Apple’s CEO, John Sculley, called it a “Personal Digital Assistant”, and the journalists present seem to have been in awe of the potential the Newton represented. A digital tablet that recognised handwriting? That could wirelessly [more…]
1983 was the year robots invaded the Consumer Electronics Show, soon after to storm homes across the world, and provide us with robotic domestic bliss ever since! Er… uh… well, maybe not. Truth is, they [more…]
Visitors to the Commodore booth at the 1986 Consumer Electronics Show were not only introduced to the newly restyled Commodore 64C and GEOS, but also a colourful new information service called Quantum Link. Typical 1980s [more…]
The Commodore 64, introduced at the 1982 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, was a significant improvement on the VIC-20, and would become the best-selling computer model of all time. In early 1981, Commodore-subsidiary MOS Technology began [more…]
During 1983 a home console revolution started in Japan with the release of the Nintendo Famicom. Short for Family Computer, this new console was designed to take video games beyond the giant pixels and beeper [more…]
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…]
©2018 Paleotronic Magazine. Editor: Melody Ayres-Griffiths editor@paleotronic.com