The Retrobits Podcast

Welcome to show #008! The star of today's show is the CP/M Operating System.

Topics and links discussed in the podcast...

E-mails came in from Thurstan, Alan, JagMod, Mike, Chuck and Ryan! Excellent, and fun reading! Thanks, the e-mails make my day.

Wikipedia has a great entry on CP/M, including technical info and some links. I am starting to use Wikipedia a lot. The "Unofficial" CP/M Web Site has lots of technical information, source code and resources for the CP/M operating system. Gaby's Homepage for CP/M and Computer History has a wide variety of info on CP/M, and lots of excellent links! The Computer Chronicles special on Gary Kildall is a must-see.

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

Welcome to show #007! Today's podcast focuses on making the connection between retro computers and modern-day PCs.

Topics and links discussed in the podcast...

E-mails came in from Alan, Ryan and Dave with Libsyn - thanks! Always great to get e-mails regarding the show.

The C64 Take Away Podcast is, in their words, "Your regular fix of Commodore 64 tunes, remixes, news and whatever takes our fancy. Produced and presented by Jan Lund Thomsen of Remix.Kwed.Org fame". Also check out the parent site, Slay Radio, for streaming retro remixes at various bandwidths. Juiced.GS is a quarterly Apple II publication. The X1541 series of cables connect Commodore computers and disk drives to the parallel port of a standard PC. The Apple Disk Transfer program lets you take Apple disk images, and using a serial cable and real Apple II, turn those images into real disks! Good old RS232 serial ports have been around forever, and can hook up the old and new with relative ease. Here's a site with lots of technical goodness on RS232. The 64HDD software package, both free and professional versions, allow you to turn a DOS-based PC into a floppy and hard drive emulator for Commodore computers. The Star Commander is a DOS shell program that can handle C64 disk formats, and permits copying of files and disk images to a Commodore drive connected with one of the X cables. The SIO2PC cable connects Atari computers to a PC. The PC can emulate storage, printers, and more. The Catweasel series of disk controllers are used in modern PCs, and can make your 3.5 and 5.25 drives capable of reading and writing foreign disk formats for retro computer systems. Information on various Catweasel models is available at the Individual Computers site.

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

This is show #006! Today's podcast focuses on the Commodore 128 computer, a wonderful example of advanced 8-bit technology.

As always, here are the links discussed in the podcast...

The Lamp and other Apple II publications are available at A2Central. The parent site is definitely worth checking out as well! Want to see great pictures of retro computers, including many international models? Have a look at the Home Computer Museum. Do a Google search for the C64 DTV - a cute little joystick with the brains of a Commodore 64! You can purchase GEOS and related applications at the cmdrkey.com website. They sell hardware and software for Commodore systems, including the CMD line of peripherals. The commodore.ca site has a great page on the Commodore 128. Find out about the C65, an 8-bit that never saw daylight (except in prototypes) at the Secret Weapons of Commodore. Good pictures and good information can be found at the Old Computers page for the C128. VICE emulates the C128 (and many other Commodore systems).

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

This is show #005! Thanks for sticking around - hope you enjoy the program.

In addition to covering your e-mails and some interesting links, this show discusses a couple of my favorite (even older than show #003) computer languages, Fortran and COBOL. If you'd like to dust off your old programs and give them a whirl, have a look at the links below!

Braeburn provides articles about the history of computing and technology in general. They have a recent article on the history of the Apple Lisa. The Replica I, a replica of the original Apple I computer! The Retrocomputing 2005 challenge - test your retrocomputing abilities... DOSBox is an environment to run older DOS games (and other programs) on modern systems and operating systems. Tiny COBOL is a modern COBOL compiler that is open-source. Salford FTN95 is a modern Fortran 95 compiler for Windows (with .NET support!).

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

Show #4 - We're on a roll...

