Retro Thing

DIY: Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote

The Atari 2600 joystick is my favourite video game controller of all time. The spartan design demands a simple gaming interface (only one button, after all) and the rubber coated stick can take considerable abuse before giving one last creaky groan and snapping.

So, it caused great excitement at Retro Thing when Alan at Hacked Gadgets gave us a shout about his DIY guide to building this unique retro remote. Alan explains, "I wanted a simple remote that could be used to easily control the volume and mute the TV when the phone rings. I have replaced all of my remotes with a single Harmony 880 control which works great, but I wanted something a bit more cool to compliment it. Building the retro remote was fun and simple since the mini remote that I used was very easy to hack."

Build an Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote Control

Build Your Own Progressive Scan Camcorder!?

We've covered some pretty neat DIY stuff in the past: Matchbox pinhole cameras, home-brew video game consoles and even a radio made from household odds and ends, but what kind of guy would whip up a 25 fps tapeless progressive-scan camcorder in his spare time? Dan Vance, that's who.

The VanceCam25P was developed to shoot The Shivering Earth, an 88 minute Indy sci-fi feature film. Dan Vance's one-off camera captures footage digitally on an internal hard drive. It uses a high-quality industrial video camera module with "frame integration" mode that allows progressive-scan image capture. Vance initially used a liquid crystal shutter in front of the CCD, but discovered that he lost a massive 2 1/2 stops of light. Instead, the final unit uses a rotating mechanical shutter like a motion picture camera. Of course, this requires precise synchronization to ensure that the CCD only attempts to capture an image while the shutter is open. Anything but perfect synchronization would result in optical disaster.

The camera outputs a component video signal which is fed to an analog component-to-firewire converter (ADS Pyro A/V link) which passes the DV signal directly to a Laird CapDiv hard disk recorder, resulting in a clever tapeless recording system. An audio preamplifier is built in to boost a microphone input for capture by the recorder's A/D converter line-level input. The viewfinder is a re-purposed Sony DXF-501CE, while the lens is a Fujinon pulled from an old Ikegami HL-79A camera.

So how does the footage look? You can check out the trailer at The Shivering Earth site. I thought it was remarkable considering it was captured with homebuilt equipment, but it still looks like sterile camcorder footage to me. I guess I'll just have to wait for the RED One digital camera to hit the market.

More details and pics of the VanceCam

Mike Riddle's Prehistoric AutoCAD

Evan Yares writes: "This is a photo of the INTERACT CAD system, circa 1978. The hardware is an S-100 computer with dual 8" floppy drives, and a 640x480 pixel graphics board.  Input is through a Houston Instruments digitizer and a Televideo terminal. I don't know what brand plotter it's using, but is using a Rapidograph pen, with either an HP or HI adapter.

INTERACT was the first CAD system to run on mainstream microcomputer hardware. (Other systems ran on mainframes or minicomputers.) Its first commercial customer was Atlantic Richfield. I understand they used it to plan deep dives for offshore drilling rigs.

INTERACT was written by Mike Riddle. He had previously worked on an expensive ComputerVision CADDS3 system, and figured he could do better. He wrote INTERACT in his spare time, starting in 1977. He was somewhat slowed down by the state of hardware at the time -- he had to write the program in pieces, and assemble it as larger memory boards became available. Ultimately, he decided he needed a processor that could support hardware multiply. Marinchip Systems, owned by John Walker and Dan Drake, made an S-100 main board with a TI TMS-9900 processor that fit the bill.

In 1981, Riddle, Walker, Drake, and about a dozen other people co-founded Autodesk. Interact was rewritten in C to run on the new IBM PC, and was rechristened AutoCAD. It has since grown to be the most popular CAD program in history." [thanks for the flashback, Evan!]

Mike Riddle & the Story of Interact [DigiBarn]

The Price Is Right Tribute Special

The Price Is Right is a long-lived American game show.  I say this for our overseas friends, since there is no American alive who doesn't know about The Price Is Right.  The show has been on every morning for more than 35 years with eternal charmer Bob Barker.  Instead of one central game, TPIR is a collection of dozens of mini games that involve guessing the prices of anything from a pack of gum to his & hers Lincoln Continentals.

You can attribute the longevity of the show to a number of factors.  Since the games are based around the prices of groceries and other consumer products, the TV audience can play along at home.

Another indisputable draw is host Bob Barker.  For more than 5000 episodes of TPIR, he has been able to share his old-time broadcaster affability with three generations of viewers.  It's not just oldsters with nostalgia in their hearts still interested the show - college kids go positively ballistic when they're chosen to go up on stage to guess the price of denture cleanser.

