Steve Wozniak is known for many things, but did you know that in addition to co-founding Apple, he also invented the universal remote control?* In this podcast interview, I dig into that story and more as we talk about Woz’s personal history with Television.

Since October, I’ve been working on a new podcast called The Culture of Tech. It’s an interview show where I talk about the intersection of culture and technology — and the past, present, and future of tech — while intertwining my own original music into the mix.

My first show is here. The guest is Steve Wozniak talking about Television. I thought it would be fun to pick a unifying topic and discuss it throughout his career.

In this case, Woz’s love and knowledge of television both allowed him to design Apple’s first two signature products (the Apple I and Apple II), but also to later create a company called CL9 that pioneered universal remote controls with the CORE remote.

Coming up on episode 2 will be Richard Garriott (of Ultima fame) talking about the Virtues.

I’m still working on logos, artwork, etc, and the official Culture of Tech website. I also set up an official Culture of Tech Twitter feed.

Hope you enjoy the show. Please let me know what you think — your feedback is essential. And if you like what you hear, please consider supporting my work on Patreon.

*Engineers at GE also invented a universal remote control around the same time, and Woz’s product, which was much more powerful, hit the market two years later.

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Subscribe to The Culture of Tech Podcast on iTunes
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After promising this for years, it’s time to finally release the Prodigy Preservation Project’s reverse-engineering tools. They’re not much, and they’re written in Python, but this code is the means by which I’ve been extracting fossilized Prodigy pages from STAGE.DAT files for the past few years.

I have been delaying announcing their availability because I was hoping Jim Carpenter, the author of these tools (and my partner on the Prodigy Preservation Project) would have more time to add more functionality and documentation, but he has not made any changes to the code since late 2015.

Yeah, I know that was almost two years ago. I’m sorry — things move slowly in ProdigyLand.

So here it is, everybody. Have at it. I hope you can help us improve them.

https://github.com/jim02762/prodigy-classic-tools

Just let me know what you find, and I’ll add it to my Flickr galleries.

Since February, I’ve been appearing on episodes of Retronauts, a long-running retro gaming podcast traditionally hosted by Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey. Retronauts traces its origins to the now defunct 1UP.com, but it has moved along with Jeremy wherever he goes.

And that includes a move across the country: About five years ago, Jeremy relocated to sunny Raleigh, NC from San Francisco. After resigning from his editor-in-chief position at USGamer.net late last year, Jeremy decided to rely on Patreon to fund Retronauts as a full-time project.

There’s only one problem: Bob Mackey is still located on the west coast, and Jeremy can’t afford to fly out there every time he wants to record a show. So while Bob still creates episodes on the west coast, Jeremy started up a “Retronauts East” wing of the show featuring a local crew of regulars.

Fortunately, I am a Raleigh native, and I still live here. So the Retronauts East roster includes both myself and Ben Elgin, a Hillsborough, NC software engineer and a veteran of Jeremy’s Gamespite forums.

Since then I’ve been on five episodes (with another micro episode on the way), and it’s been a blast. Jeremy is a gin aficionado, and we typically drink a gin and tonic before or during the show, which is why you may hear high-resolution ice clinking in the background.

Here’s a run-down of the episodes I’ve appeared on so far:

Episode 87: Apple II Games
Episode 91: Early Sega Arcade Games
Episode 95: Early Batman Games
Micro 59: Atari Swordquest
Episode 98: Mac Gaming in the 1980s

There’s more to come. So stay tuned and enjoy.

Last week I was in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, and I had a blast. I need to write more about that soon.

On Friday, I took a day trip down to Mountain View to visit the Computer History Museum, which I had not been to since 2006.

Aside from not having visited since they opened their first major exhibit, I am friends with the senior curator, Dag Spicer, and it was great to finally meet him face to face. I also met up with Allan Alcorn (creator of Pong) there, and we wandered around enjoying the exhibits together. That too is a story for another day.

The CHM is a wonderful place, and the exhibits are top-notch. Just brilliant. No where else can you see the first mouse, the Pong prototype, the Atari 2600 prototype, the Community Memory machine, and so many more legendary artifacts.

I also love it because there are bits and pieces of my work scattered throughout the place.

[ Continue reading “Retro Scan” Enshrined at the Computer History Museum » ]

A very good existential question for these times

I seem to recall Alien 3 being a fairly well-received game for the Super NES. But I’m not sure I’ve ever played the Genesis version. In fact, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen the Alien 3 film, despite being a fan of the first two films in the Alien series.

So what do I know about this game? Nothing!

But I like the art in this advertisement. Its headline question very clearly conjures up how I feel these days about uncertainties in life, the economy, and politics.

Speaking of the economy, I recently started a Patreon campaign to fund my work on this site. In fact, everyone donating $10 or more a month on Patreon is getting access to a 600 DPI version of this scan (along with access to full research interviews used in future articles). At some point I hope to make available high-res versions of all the previous Retro Scans available to select patrons as well.

Discussion Topic: What’s the scariest classic video game you’ve ever played (let’s say pre-1997)?

Since 2013, I’ve been hosting a web-based recreation of the classic Prodigy online service game called “MadMaze” on the VC&G webserver.

(You can read the backstory about that here.)

The only problem with this “modern” version of the game, called MadMaze-II by its late author, Russell Brown, is that it only worked in Internet Explorer. This re-creation was developed in 2001 at a time when Internet Explorer was the browser of choice for many.

Well, thanks to the help of a web developer named Brandt Horrocks, the game now works in Chrome and Firefox. In Chrome, it seems to work nearly perfectly, although it does not support the sound effects Brown originally implemented in the game (yet). In Firefox, the game is playable, but the introduction renders slightly differently.

The game is still at its original VC&G address, https://www.vintagecomputing.com/madmaze/, so give it a shot and see what you think. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments here, and I will show them to Brandt, who may be able to do more bug fixes in the future.

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See Also:

Bringing Prodigy Back From The Dead: The Prodigy Restoration Project (2014)
MadMaze-II Now Hosted on Vintagecomputing.com (2013)
Prodigy Lives! Play MadMaze On the Web (2006)

Today’s the big day. I just launched a Patreon Campaign with the aim of supporting my history work.

Here’s some of the info from the Patreon page repeated below for future reference.

[ Continue reading VC&G Patreon Launches Today » ]

[ Update – 01/09/2016: I just launched my Patreon campaign this morning. You can see it here. ]

The Problem

Here I am. It’s 2017. I’ve been writing professionally for over a decade now, and I’m not going to lie: I don’t make much money. I support a family of four, health insurance keeps going up every year no matter what I make, and freelance budgets at publications are trending down. Competition is fierce.

What I’m trying to say is that my professional focus, as it stands now, is not sustainable in the long run. I can see the writing on the wall.

So I’m considering various options. One is a career change. But that is a hard trick to pull off. Maybe I could be a professional graphic designer, as I once was many years ago. I don’t have a degree, so getting a full-time job is tricky. