Retro Thing

Thanks to "The Brand Show"!

Thanks to The Brand Show for having Bohuš as a guest on their radio show.  We spoke about Zombie Brands, oddball examples of brand identity, and of course the merits of playing Atari after a few drinks.  The folks on the show told me that not only do they have radio listeners in Kansas City, but many more join the program by downloading the podcast.  You can follow the link below to download an MP3 of the hour long show - our discussion is about 38 minutes in.

It was a lot of fun being on the radio, and we want to thank everyone at The Brand Show for finding our little spot on the internet and letting us spread the retro love.  If you're a new reader here, please drop by the "comments" section to say hi - and make sure to subscribe to our RSS feed, or receive updates by email.

Direct link to MP3 podcast of The Brand Show

Tiny Transistor Treasures: Pete Roberts' Old & Vintage Radios

The Retro Thing research elves stumbled upon this little radio site a few days ago. We usually avoid AOL Hometown like the plague, but this collection of radio goodies is definitely worth a quick mention. Pete Roberts was a teenager during the 1960s, and now he cheerfully collects and repairs both valve and transistor radios.

Standouts in his micro radio collection include a mid-1960s Sinclair Micromatic and a pair of Russian-made sets, including the boxy Yura keychain receiver (inexplicably marked "Made in Hong Kong" -- perhaps an attempt to slip Soviet consumer electronics into the USA at the height of the Cold War), and the Amsa Micro, billed as "The Smallest Radio In The World" upon its release in 1968.

Roberts comments, "This is a specialist [repair] service - I don't handle TVs, VCRs or any other electrical goods. Just radio (including '70s radio/cassettes)! Don't forget, today's disposable consumer electronics contribute heavily to the mountain of toxic waste that eventually ends up in landfill, squandering scarce natural resources. Your older 60s and 70s equipment was made better, and works better than contemporary gear." 

Old & Vintage Radios + Repairs

Kodak Instamatic Cameras: Fun With Flash Cubes

Vintage Kodak ad scan from AdClassix.com

Photography used to be a big deal. Each shot cost money, and shooting indoors usually required disposable flash lamps. In the early 1960s, Kodak decided to make snapshot photography accessible to the unwashed masses by offering film in cartridges rather than on fiddly spools. The result was the arrival of the Kodak Instamatic lineup in 1963. They were designed to accept 126 cartridge film, dramatically lowering the cost of manufacturing each camera, since the film back plate and frame counter was built into the plastic film cartridge.

Many Instamatic 126 cameras were manufactured in the UK, USA, Germany, Brazil and even Australia (a far cry from today's "Made in China" approach). They offered simple controls -- low-end models included a fixed focus lens with a separate viewfinder and dual-position "sun" and "cloud" exposure control and no electronic aperture metering. Instamatics were the essence of simplicity, much like Kodak's original Brownie camera.

Kodak marketed several disposable flash technologies including the Magicube, which offered four tiny mechanically triggered pyrotechnic flash bulbs in a svelte transparent plastic cube. It didn't take me long to discover that the flash could be set off by poking a little wire on the bottom of the case. Much hilarity ensued (gimme a break, I was only ten) until I realized I'd burnt through an entire package of flash cubes.

The Instamatic 126 lineup was wildly popular and remained on the market until 1988 - an astounding 25 year run. The Kodak site reports that more than 50 million of the little cameras were sold in the first seven years alone, and I suspect another 20 or 30 million were sold throughout the snapshot-crazy 1970s. Dozens of models were produced and they often pop up cheaply at garage sales -- a great low-cost collectible. Sadly, my Instamatic met an untimely end in 1979, when my little sister dropped it from a hotel balcony somewhere in Northern California.

Kodak Instamatic 804 Camera [The Classic Camera]
1960s Instamatic TV Commercial [archive.org]

Old Time Radio Downloads: Real World Time Travel

Electronic entertainment is often a solitary occupation: we lose ourselves in the sonic universe hidden within our iPods or immerse ourselves in deafening 7.1 THX surround sound and the blinding action on a 52-inch plasma screen. It wasn't always this way. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, serial radio shows acted like a magnet to draw the entire family around the living room radio set for an evening of exciting adventure.