Barker is retiring this June after 50 continuous years on television (he hosted other game shows such as the madcap Truth or Consequences).  Thursday night CBS is broadcasting a retrospective of Barker's work, and of course you can still catch the octogenarian host every morning for another month.  There's also a link below to watch some videos on CBS' website (there are also plenty of great moments on YouTube).

Barker's tenure on the tube has garnered a number of records.  TPIR is the longest running TV game show, among the longest running daily programs (it's been the only daytime game show on TV in the last 15 years), and Barker has been on television continuously for fifty years.  I don't think that the phoney-baloney saccharine sincerity of some other hosts and other exasperatingly moronic gameshows (Deal Or No Deal, I'm looking at you...) are in any danger of threatening Bob Barker's amazing record.

Game shows have come and gone, and TPIR has weathered all the trends.  The set has seen little change since 1972, many of the games are still around and have become bona fide classics, and Bob Barker's consistent warmth has served to make him king of game show hosts.

Read our article about Bob's signature microphone

CBS "Innertube" site with clips

Terrific fan site with tons of classic off-air clips

DIY Mona Lisa, Sort Of...

There is only one Mona Lisa, though she has grown to be an icon of all of art.  How many novelty neckties, mouse pads, and Terry Gilliam cartoons feature the enigmatic lady?  In modern times, some credit Andy Warhol for popularizing the image of the Mona Lisa in his art, raising the work to icon status much like Elvis or Marilyn Monroe.  The painting is even a main plot point in one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, "City of Death".

Certainly there are so many bits of knock-off Mona merch, that anyone can partake of her contemplative and knowing gaze.  In this photo you can see that someone went even further.  Not content with the mere image of Mona Lisa, this artist sought to re-create the work as a real painting.  A reasonable copy (certainly well beyond my skills as an artist) took shape, but take a closer look at the face.  It's another woman!  Call the Louvre!  Break out your daVinci Code decoder rings! 

I'm pretty sure that there is no sinister sub-plot of forgery happening here.  Perhaps a talented amateur created this homage to the Mona Lisa, replacing the visage with someone close at hand.  Or is this an example of a smart painter-for-hire who can plug any face onto what is perhaps the most recognized piece of art in the world?  A kit maybe?

In any case I call the painting "The Mona Kowalski" (Don't you agree that she looks like a Mona?).   This is definitely one of my favorite thrift store paintings I've ever found.  It'll be tough to beat, unless somewhere out there I find a painting of two large sad-eyed children dressed as harlequins slaughtering Ziggy.  Look, I'm only saying what everyone else is thinking.

Cadaco Mini Skee Ball

I've always liked mini versions of arcade gear, so here's a mini Skee Ball setup from Cadaco.  Cadaco is still around, manufacturing magic sets (designed by magician Marshall Brodien, no less...) and games.  There isn't a year imprinted on this toy, but I'm guessing it could anywhere from the 60's - 80's.  I recall lots of cheap-ish toys being revved up via day-glo colors from time to time.

It works pretty well.  You don't roll the ball yourself, instead you test your aim using a spring-loaded cannon to shoot the ball at the target.  I must be a Skee Ball whiz these days - at least when playing such a tiny version.  Now that I'm an adult this game seems a bit easier than I recall.  Ah, growing older and increased skill at baby sized carnival games sure can be bittersweet.

Sure it's a fun game, but this is also a sneaky way for me to introduce you to a great retro-sounding band from here in Chicago.  J+J+J capture a great snapshot of 80's dance/techno without being slaves to that kind of sound - I'll write about them some more one of these days.  One of my favorite songs of theirs is "Skee Ball vs. The Mall", and yes - I listened to the tune while I was playing with the Cadaco Skee Ball.  If I were do both of things while at a mall I imagine that I'd explode or something.

"Skee Ball Vs. The Mall" - 2nd song down on their MySpace music player

Corvette Car Phone Scam

Back in the 70's & 80's my parents got a lot of offers to tour retirement communities.  The lure wasn't just the promise of endless days of leisure and hot and cold running Geritol, but there was also the excitement of the elaborate and expensive prizes they'd won!  My folks weren't interested in living anywhere but their suburban bungalow home, but the prizes were intriguing enough to agree to these tours.

A particularly memorable prize was a "car phone".  Now try to remember that back in the day only Mannix and K.I.T.T. had car phones, so it sounded like a heck of a prize.  Hours of high pressure sales lectures later, my parents were presented with the above drek.  Unfortunately my father wasn't type of guy to say, "Ha ha... a car shaped phone.  Great, ya got me.  Now which of you should I talk with about punching in the face?"

