Category: Retrocomputing

Today marks an important date in Windows history: the release of Windows 95. Yes, 15 years ago I was in my university dorm ogling a friend's just-purchased copy of the 95 Upgrade, wondering how awesome my DX2/66 would be once I had replaced my factory-original Windows 3.11. Similarly fond-but-geeky memories of playing Doom deathmatches over our null modem cable also come rushing back... ...

Idea Informer is a widget that you put on your site, and it takes the form of one of those "feedback tabs" to the right of the page (you've seen them before, I'm sure). The thing that's a bit different about Idea Informer is that any comments left by visitors become public, and other visitors can vote them up. You can think of it as a public wish list. One problem with the implementation is that ...

About ten years ago, I remember installing a PlayStation emulator on my PC. With marvel, wonder and awe, I played through Final Fantasy VII yet again. It was awesome! Both the MIDI orchestration and jaggy polygons were faithfully preserved and everything! I also remember that it was slow. My PC had a 600MHz processor, yet it struggled to emulate the 33MHz processor in the PlayStation 1. Fast ...

While the bulk of the buzz about HTML5 still seems to be focused on the video tag, there are plenty of other awesome developments cropping up. Things like drag-and-drop attachments in GMail and all those crazy Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive samples. Then there's the work of developer Joe Huckaby. Joe has taken images created by graphic artist Mark Ferrari to produce some incredibly cool, ...

I know, I know, Zelda games are sacred. It's like trying to cover a Michael Jackson song -- you can give it your best shot, but you can't improve on something perfect, so why bother? Well, you do it for fun of course! Zelda II FPS is a delightful, painstakingly recreated version of the 1987 side-scrolling classic. No expense has been spared -- all of the original textures are there, and the ...

Plasma Burst is a platformer that thinks it's an FPS. On the one hand, you get traditional side-scrolling action, but on the other hand, everything else feels like an FPS. You play a guy "sent back in time to save the world" (back-story is always the strong side for games like this). You stroll through levels full of baddies and basically shoot them up. By default, you have a laser-like gun, but ...

Uncensored isn't the first BBS I'm covering for DownloadSquad. But this one seems to have some actual users, which makes it interesting for me. Uncensored bills itself as a "fun alternative to the Information Stupidhighway". See what they did there? Eh? Clever! What it actually is (as far as I was able to tell) is a very simple messaging system. You don't have to access it via telnet like in the ...

I knew Radio Shack were kind of ancient, but I had no idea they've been around since 1921. That is a long time. It took them 18 years, but in 1939 they started publishing their comprehensive yearly catalogs. And they kept on going strong and steady -- except for a couple of years during WWII. Like any old catalog, these provide an interesting portal into a different time -- a simpler time, when ...

Ahhh, the good old days. When men were real men, and websites were horrific white-on-dayglo-yellow creations lovingly crafted in notepad, complete with animated GIFs of randomly dancing M&M's and poor MIDI versions of Oasis' Wonderwall on auto-play. Miss those days? Do you? Come on, you can admit it... we're all friends here. Okay, you don't have to say anything -- I can see it in your eyes, ...

Hey, did you know that 'jilling off' is the female equivalent of ... jerking off? No, I didn't either -- not until I stumbled across this game. Then, like the curious fool that I am, I typed 'jill off' into Google... and voila! How about that. Anyway, I digress: Mighty Jill Off has nothing to do with masturbation -- unless you're into horny BSDM-themed 8bit female characters, anyway. ...

I grew up in Fidonet and the BBS culture. I remember whole nights spent online in my early teens, slugging my way through text MUDs (multi-user D&D games). I really liked it. But it's gone. Times have moved on, things have changed. We now have graphics. Apparently, one Zach Perry takes issue with that. He has recently launched AEIN, or Alternative Electronic Information Network. In a ...

What with all the furore over Google Buzz and its questionable security, the big picture since the launch has been more than a little occluded. I hope, with the dust settling, we can now begin to look at what Google Buzz actually brings to the table -- without hyperbole, without the Mashablesque over-reporting -- the actual goodies. As always, controversy or not, Google has brought us a very ...

I'm about to shock you with my most blatant 're-newsing' to date. I pray, what with the spectacular Super Bowl tonight, that you can forgive me -- well, at least the Americans amongst you. OK, the Americans from the Deep South. BUT ANYWAY... Computerworld has a gallery of the 10 best Super Bowl technology ads, from 1976 (Xerox!) to present day (Garmin). They're all classics that you've ...

One Button Bob can only be played with an ultra high-tech Boomslang five-button gaming mouse. Well, that's not actually true. That's tech writing for you. To be honest, to play One Button Bob you do need just one button. This retro-tastic little gem casts you as a fictional character (you're going to have to guess the name). On each screen, your one button does something different. ...

I'm looking at you guys and wondering if you remember MS-DOS. I mean, I'm not that old, and I had computers that ran MS-DOS, so... there must be some people here that remember BASIC? QBASIC? How about BASIC on the Atari? Tiny BASIC? Failing that, I'm sure those of you that went through college during the dot-com bubble experienced Visual BASIC? Anyway, I'm rambling. Basically (!), there's a ...