Thanks to lapsed copyright, it is now possible to enjoy Old Time Radio downloads from dozens of free sites such as archive.org. I heartily recommend vintage episodes of the Mutual Broadcasting System version of The Shadow. Once you're hooked, be sure to explore the world of Dragnet, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Captain Midnight and countless other almost-forgotten shows from the Golden Age of Wireless.

Everything Old is Digital Again [Geekdad - Wired Blogs]

Rare Ferraris Set Auction Record

It's Ferrari's 60th anniversary year, so it should come as no surprise that their testosterone-driven classics are collecting record prices at auction.

A 330 TR/LM Testa Rossa Spyder sold for a stunning 7 million euros in a recent auction held at the company's Fiorano test track in Maranello, Italy. Other unbelievable sales included a 1953 340/375 Berlinetta Competizione (€4.2M) and a pair of 1953 250 SWB Scagliettis that sold for €1.9M each.

For those of us who aren't rock stars of tin-pot dictators, there was a range of almost-affordable memorabilia including a steering wheel from a Ferrari F1 car (€ 59,000) and a Ferrari Tandem bicycle by Colnago, a steal at only € 10,000.

Since I only have about $3 in my tinplate dime bank, I guess I'll just have to stick to my battered old Dinky Toy scale models. But it's fun to dream, isn't it?

Rare Ferraris set record prices at auction in Fiorano [Sympatico/MSN]

Real Life Max Headroom Online

News At Seven is a project by students at Northwestern University's InfoLab.  Their system is able to collect news and opinions from blogs, add in related video and images from Flickr, and all packaged and presented in news-like fashion by a 3D generated avatar.

There are an alarming number of similarities between this project and 80's pop culture icon Max Headroom.  Contrary to what many believe, Max Headroom was not computer generated.  He was realized through makeup, video effects and audio manipulation - but there it all relied on the improvisational skills of talented actor Matt Frewer.  When not a virtual pitchman for Coke, Max starred in a cyber-punk TV series working in a newsroom.

It's easy to see the parallels between the two projects.  Max was a complete personality recorded inside a mainframe, while News At Seven seeks to synthesize a personality by sampling content from several sources.  Just imagining the collection and organization of all of this data and the production of a video through automation makes my head spin.  Maybe someday they'll invite this friendly Retro Thing reporter over to their lab, seeing that I live some ten minutes away from the Northwestern campus.  ;)

Is it the future?  It's got a way to go to seem a little less creepy, but I can still see this technique coming in handy someday.  Though you wouldn't want your virtual reporter relying only on the popularity of online stories being a metric for newsworthyness.

In any case, my favorite part of the whole project is that the reliance on streaming media means that the animation can be jerky and the audio can stutter - just like good ol' Max.

Affordable Honda CBR125R Motorcycle Arrives In Canada: A return to simpler times?

The modern North American motorcycle market is a strange beast. In many parts of the world, riders start off on affordable 49 cc scooters before graduating to 125cc and 250cc bikes. That's not the case here, where many people start out with a much more powerful and expensive machine. In an effort to make the sport safer and more affordable, Honda recently introduced the sleek little CBR125R in Canada for only $3399 ($3100 US).

Vintage Vornado Fans from Kansas

The original Vornado fans were built in Wichita, Kansas in the 1940s and 1950s by the O.A. Sutton Company. The old company is long-gone, but the Vornado name was revived in 1989. The company now has a 120,000 square foot headquarters in Andover, Kansas.

The $99.99 Vornado fan is a modernized version of the original from the 1950s. It measures approximately 14" in height and offers three fan speeds capable of moving air up to 65 feet. It's available in a single vintage shade of green (although the company site alludes to a "classic black" version) and the all-metal construction sets it apart from the cheap plastic devices you're likely to stumble across at the local Wal-Mart.

