It’s 1984-rrific, folks! This sweet little YouTube video was posted back in 2006 but only just now came into my radar. Take a gander at Steve Job in a bowtie, enthusiastically introducing the Macintosh which made Apple a real household name. Interestingly enough, the stage back then was as black as it is today. The only thing which has changed is the loss of the suit and that silly bowtie!

written by Tyler Regas

If you’ve never seen anything crafted by Ben Heckendorn, then you are in for a treat. The man, who goes by Ben Heck, has engineered himself into the retro-modder-god whom many consider him by cramming a wide range of technologies into handcrafted portable cases. Ben made a name for himself with his very first project, the Atari VCSp, which received a storm of attention after it was posted on Slashdot.

Ben hasn’t rested on his laurels, either. Since then he has created numerous devices including a portable Sony PlayStation and laptop versions of the Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and a load of other gaming consoles. His latest project is a real throwback, too; the Apple //gs Laptop. The //gs was a precursor to the Mac which came to power in 1984 and was the last of the lauded and venerable Apple ][ line. Sadly, there is only one, and its not likely to go on sale any time soon, however, if you’d like an Atari VCSp 5.1 you can have one for US$350 and a 4-switch Atari 2600 console.

written by Tyler Regas

First thing you should know is that you probably can’t buy it. There’s only one, after all. What is it? Its a Nintendo SNES which some engineer reworked, stuffed into a custom-made wooden case, and made it rechargeable. This gadget is very cool. My daughter has a Nintendo DS, and she wanted one. That’s quite the endorsement. Check out the video which shows it running StarFox. Neato! [Source: Tech E Blog]

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: gadgets, nintendo, portable, retro

I was thrilled beyond belief when contributor ER found the new theme we are now offering. If you look to the right you will see a new item called the Theme Switcher. As you can see, there is our theme, MoboDojo PHM, and there is now the new Retro MacOS. I’ll warn you up front, it doesn’t have the same features as the default theme. Its more like an RSS feed than a website. It is a hoot, though! Many thanks to Stuart Brown, the theme designer!

written by Tyler Regas

Though I acquired the 701c before I got the Mac Classic, I had stars in my eyes from the miniscule Macintosh. I’m going to rectify that now via this piece. For those of you who don’t know, the IBM ThinkPad 701c is not a new machine, and, true to my nature, its a laptop. Its a special laptop, though, as it is unique among lappys. What makes it unique is its “Butterfly” keyboard. You see, the keyboard is wider than the laptop is, and thats not magic.

It performs its trick via some very clever mechanical machinations. As you lift the lid of the lappy it actuates a gear which causes the two halves of the keyboard to move outward and join together. It works because the engineers at IBM were very, very cool. To see it in action, check out this YouTube video.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Retro Tech-o-rama

Remember the heady days of The Talking Moose and Jared on the old 68k Macs? Man those were fun. There was also this one that barfed and some others which did really annoying things as a prank. In the later days of the Mac, as the PowerPC transition replaced older 68k macs, there was SimStapler from Freeverse. You can relive those heady days with a large collection of software from madman John Schilling.

Just to give you an idea of what you’ll find there’s MacBarfX which emits a barfing sound whenever you eject a volume. There’s EarthquakeX which makes your screen shake at random. There’s Conan The Librarian X which tells users to shut up when they get too loud. If you need something useful and aren’t out to torture your Mac pals there’s Smell-O-Mints, a nice looking table of Periodic Elements.

Most of these applets are Universal Binary and a lot of them run faceless so users can’t just quit them and stop the harassment. Have fun!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools, Laugherating