Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer

It's easy these days to take the Internet, ludicrous processing power, massive hard disk capacities, cloud computing and mobile connectivity for granted. Back in 'the day' things were very different. Gordon Laing's well researched and elegantly designed homage to lots of different, lovely but defunct hardware from the era of "Home" as opposed to "Personal" Computers.

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05/07/2011

Cholo - Novella

Cholo was a classic game released initially for the BBC Micro, it had wireframe graphics where you take control of a robot drone, taking over other more powerful robots to complete tasks (similar to that of Paradroid). The back story was set out in a novella which was included in the game's packaging.

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28/04/2011

Cholo Remake

Cholo was a classic game released initially for the BBC Micro, it had wireframe graphics where you take control of a robot drone, taking over other more powerful robots to complete tasks (similar to that of Paradroid). The back story was set out in a novella which was included in the game's packaging.

[ more... ]
28/04/2011

BBC News: Recreating the era of 8-bit computers

Chances are that you are reading this article on a computer screen. Most would agree that a modern 32 or 64 bit machine is a pretty complicated piece of equipment.

While it is easy to buy the parts of a modern PC - motherboard, graphics card and processor - the sheer complexity would defeat any attempt to build one starting with electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and chips.

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28/04/2011

BBC Micro Emulator

Unfortunately the days of the BBC Micro have been and passed, but the technology has been kept alive by the fans and the games can be played using an emulator, that will enable you to run BBC Micro software on your PC.

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27/04/2011

BBC Micro

Anyone over 30 is sure to feel a nostalgic inner-glow whenever the BBC Micro is mentioned.

The world has changed so much in the last 30 years with regards to computing. Now it is common for households of people who are not even considered geeky to have a couple of computers, a playstation, myspace and facebook pages, mobile phones with internet connections, etc...  But for a large chunk of the 1980s the 'Beeb', was one of the main ways people in the UK accessed computer technology.

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27/04/2011

The Dark Wheel

The Dark Wheel is a 1984 novella set in the Elite computer game universe and distributed with the original boxed game for most 8 and 16 bit versions. It was written by noted fantasy writer Robert Holdstock, and was the first novella to be included for distribution with a computer game.

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31/03/2011

BBC Micros used in retro programming class

Computer history is cruel. It is a story of the old constantly being pushed aside for the newer, the faster, the smaller, the shinier.

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27/08/2010