"Celebrate the classic style of the 1950's with this reinvented Vintage Vornado Fan which is actually not a fan at all, but an air circulator.  The difference is in the technology; an air circulator uses vortex action and provides complete air circulation.  Built with solid metal construction and deep pitch whisper-quiet blades, this circulator delivers high style along with powerful air circulation." [thanks to Joe Montanez for the tip!]

Classic Vornado Air Circulator [Vornado Air LLC]

Saxton Astro Com A-1005 Wrist Broadcaster

Cell phones are great, but isn't the Saxon Astro Com what communication on the go was always supposed to look like?  Chrome face, single big knob, spindly antenna with ball at the end - to me this "wrist broadcaster" would look equally at home on the wrist of Dick Tracy as Flash Gordon.

If you've ever had a Radio Shack project kit, or a Mr. Microphone, you understand the principle.  Tune a nearby radio to a blank spot on the FM dial, then a little transmitter inside the mic can broadcast to nearby radios tuned to that frequency.  Quicker than you can say "streaming media bottleneck", you're on the radio with no FCC breathing down your neck - mostly because your potential audience is somewhere in the range of a 20 foot circle.

The Saxton Astro Com is probably the slickest designed FM transmitter microphone I've ever seen.  It's got a nicely curved body to fit the contour of your wrist, a tuning knob to zero in on the broadcast frequency, and my favorite - a spring based antenna.  For the time it was made (whenever that may be), it's a surprisingly compact little unit.  Looking at it reminds me of a long standing question I've had - where are the wrist cell phones?

In the battle of personal communication, the custom of holding a phone up to the face has definitely won out over the somewhat cliched sci-fi wrist communicator form factor.  Cell phones are here to stay, but I think that it's less awkward to talk up one's sleeve than simply shout into the air as those bluetooth earpieces would have us do.  I'd rather wear one of these while I'm taking my atomic jetpack to work at the Extruded Foam Food Conglom.

Back to reality for a moment, I'd like to figure out what year the Astro Com is from.  The bottom of the unit only says, "Made in the British Crown colony of Hong Kong.  Pats. Pending".  I found the manufacturer referenced in a patent online for a phone related device, and also in a 1970's interview about covert surveillance devices (with a nice big picture of Dick Nixon too, har har...). 

From the aesthetics of the Astro Com it looks like it's older than the 1970's.  Any ideas out there?  Perhaps we'll never know.  It's pseudo-futuristic lines could come from years gone by, or perhaps it fell through a crack in time from the years to come.

Here's a kit to let you build your own wireless FM microphone.

iPod Living Inside Game Boy

[maybe you guys will like this Game Boy Mod better than the last one... - Ed.]

We've all seen a number of neat projects that camouflage your iPod inside some retro device.  Some of these mods are cute, but many more are just kind of "ehh".  Here's a neat one that fits the iPod into a classic grey Game Boy (with plenty of room to spare I would guess...).

What I like about this project is that the front buttons from the original Game Boy control the iPod within.  Also the iPod isn't modified in any way.  It's still removable for those times you don't want your music player taking ten times more space.

Linked below is an article on how you can create your own version of this project, and also a Flickr set with step by step instructions.

Flickr pics with step-by-step illustrations

The Ensoniq Mirage: Digital Sampling For The Masses

Back in the early 1980s, digital synthesis was an expensive proposition. The most amazing musical gadgets of all were digital samplers, which played short samples of real sounds at different pitches to emulate real instruments with startling realism. The same thing can be achieved today with a $29 bargain-basement sound card, but back in 1983 an 8-voice 8-bit digital sampler such as the Fairlight CMI Series IIx would set you back the staggering sum of $30,000.

And then everything changed overnight.

Blowout Alert: SEGA Genesis Mini-Consoles for only $10

Here's your chance to pick up a brand new Arcade Legends SEGA Genesis 2 unit for under $10. The tiny console features six classic Genesis titles including Sonic 2, Ecco The Dolphin, Gain Ground, The Ooze, Columns, and Alex Kid & the Enchanted Castle. It includes a pretty decent imitation of the original Genesis controller, along with a battery-powered console unit (4 x AA batteries not included). The only downside is that you can't connect a second controller for head-to-head play, although some of the games support split-screen mode just like the originals.

