer historians who might think it was authentic. Hopefully you didn’t stake your house / car / life savings on that being the real deal. If you did, then I applaud you on your unflinching loyalty and trust in the site.

I hope I got your hopes up with talk of the Apple IIpc. Sounds like an exciting idea, doesn’t it? With devices like the C-One popping up, you never know what will happen in the future. Steve Wozniak himself said (via email) that he loved the prank, so I guess, based on that criteria alone, it was a success. Sadly, no real Apple IIpc (that I know of) is in the works.

So now it’s time to move on into the greater world of April. After all, more Vintage Computing and Gaming always awaits us on the road ahead.