Not ones to go through the tedium of learning from their mistakes, my parents were hoodwinked with similar "Let's Make A Deal" quality gag prizes a number of times.  The other one that leaps to mind is the "deluxe motor boat" which turned out to be a 6 foot long inflatable raft with a trolling motor that looked like it came off of a toy. 

Before you ask - yes, we still have the raft.  I'll use it when we win the opportunity to invest in real estate along a fragrant and thriving ecosystem... which will turn out to be a backed up sewage canal.

Zaxxon Board Game

When I wrote about video arcade game boards a few days ago, I was reminded of another kind of "arcade board"... "board game", really.  When video arcade games took off in the early 80's, traditional game manufacturers tried to cash in with non-electronic companions to some of the most popular games.

Zaxxon was one of the first video games with a 3D type perspective (actual 3D games were still some years away), a leap in video game realism.  This game's many pieces do sort of capture the spirit of the pseudo-3D original on a physical 2D playfield.

Like many tie-in type board games, there are no huge thrills here.  But if you're a huge video game fan, and your grandma doesn't have a Colecovision, then maybe a game like this can help you get through Thanksgiving weekend.

Rolex Oyster P.O.W. Watch On Auction

This isn't just the story of a watch, nor the tremendous money that this object will likely fetch at the upcoming auction of watches put on by Antiquorum Geneva on May 12th and 13th.  This is the story of a man and a war and how part of that emotional journey has been preserved in this timepiece.

During the second world war captured Allied soldiers found themselves in POW camps.  The owner of the above watch was a soldier called Clive Nutting, imprisoned at Stalag Luft III.  You may recognize the name of the camp thanks to the soldiers that famously broke out in 1944, and it was also the inspiration for the film "The Great Escape" in 1962.

Along with other imprisoned soldiers, Nutting did work for the Germans, earned a wage, and had a unique opportunity to buy Rolex watches like the one above.  During the war, Swiss Rolex found themselves cut off from their primary markets by the Axis presence on all sides.  Yet Rolex was able to find willing customers among the Allied POW's that could afford their precision timepieces. 

In an act of confidence, they offered American soldiers remarkable prices and payment terms... even going so far as to say that they "must not even think of settlement" of accounts until after the war.  Buy now, pay when the world flew the white flag.  Rolex continued to find such "captive" markets, hoping for a booming business for themselves once peace finally came.

The black faced Rolex pictured above is rare enough on its own, and the care that Clive Nutting showed for his precious watch shows.  He also kept all the paper work, related newspaper clippings, his own unpublished illustrations and cartoons from his time in the camp, even correspondence between Nutting and the head of Rolex himself.  Auctioneers love that kind of extra material to give an item "provenance" and boost bidding, but this collection is more than that.  Together, this collection recreates a fascinating snapshot of a part of WWII that we seldom hear about. 

The auction house is also offering another similar watch, with a similar history.  It's worth reading the full-length stories that I linked below to get all the details, and also check out the great pictures.  It's amazing to see how a wrist timepiece can become more of a mini time machine. [thanks for the tip, Michael!]

Part One of the story

Part Two of the tale

Tinplate Ten Dollar Dime Bank

These dime banks are shaped like stubby little cash registers.  It's an exclusive club for dimes only.  Inserting the first ten cent piece locks the rear door adamantly denying access to the loot inside.  But when you can hear the strains of the ice cream truck bell off in the distance, how can you get your money out?

When loading a dime into the Americana colored bank, a little switch levers the dime into the bank and advances the total displayed on the front.   Once the counter reaches ten dollars, the rear door slides open and you're off to the mercantile.  A cute device that teaches kids the value of saving, and has a much friendlier customer service policy than my real bank.

I thought it would take forever to collect ten smackers in dimes, but after being a little dilligent with my pocket change for a few weeks, I had enough bread to buy lunch - and enough left over to get some of those little paper sleeves for wrapping coins!  But hey - ten bucks is ten bucks.  Even though this bank dates back to the 50's or 60's, as a kid in the 70's I could have still had a lot of fun with $10.

How much money do you think a bank like this would need to hold to represent an impressive amount of cash to a kid today?

Word of a dime conspiracy

My Favorite Bakelite Antenna

I've had this antenna for a long time - it might be one of the first things I ever got from a thrift store when I was a kid.  It's got everything - coiled up springies, matte steel antennas, Bakelite base, and a multi-position Frankenstein switch.  This'll bake your noodle - I still use this for TV reception.