Ten bucks is an absolute bargain for this much fun. I bought one last year and spent many hours hanging with Sonic, Alex and Ecco.

Buy Arcade Legends SEGA Genesis 2 for $9.99 [while stocks last]

A Real Polaroid SLR Instant Camera

My 4 year-old son wants a Polaroid camera. Oddly enough, he came up with the idea while watching a cartoon. One of the characters had a camera that ejected instant prints for the front, and he decided the design was far more sensible than a digital point-and-shoot. I agreed with him. I have an old Polaroid OneStep camera in a box somewhere and I promised that we could shoot a few photos. He grinned and responded, "Stop signs, dad. I want to take pictures of traffic signs." Unfortunately, I neglected to check the price of Polaroid film packs -- this little roadside safari is going to cost me $1.50 a shot.

A number of people have asked me whether Polaroid ever made an SLR instant camera with through-the-lens focusing and framing (Polaroids typically offer a simple discrete viewfinder). The good news is that Polaroid produced such a series. The bad news is that they don't look anything like a normal compact Canon or Nikon 35 mm SLR, nor do they offer zoom lenses -- they share the same lumpy design as nearly every other classic Polaroid device.

The Polaroid SLR 690 was expensive, carrying a list price of $399 when it debuted in 1996. It offered a rather slow  4-element 116 mm f/8 lens with ultrasonic echo ranging and a 4-bit microprocessor to control the two-blade scanning aperture system. Other convenient features included center-weighted scene averaging exposure control, an auto-focus bypass switch, and a built-in tripod mount. Honestly, a Polaroid SLR is of limited use with a fixed focal length lens and I wish that Polaroid had been able to integrate a zoom.

Discover more about the Polaroid SLR 690 [Ken Rockwell, with more great photos]

related:
Polaroid I-Zone Camera
Polaroid Pinhole Cameras

Oddball Micros: Oric, The World's First £100 Colour Personal Computer

I miss the technological excitement of the early 1980s, especially since I wasn't old enough to fully participate the first time around. Computers are commodity items in the 21st century; the purchase choice usually boils down to a PC or Mac. Anything beyond that is usually a matter of personal taste and wealth: processor speed, operating system, and maybe a blindingly fast graphic card and massive hard drive or two.

It's all amazingly dull when compared to the rough-and-tumble Wild West of 1983.

Working PC Inside A Classic Game Boy

A few weeks ago we wrote about the smallest PC motherboards yet.  In his post, James wondered what sort of cool new case mods this would inspire. Here, my friends, is the answer.  You are looking at an entire functional PC shoehorned into 1989's classic Game Boy. 

Let's see, what are the down sides?  There's no screen on the unit itself, so you have to connect a monitor.  The unit is also no longer able to provide the classic pea-green Tetris many of us grew up on.  Nor is it any more likely to fit into a pocket than the original massive portable game unit.  On the positive side - it's a freakin' PC inside a GAME BOY!

The OS runs off of a 4 meg flash drive that sockets into the original cartridge port (of course...), and the buttons on the front face have been replaced with LED indicators.  They've even managed to include USB ports!

If they added a nice screen to the project (with a custom icon set that would reproduce the smeary greenish LCD of the original Game Boy), it would be just about perfect.  I wonder what the current draw is of such a unit - could it be run off of a pocket-sized battery pack for a decent amount of time?  If so, you'd be talking the ultimate in portable computing and portable cool.

One quick question about casemodders.   How come no one has told these guys about needle files to clean up their rough Dremel work?  Maybe they don't have time to mess around - that's probably why these PC hot rod guys always have several awesome PC projects going, and I have exactly none.
[via Plastic Bamboo]

Link to more pictures of the project

Some of our favorite PC case mods