This episode of the Retrobits Podcast is a grab bag. There are several things I wanted to talk about, none of which would make up a central theme, so this show is "potpourri". Here are the URLs referenced in the show:

The Denial website/forum focuses on the VIC-20. Missed this one during the VIC-20 show (#001). Thanks to folks for pointing out this great resource! Computer Chronicles, a television program that ran from the 80s until the late nineties, is available for download and/or viewing at the archive.org website. It is really fun to watch these shows in our modern day context... BBSMates is a website dedicated to online bulletin board systems (BBSes). It has a searchable database of over 75,000 systems, from the 80s to modern day! Classic Gaming Expo is an event dedicated to "the people, systems and games of yesteryear". DigitalPress covers a wide spectrum of retro gaming. The UCSD P-System is a computing environment from days gone by. It's most famous component was the Pascal compiler. There was a reunion of some of the original folks that developed it, and they made videos, which are available for download and viewing. Fire In the Valley is a must-read book for those interested in the history of personal computing. I will do a full book review in a subsequent podcast. For now, if you've got some reading time to kill, run, don't walk, to buy this book. I have read it twice, and will be reading it again soon. You can get it on Amazon, among other places. Also coming soon, a book on the rise and fall of Commodore. I've noticed this book actively promoted in vintage computer settings, like the USENET groups. It's not out yet, expected to go to press pretty soon. Some impromptu reviews from some famous names in the Commodore fan realm have seen chapters, and they stated they like what they saw. Even though it's kind of pricey for a casual read, I'll probably get it, given my long-term interest in Commodore, and the lack of historical information about the company.

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

Happy to have you here for show #3!

This episode of the Retrobits Podcast focuses on a couple of popular languages from the 80s, and open-source languages in active development that carry on and extend the legacy of those languages. Here are some of the URLs referenced in the show:

The magazine New Scientist had a great article on vintage computing. Blake Patterson scribes the Byte Cellar Blog on retro computing. Interesting stuff, and a very well-decorated retro room! The Vintage Computer Festival is an international event that celebrates the history of computing. It's a show for retrocomputing! I'm hoping to go to the 8.0 event in November 2005. The Computer History Museum is home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world. Borland maintains a Museum where old version of the Turbo languages can be downloaded. The Free Pascal project carries on Turbo Pascal and Delphi compatible legacy today. The xHarbour project provides an extended xBase compiler.

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

Glad to have you back for show #2!

This episode of the Retrobits Podcast centers on the high-level view of vintage computing. We talk about why people like retrocomputing, and how folks participate in the hobby. Some specific websites and resources are discussed, and here is some follow-up information:

The Contiki OS is a full-fledged operating system, TCP/IP stack, and web browser designed for memory-constrained systems. It's an interesting look at the way people are stretching smaller/older technology. Google Groups is a cool place to become familiar with USENET, or Internet News. comp.sys.cbm, comp.sys.apple2, and comp.sys.atari.8bit are some of the groups I have been reading recently. Watch out - conversations can get a little, shall we say, colorful? But the info is truly great. The Vintage Computer Festival is an international event that celebrates the history of computing. It's a show for retrocomputing! I'm hoping to go to the 8.0 event in November 2005. The Atari Archives site is one of the places archiving and making available reference material from the vintage days. Mostly Atari, but some general purpose reading. It's a great site. You can Telnet to thecafe.dtdns.net, on port 8888, for Internet-based access to a real BBS! Many other such systems exist.

Be sure to send us any comments, questions or feedback to [email protected]

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Thanks for listening!

- Earl

Glad to have you aboard. This is the Blog entry for Show #001, our first effort! I hope you find the show interesting.

Here are some show notes:

This episode of the Retrobits Podcast focuses on the VIC-20 computer. The history, technology, and cultural backdrop of the computer is covered. In addition, several programs and websites are discussed. Here's a list of the websites referenced in the show:

The VIC-20 site at Old Computers dot Com (Site Home Page)Rick Melick's VIC-20 Tribute PageThe VIC-20 site at Wikipedia (Site Home Page)The VIC Tracker SynthesizerThe Star Commander software packageCommodore Key Dot Com (hardware)VICE (Commodore Emulator)

Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan

Please leave comments on this blog entry if you have any suggestions for the show, or if there's anything at all you'd like to let me know!

Thanks for reading, and listening...

- Earl