Released in 1980, the VIC-20 was the world’s first low-cost computer, at a list price of under US$300. Compared to other computers of the time, the VIC-20 had a tiny memory (5 kilobytes) and an [more…]
The limited release of the Nintendo Classic Mini in 2016 revived the market for “retro-clone” consoles as people flocked to re-live the video games of their youth. Paleotronic acquired a couple of common clones from [more…]
What do Steve Wozniak and George H.W. Bush have in common? They’ve both been seriously into Tetris! But who can blame them? The object of the game (as if you didn’t know) is to complete [more…]
Marty’s camera in Back to the Future is one cool piece of gear, but his JVC GR-C1 VideoMovie was actually over four years old at this point – an early version of it had been [more…]
Before MS-DOS, Microsoft’s biggest product was arguably BASIC. Variants of Microsoft BASIC shipped in most 1980s home computers, including the Commodore 64, Tandy Color Computer and the Apple II (as Applesoft BASIC). Standing for “Beginners [more…]
The 1990s saw the rise of handheld portable video-gaming, with the three dominant console manufacturers, Nintendo, Sega and Atari all coming out with their own take on gaming-on-the-go. Could Nintendo’s monochromatic Game Boy fend off [more…]
Paleotronic had a chat with archivist and documentary film-maker Jason Scott (Get Lamp) about his efforts to preserve Apple II and other vintage computer software… Firstly, could you give a little background on how the [more…]
First demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1982, the Compact Disc was an evolution of the optical LaserDisc format created by Philips and MCA. Philips partnered with Sony to develop the new disc, initially [more…]
Any computer that was going to use a command line interface desperately needed a character set, and despite their ultimate monstrous graphical capabilities, Commodore’s machines were no exception. As was usually the case (cf. SHARPSCII, [more…]
A little while back we implemented a “virtual modem” that allows users to telnet to a large directory of Internet-connected BBSes from inside Apple II terminal programs. However, we didn’t emulate enough of the Apple [more…]
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