MOBODOJO » Retroriffic

First New Jag E-Type In 20+ Years

Tyler Regas — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:05:29 +0000

Mr. Parrot built this Jag E-Type from the ground up using original Jag replacement parts. The car qualifies as E-Type number 72,530, even though it was built by a single man in his garage. Absolutely stunningly fantastic! You can read the entire story here. [Source: Octane, Photo: John Colley]

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Casio Swanks Up Calculator Watches

Tyler Regas — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:51:05 +0000

Closely alongside highwater pants, pocket protectors, short-sleeve white button-up shirts, and white tape wrapped around the bridge of black thick-rimmed glasses, the calculator watch is one of the Geek badges. Yet, for reasons clouded in the hazy Nerd past, the calculator watch has never attained the heights of ridicule its brethren did. Casio, the creators of the calculator watch, are apparently aware of this and have decked the wrist-bound gizmo out in swanky new color combos. You can pick up classic black for US$70 and in five other colors for US$60.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

The iCat Feline Bed

Tyler Regas — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:53:29 +0000

This particular one was found by my daughter, since I don’t spend hours a day combing YouTube for cats (she’s reading the Warriors series right now). This is, however, a fantastic reuse for a retro iMac. I can only wonder how even cooler it would be if there were an iFish next to it. Maybe its called the Fish Classic? There’s a whole ton of them over at The Apple Collection.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Stan Veit Talks About Early Apple

Tyler Regas — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:24:38 +0000

Back in the days when even I was an early computer user, Apple was hammering out its early deals with the likes of Stan Veit. Mr. Veit was the first Editor-in-Chief of Computer Shopper magazine, but before that he was a critical component in the development of the computer retail establishment. As such, Stan got to deal directly with Steve Jobs and an extremely nascent Apple Computer Inc. at a time when the Apple I came without a case. He’s written about it in a series of essays which appear on Computer Shopper’s website.

While the story is deeply interesting from Stan’s point of view, it shows a Steve Jobs which I’m sure nobody would be surprised at. Stan, however, spins Jobs as a very slick Snakeoil salesman who stabs people in the back. While I’m not shocked at this and don’t disbelieve it, it doesn’t benefit from the perspective of the other side. At one level, Mr. Veit clearly indicates that his association with Apple caused the failure of his computer store in New York City when Jobs changed the way the sales channels worked.

I’m not going to make this brief piece a defense of Steve Jobs and Apple, but I will say that its important to take these stories from a perspective which can only be granted by time and hindsight. Even today, Apple is ruthless when it comes to marketing and working with channels. I’ve also never seen anyone work as hard as Steve Jobs has at making a company like Apple work from almost every possible angle. That’s gonna piss some people off.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Windows 3.1 In DOSBox On Nokia N810

Tyler Regas — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:58:57 +0000

Ok. This is just plain sick/kewl/nerd to the extreme. This is a screenshot of Windows 3.1 running in DOSBox on a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. No, this is not me. I’m honestly not this cool, though I may try to do it some day. There were a couple of interesting bits in the comments on PicasaWeb, the source for the following image. One, there was a lot of interest in this and two, there was a guy whose handle is DosFreak. Wow.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Apple’s Wicked PowerBook G3 “Pismo”

Tyler Regas — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:58:15 +0000

Possibly the single best pre-widescreen lappy ever made, Mac or PC, was Apple’s PowerBook G3, codenamed Pismo. Apple introduced it in early 2000 to instant praise and adulation. It came with a 400 or 500MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, two PC-100 SO-DIMM slots for up to 1GB RAM (Apple only rated it for 512MBs), a 6 or 18GB ATA-66 drive, a 6X DVD-ROM drive, a 14.1″ Active Matrix TFT display which could handle 24-bit color and was driven by an ATI Rage128 video sub-system with 8MBs of VRAM driving the gorgeous 1024×768 backlit display, 2 USB and 2 FireWire ports, a 56k modem, 10/100 Ethernet, optional internal AirPort, and a PCMCIA Type-II slot. All this was swaddled in the single sexiest case ever devised for a machine, making it even more desirable by Apple lovers everywhere.

I got mine upgraded to run a 550MHz PowerPC G4 processor, bumped the RAM up to 1GB, replaced the aging 6GB drive with a riproarin’ 7200-RPM 60GB drive, and slotted in an ugly but fast DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. It was the best machine I had ever had, bar none. It was so much so that this entry is looking more like a love letter than a retro review. The Pismo was also the only machine which was able to last for 7 years and stay up to date with technology, a testimony to Apple’s prowess with it OSen as well as its industrial design chops.

I ran the system on everything from 9.1 through to Mac OS X 10.4.11. It won’t upgrade to 10.5, since its only a single processor system. I ran iLife ’06 on it, even GarageBand, quite well. It was certainly no massive workstation, but with the extra RAM it could run FireFox, Mail.app, several utilities, Adium X, and still play a DVD without skipping. iTunes worked very well on it, too, aside from the fact that I was unable to sync my iPod 5G to it.

I dearly miss the machine, though I know there is a person out there using it right now (I know who they are, famiy friend) and enjoying it. In the last year after purchasing my MacBook Pro it had not been used as much. I did, however, always keep it near me. It was a phenomenal machine and, I assume, remains so. I’ve long thought how nice it would be to see Apple make a Pismo Celebration model of the Intel-based MacBook Pro with a widescreen version of the Pismo case. I would pay good money for that. Yes, I would.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

The History of Panic’s Audion

Tyler Regas — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:48:45 +0000

I admit it. I’m a retro nerd, big time. I love old gear and software. I happen to love the look of Mac OS 8/9 and truly miss it. I wish I could apply the look to my MacBook Pro without installing potentially system corrupting software. I’d really like to see Apple just integrate it just to show for once they have feelings… but I digress. While I was over at Panic looking over Coda I stumbled around and found this cool story about how Panic’s seminal Audion MP3 player software came to be. I was very fond of it back in the day and seeing this has prompted me to dig out my PowerBook 3400c, reinstall OS9.22, and fire up some Audion. Man, I miss my Pismo.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Steve Jobs Introduces The Macintosh

Tyler Regas — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:57:06 +0000

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!

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

Ben Heck’s Apple //gs Laptop

Tyler Regas — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:28:43 +0000

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.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now:

PDA Handyman Celebrates Six Years!

Tyler Regas — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:16:39 +0000

Six years ago today, PDA Handyman opened to the public. Our first reviews were of Casio’s ruggedized Cassiopeia EG-800STD and their budget-minded BE-300 Pocket Manager. We also offered long-term updates on Handspring’s Visor Deluxe (the blue one) and Compaq’s seminal iPAQ 3135 (that’s the grayscale model). Finally, we took a quick look at the specs of the somewhat anticipated Royal Electronics Lin@x Linux-based PDA, which was unveiled at 2002′s CES show in Las Vegas. We were also running Palm InfoCenter headlines on the site, and they had just leaked Palm i705 pictures and were discussing the rumored release of Palm’s M515 and M130 devices. Talk about retro!

We want to thank all of our readers for six years of great support and sticking by us through thick and thin (and ignoring my periodic brain farts), and we look forward to another six years of some of the most amazing portable devices, software, and services that we can report on for you.