I've got a modern $30 powered antenna, and it doesn't do any better than this Flash Gordon pairing of Bakelite & tinplate that I got for a quarter.   The chicken-head switch (seriously - that's what they're called...) does help clean up the signal depending on the channel I'm watching. 

Not sure what it does inside, but I've had newer antennas where the switch didn't seem to do anything.  I guess that the reassuring clicks are there to let you feel like you've got a chance in hell of tuning in Star Trek where this antenna might appear as a prop!

Antennas are back in the HD age

Cathedral Radio Shaped Mantle Clock

If you've been reading our pages for any amount of time, you can see that we've got a thing for clocks, and we've got a thing for radios.  This darling has elements of both - and no... this isn't a ham-fisted segue to talk about a clock radio.

This is just a regular mantle clock, but it's shaped like a classic cathedral radio (or is the radio patterned after the clock?  Oh boy...).  No radio, no illumination.  Just the loud rattle of an old clock in need of some oil.  It's too noisy for me to use at this point but if I ever finally find a functioning cathedral radio someday, they're going to be brothers up on the shelf. 

The cool thing is that the swirly thing right above the six twirls like crazy.  A clock with a mini hypno disc?  Maybe if I waggle this in front of you by its cord I can hypnotize you to do my bidding?  Or would you just get mad and offer to "clean my clock" for me?

[editor's note: Sorry to our overseas friends who might not get the "clock cleaning" idiom. It's not dirty or nothin'...]

Retro Themed Lottery Cards

We've written about zombie brands before, old nameplates resuscitated to sell new product, but these lottery cards are just weird.  I see some sense in the Rubik's Cube ticket since the game involves numbers in a cube, but Betty Boop?  I guess that  Betty is still slapped on everything decades after she was last on screen, so I shouldn't be surprised.  I'm actually a huge Boop fan; I love anything from the Fleischer studios (creators of the Popeye cartoons) of that era. 

I guess that I'm being naive in wishing that the industry of low-rent gambling wouldn't choose one of my all-time favorite characters as a spokesmodel.  To anticipate your next question, no I didn't play the ticket.  I just didn't have faith that Betty's boop-oop-a-doop would net me more than the $5 it would cost to play.  Now maybe if the ticket featured Scrooge McDuck...

Classic Video Arcade Games JAMMA-In-A-Box

If you want to play your favorite classic video games without emulation, you'd have to buy the actual arcade cabinet with all of the original hardware.  A fervent dream for many of us, but really impractical for nearly as many.  Don't lose hope - I've learned that there is a vein of video game enthusiasts that collect the actual motherboards from arcade cabinets and play their favorite games using the original hardware.

JAMMA was an arcade motherboard standard from the mid 80's through the 90's.  By standardizing the hardware, an arcade owner could simply swap out motherboards and apply new graphics to the cabinet.  No more hauling around refrigerator-sized particleboard furniture.

Arcade In A Box offers JAMMA In A Box - a set of real arcade controllers with hookups for a JAMMA board inside, and video outputs to hook up to any television.  You can pick up original JAMMA boards on Ebay starting at around $40, install it in the JAMMA-In-A-Box, and play games on your TV at home.  This isn't emulation, this is 100% the arcade hardware experience.

I don't have a JAMMA-In A Box here to test out, but from online reviews it's sounds like an easy route to authentic play of your favorite arcade games.  Ed Farias, owner of Arcade In a Box, is a reader of Retro Thing.  He's offering our readers a $50 discount (we're not getting any money from this deal BTW - just passing the offer on to you...) if you order Jamma In A Box by the end of May.  All you have to do is use the discount code "RETROTHING".

Game on, mama JAMMA.  ;)

Manufacturers page on JAMMA-In-A-Box

Learn more about JAMMA boards

Cassette DJ's at Maker Faire

Even with advances in digital music, DJ's have never let vinyl records disappear entirely, bless them.  Now there's a chance for DJ's to tenaciously hang onto another disappearing format; the audio cassette.  Our friends at MAKE magazine are having their annual Maker Faire in San Francisco on May 19th with a cassette-only DJ competition from 1-6 pm.

Being MAKE, they are encouraging DJ's to bust their phat mylar beatz using hacked tape players, modded boom boxes and the like.  There are some rules over at the event's page for the competition including provisions that everything come solely from pre-recorded store bought cassettes - no warpy laptop manipulations simply dubbed to tape.

I just hope that among the tape-stretching and multi-track mayhem there's enough beat left over to dance to, and that by the grace of God someone brings along some dBx noise reduction.

MAKE page for the cassette DJ event

PDF Poster to help spread the word

Makerfaire main page