In 2006, I wrote about a version of the classic Prodigy game MadMaze that had been adapted for the web by Russell D. Brown, an electronics engineer based in Rome, New York.

Just today, a commenter on that original post (thanks Joshua) let me know that Russell Brown passed away last year on July 1st. That means his implementation of MadMaze-II is now offline.

(Please note that the original author of MadMaze, Greg Costikyan, is still alive and kicking as far as I know.)

Luckily for all of us, I asked Russel Brown back in 2011 to share his MadMaze-II code with me in case his version of the game ever went down. He complied, and I have just now set up a fresh copy of his adaptation on this web server at the following address: https://www.vintagecomputing.com/madmaze/.

The game still requires Internet Explorer 5 or up, and it seems to work in IE 9 for me. Brown programmed the game in such a way that obfuscated its function to prevent cheating (he even incorporated a copy protection scheme), so at the moment I have no idea how to successfully modify it if players find any bugs. But if you encounter any problems, please feel free to let me know, and I’ll have a look.

Have fun in the maze. And may Russell Brown rest in peace.

[ Update – 01/18/2017: Thanks to the work of Brandt Horrocks, MadMaze-II now works in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers. Read more about it here. ]

“There’s only one word for these prices: rip-off.”

Discussion Topic of the Week: Which was the better machine: the IBM PC AT, Atari 520ST, Mac 512K, or Amiga 1000?

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Have you ever seen an edible still life rendered in 16-color EGA?

It appears that this image, which shows fruits and vegetables, cheese, and a napkin or folded tablecloth, originated as either a video capture or a scan of a photograph that was then digitally cleaned up to isolate the centerpiece in absolute blackness.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Digital Still Life » ]

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This particular image, titled “Another Day at the Office,” is one of the gems of my personal GIF collection. I believe I downloaded it from CompuServe, and I likely downloaded it on the file date, June 16, 1996.

The image itself is a computer-crafted ode to Doom II that merges a real digitized photograph with imagery ripped straight from id Software’s famous first-person shooter.

Such a passion for Doom II in the workplace isn’t foreign to me. In an office where I worked in the mid-late 1990s, certain engineers were known to play late night four-player Doom deathmatches over the company LAN.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Doom II at the Office » ]

One big happy family — and a PowerBook (click to see entire ad)

It’s Black History Month once again in the US, so I thought it would be timely to share this Apple PowerBook advertisement from 1992.

The ad appeared in the February issue of Smithsonian Magazine; I don’t think it is a coincidence that it prominently featured people of African descent. It also prominently featured the PowerBook 100, which had just been introduced a few months prior in October 1991.

The obvious racial focus of this ad brings to my mind a couple of interesting, if racially-charged questions: What percentage of black Americans, historically, have used Apple products versus other computer brands? Do African Americans, like other demographic groups, have their computer or tech brands of choice?

Today, Apple is such a mainstream company that the answer to the first question is most certainly larger than it likely was in the pre-iPod era. It would be interesting from a cultural standpoint to peek back into private demographic customer studies that Apple no doubt commissioned at various points in its history.

As for an answer to the second question, I have no idea. But I would love to hear from African American computer users to find out.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite PowerBook model?

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This week we’re taking a look at another image that made the rounds in the BBS days, DRAGON6.GIF. In it, we see two digitally illustrated Chinese dragons who appear to be springing forth from a magical stone. Iridescent waves crash around them, and smoke curls throughout an ethereal void. The color palette is rich and bold, underscoring the image’s Eastern art influence.

At the moment, the artist behind this amazing work of digital art remains unknown. Still, we can narrow down when the image was made and how by taking a look at its resolution, color depth, and file date.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Twin Chinese Dragons » ]

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I’ve always thought of VC&G as sort of a family friendly blog, so I don’t plan on delving into adult GIFs any time soon. But we might as well talk about bikini photos, because they were some of the most heavily traded GIF images in the BBS days. They provided culturally acceptable PG- or PG-13-level titillation, and male teenagers (arguably the primary users of BBS systems in many areas) flocked to them.

Just recently, I searched my GIF archives for the oldest GIF format bikini photo I could find. I came up with this image of Cheryl Tiegs in a file dated October 29th, 1987, which is only four months after the June 15, 1987 publication date of the first GIF specification (GIF87a, for those keeping track).

The image itself is derived from a photo taken by Walter Iooss Jr. for the 1978 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. The sharpness of the image suggests to me that it was scanned (vs. video captured), either with a flatbed or handheld color scanner, and likely from that issue itself.

I don’t know who scanned it. It could have been Jim Maxey, who originated many GIF files in the format’s early days, but since the image isn’t tagged with his BBS information, I doubt it. Maxey also tended to work with video capture boards verses scanners at that time.

Regardless of who created this image, it’s a nice, relatively tame example of 16-color EGA bikini art. Upon viewing it, you can almost feel its 1970s girl-next-door wholesomeness flowing out of your computer screen. And that’s despite her see-through fishnet bathing suit, which was scandalous in 1978.

(Note that Tiegs’ name is misspelled in the file name as “TEIGS”)

Thirty-five thousand years ago, when massive beasts still roamed the earth, an early modern human carved the figure of a sexually robust woman into a piece of woolly mammoth tusk, creating the earliest known figurative artwork. During a time of almost certain hardship and scarcity, when acquiring that tusk involved slaying an animal 100 times one’s weight, the artist devoted countless hours to create a sculpture that idolized nothing less than sex itself.

35 millennia later, during a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government defense budget to finance it, a late modern human utilized a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a sexually robust woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and its creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now.

You can read the full story I wrote about this landmark piece of digital art over at The Atlantic. I’d like to personally thank Lawrence Tipton, Robert Martina, and all of the SAGE veterans who helped me research this piece.

Since my last update on the articles I’ve written for Macworld in November, I’ve written at least a handful more vintage-related stories for the publication that I haven’t mentioned on this blog. To remedy that, I thought I’d share them below in convenient digest form.

• 12-21-2012 – The Forgotten eMate 300 — 15 Years Later
• 12-28-2012 – How to Make a Mac Plus Clock
• 01-11-2013 – Apple Knockoffs Through the Years
• 01-18-2013 – 30 Years of the Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe

The Mac Plus Clock piece is particularly fun, and I think VC&G fans will really enjoy it.

APPLE’S BOLD NEW COMPUTERS IN ALL-CAPS

Thirty years ago last Saturday (January 19th, 1983), Apple announced two new computers: the Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe.

Ultimately, the Apple Lisa met an early end, leaving behind technology that shaped the entire industry. The Apple IIe remained a reliable breadwinner during uncertain times in the early life of the Macintosh and remained the flagship member of Apple’s popular 8-bit computer line until it ended in 1993.

Here’s the cover of the March 1983 issue of Popular Computing which featured Apple’s two new machines. It has always been one of my favorite vintage computer magazine covers.

By the way, I recently wrote an article about this anniversary for Macworld in case you’re interested.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever used an Apple Lisa? What did you think about it?