Ah yes; a worm pun.

Around the turn of the 1990s, “WORM” (Write Once Read Many) became a common computer industry buzz-word for a new mass-storage concept. Numerous companies released their own WORM drives that used proprietary forms of optical media, most of which were incompatible with other WORM drives. Seen here is such an attempt: a curious “Optical Card” from Canon that obviously didn’t achieve widespread usage. According to the ad, it stored two megabytes of data on an optical layer that could be written once and never changed — much like a CD-R, but without the spinning disc.

Cursory Google searches reveal that the Canon Optical Card eventually saw limited trials as an identification card, either for travelers or medical information. Whether it’s still in use today is unknown to me.

Discussion topic of the week: Do you recall using any strange computer storage media that didn’t become a standard? (i.e. Bernoulli, magneto-optical, WORM, VHS, tape, cassette, Jaz, etc.) Tell us about the most exotic computer storage media you’ve used.

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Of all the Christmas-themed vintage computer ads I’ve seen, this 25 year-old specimen stands out for its rich, colorful illustration as one of my favorites. The item for sale in this case is PeachText 5000, an otherwise-boring productivity application (from a modern perspective, anyway). But hey; at least they hired a good illustrator.

By the way, I’d like to wish everybody out there a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays from VC&G. While being relatively lazy for the next week, I’m going to take this opportunity to do some serious video game playin’. I hope you get the chance to do the same. Mother 3, here I come!

Discussion topic of the week: It’s Santa time. If you could magically (and freely) have any one item for your classic computer or video game collection, what would it be?

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Click to see the 2600 ad in context.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day: a vintage video game ad from a newspaper. The subject in this case is the Atari 2600, and it appears in a “Howard BRANDiscount” advertisement from 1981. It’s especially amusing to see the Atari 2600 marketed in this particular context, peddled among such diverse items as spray paint, pocket t-shirts, picture frames, and disposable diapers (click on the image above to see what I mean).

Remember my grandmother’s cedar chest I talked about in September? Well, this is from the same chest, from a set of newspapers that my grandmother saved. I scanned many things from those papers, so you’ll probably be seeing more examples of vintage newsprint ads in the future.

Discussion topic of the week: What do you think this ad says about the state of the video game industry in 1981?

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I didn’t find this one in the creek.

And now, I present to you…a box. I know it’s not that old, but I’ve been hanging on to this scan since I finally threw out the packaging for my TrackMan Marble FX a few years ago (I scanned it first). I believe I bought this trackball around 1998. I had another Logitech trackball before it, but I was fed up with cleaning the rollers every few weeks. The neat thing about the TrackMan Marble series is that it used an optical scanning mechanism that tracked the movement of dots printed on the marbled red ball. I used the FX for years until it finally crapped out — some components inside of it irreparably broke, although I still have the parts. There’s more to my TrackMan Marble story, though, albeit with a different model.

Trackball Creek

When I moved to a new house a few years ago, I walked out one day to explore a twisty, shallow creek in the woods behind my house. The stream lies in a flood plain that gathers nearly all the water runoff in the area when it rains, so it regularly overflows its banks.

Some ways up the creek, I found a makeshift junkyard of soiled, broken goods both tossed and washed in from every direction. There, among the discarded bicycle spokes, power drills, soggy basketballs and broken mirrors, I spotted a curious looking ball protruding from the mud. I pulled it out and realized that it was a red trackball for a Logitech TrackMan Marble.

Months later, I found the unit itself, and it looked like this. I took it apart to see if I could salvage anything of interest, but, of course, sitting half a decade in a muddy, wet environment isn’t conducive to the proper operation of electronics. Beneath the dirt — caked and wedged between every crack imaginable — I found nothing but a corroded mess.

For a few weeks, the unit served as a strange fence ornament in my back yard until my wife complained about it, then I threw it out. In the end, I walked away with a nifty red trackball, half-bleached orange from years in the sun, that I still have in my collection. It serves as a token from an almost embarrassingly pitiful lesson in technological humility — how something once new, shiny, high-tech, and amazing can be quickly rendered worthless and derelict by an apathetic hand a coat of mud.

Discussion topic of the week: It’s one of the great debates: trackball or mouse? You tell me!

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Better than sliced cheese.

