A Cybiko ad spoofing stereotypical Japanese zaniness.

The Cybiko was a bizarre handheld device of mixed lineage: I’d call it 1/3 game console and 2/3 handheld PC. It sought to be a PDA for kids, so it incorporated both gaming and organizer software. It also included a very novel feature at the time: wireless connectivity. Cybiko units could send each other text-based messages, share software, and play games via a built-in radio transmitter.

Owners could hook up the Cybiko to their PC to download new software from the Internet. Cybiko, Inc. encouraged homebrew development for the machine in either C or CyBasic (a BASIC variant), which helped maintain popular interest in Cybiko for a few years longer than it would have otherwise.

Despite those efforts, Cybiko was never particularly successful. The company tried again with the Cybiko Xtreme in 2001. No such luck there either.

A Handful of Drawbacks

I picked up one of the original “Classic” models on clearance back in the day. Its biggest drawbacks were the dreadfully sluggish speed of the software interface, the heavily-ghosting greyscale LCD screen, and the bizarre layout of the buttons and directional pad on the unit. Oddly, the Cybiko included a pull-out stylus to help you press its tiny QWERTY keyboard buttons. Also, I remember it being very tricky to hook the Cybiko to your PC to get new software.

I later picked up a revision 2 Cybiko Classic with the MP3 Player add-on at a Hamfest. I never did much with the gadgets, though. Cybikos included a rechargable battery — I remember seeing one leaking already a few years ago. So if you have one, take out the battery before it ruins your unit.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever owned or used a Cybiko? What did you think about it?

Last night, PC World posted my latest history-flavored slideshow on their site. It’s a visual survey of dial-up modem history that they titled “Modems: 60 Years of Hooking Up.”

I wanted to go into more detail, but it was hard to find good quality pictures of old modems. That’s unsurprising because modems not devices that folks celebrate as often as, say, computers themselves. My personal book collection on modems came in handy, but the muddy black and white photos printed there are as clear as molasses.

(By the way, if anyone out there has photos of a Racal-Vadic VA3400 or a Bell 212A data set, please let me know. Those would come in handy for a more complete history of modems in the future.)

I didn’t go into more detail about non-dial-up modems (i.e. ISDN, DSL, Cable, wireless, or satellite) because you could fill a whole slideshow on the history of each of those separately, and I was already running a bit behind from trying to find photos of dial-up modems. But hey, the result should still be entertaining and informative.

I hope you enjoy it.

I Am Not Luke Skywalker

Back in the mid-1990s, Mark Hamill hosted a show called “.com” on CNBC. Few people remember it. I don’t think I’d heard of it until I stumbled across the ad scanned above a few months ago.

You may be able to eke out a few more details by digging through the show’s official website on the Internet Archive. That’s where I found this bio of Mark Hamill himself:

Mark Hamill is the host of the “.com” television series.

He also stars as Col. Christopher Blair in ORIGIN System’s award-winning interactive computer action series Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom. Mark is best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in one of the most popular and successful movie trilogy of all time, the Star Wars saga. Most recently, Hamill has been heard as the voice of the Joker in both the Batman animated television series and the theatrical animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

The Internet Archive is also where I found this photo of Mark Hamill hosting a show called “My Kids,” which was produced by the same company. I honestly don’t know any more than that.

This looks like a good job for the VC&G reader-sleuths to put together a more complete history of this long-forgotten TV show. Anyone up for the task?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you ever see the “.com” TV show while it was on the air? Tell us your memories of it.

25 years ago this month, Apple introduced the Macintosh Plus — a computer many consider to be the first truly usable Macintosh model. In honor of the anniversary, I asked myself to write a short article about it for Macworld. To my surprise, I complied with the request and the result is now up at Macworld.com. I hope I enjoy it.*

* Inside joke.

Explain the context of this image and I will grant you the power of flight. Hint: it has something to do with computers.

“Refresh Your Memory. And Keep Your Cool.”

I recently ran across this ad for the ICD FA-ST Atari ST hard drive system in a 1988 issue of STart magazine that my wife’s uncle gave me. He was quite an ST fan himself back in the day, and I was the lucky recipient of his ST collection last year.

According to an ICD catalog I have, the 20 megabyte model of this HD system (the FA20ST, seen here) retailed for US $699.95 in 1988 ($1,294.60 in 2010 dollars). The highest end model( FA52ST), which included two 50 megabyte drives, sold for $1649.95 (or $3,051.68 in 2010 dollars).

Those steep prices (common for all hard disks at the time), along with the small market size of Atari 16-bit owners in the US, made drives such as these quite rare. I’ve never seen one in the wild.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Do you own hard drive systems for any of your vintage, non-IBM PC compatible computers? Tell us about them.

It’s the Datalife Holiday Pack!

It’s Christmas morning, 1983. You eagerly run downstairs to the fireplace and notice a stocking stuffed to the brim with goodies. You dump it out and find ten boxes of Datalife 5.25″ floppy diskettes.

Choose your own Adventure:

a) You are happy because disks are expensive for a kid and you use a personal computer.

b) You’d rather have candy.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What did you get for Christmas this year? Any gadgets, games, or computer stuff?

A few days ago, PCMag.com published a slideshow of vintage Christmas graphics files that I put together. Some of those images were stills from animated GIFs. Below, you’ll find the full animated GIF files featured in the article and a whole lot more. Merry Christmas!

Prepare to be besparkled.

[ Continue reading Animated Christmas GIFs of Yore » ]

I’ve been collecting vintage Christmas GIF files for a while now, and I finally decided to put some of the best ones from the 256-color PC era together in a slideshow. You can check it out over at PCmag.com.

Please disregard the “Christmas Card” stuff they inserted in the title and introduction — I’m not sure why they did that. The images have nothing to do with Christmas cards (those paper things you mail to people). I guess it’s hard to concisely describe to the general public what exactly these images are and why someone would want to look at them. Also, the captions are to the upper right of each image. Hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas.

Update (12/21/2010): I just posted a bunch of animated Christmas GIFs, including those featured in this slideshow.

35 years ago this month, Steve Sasson and his crew at a Kodak laboratory in Rochester, NY tested the world’s first digital camera for the first time. The device only took 100×100 pixel photos, storing them on audio cassette tape.

Sounds like a good excuse to create a slideshow overview of digital camera history, doesn’t it? Mosey on over to PC World and check out what I put together — “35 Years of the Digital Camera.”