Discussion topic of the week: What’s the best Apple II or IBM PC compatible joystick you’ve ever used? It was always hard to find a really good one for platforms with analog joystick inputs.

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From a more innocent time, when “laptop” was two words separated by a hyphen.

Discussion topic of the week: What was the first portable computer you ever used?

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Get thee to a nunnery

Ten years ago this Friday, Nintendo released what many consider to be the greatest Zelda title of all time, if not one of the greatest video games ever created. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time went on sale in Japan on November 21, 1998 after a long period of eager anticipation on the part of Zelda fans, who hadn’t seen a home console Zelda title since 1991’s A Link to the Past on the Super NES. Nintendo hyped up the release of their new game by offering a limited edition gold-colored cartridge (seen here) to those who pre-ordered Ocarina in the US.

Sadly, I missed out on the gold carts, but I did manage to snag a copy (a very gray copy) for Christmas 1998. Honestly, since playing through Ocarina of Time almost a decade ago, that personal experience — in terms of its joy, its depth, and its enchanting, enveloping nature — has yet to be surpassed by any other title. Now that’s a good video game.

Discussion topic of the week: Tell us why you think the Ocarina of Time is great. How, if at all, has the game been influential to the video game industry?

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It’s not every day that I receive a Fuzzy Memory dating back to the early days of personal computing. Come to think of it, it’s no every day that I receive a Fuzzy Memory. But I digress — in this case, the computer in question isn’t even personal, but a mainframe PDP 11/34. The year? 1979.

Like always, I’m not an oracle of infinite knowledge and resources, so I need you (my adept readers) to help solve the mystery. And besides, I like making you do most of the work.

Advent, Trek, and Tripe

Robert wrote me a few days ago regarding a neolithic computer game from the disco era:

I have a new “fuzzy memory” search for you. When I first became addicted to computers in 1979, it was on a PDP 11/34 at my local college. That computer had 3 text-based games that endeared me to computers forever: Advent, Trek, and Tripe.

I have been able to find both Advent (which was the precursor to Zork) and Trek (a text-based Star Trek battle/strategy game). I have never tracked down a version of Tripe.

Tripe was a text-based parody of Star Trek. Key things that I recall about the game include:

• Away teams would raid a planet and “kill the women and rape the bad guys!”
• The ultimate weapon was the “dusn’t matter probe”. When fire, it would start playing one of Kirk’s famous speeches, at which point the enemy would commit suicide.

I don’t know if this game ever left the confines of the PDP, but it sure would be cool to track down a version of it.

Thanks,
Robert

The Search Begins

In this case, we’re fortunate: Robert knows the name of the game he’s looking for, and he knows the platform. But one key absence still prevents him from reliving his fondest gaming memories: the game itself. If anyone out there knows more about Tripe or how to obtain a copy of it, please let us know in the comments section. Perhaps there’s a more recent port of the game for another platform, or maybe someone has a disk image of the game that Robert could run on a PDP/11 emulator.

While you’re at it, feel free to leave your own mainframe memories in the comments below. Good luck!

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Have a memory of a computer, video game, computer software, or electronic toy you need help identifying? Send me an email describing your memories in detail. Hopefully, the collective genius of the VC&G readership can help solve your mystery.

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I actually have a TRS-80 Model 12, although I don’t have a hard drive for it. I bought it at a flea market back in 2000-2001 for $20. It had been used for corporate accounting, payroll, spreadsheets, etc. for some years, and it came with a bunch of 8-inch disks and a huge dot-matrix printer. Sadly, the 8-inch drives on my unit both failed some years ago, although not before I got a chance to load up BASIC and tinker around with a spreadsheet. I haven’t gotten around to fixing them yet, but I’ll probably give it a shot some day.

Discussion topic of the week: Here’s a good one: How many of you readers out there have used systems with 8-inch floppy disks? If you have, tell us about the computer and your 8-inch floppy stories.

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Sega created some pretty edgy advertising in the mid-1990s, so it came as no surprise when they used a risqué visual metaphor to introduce their new 32X add-on for the Genesis. Sadly, the only fruit this unholy union bore was Sega’s eventual failure in the hardware market.

Discussion topic of the week: It’s a tough call: are there any decent games for the 32x?

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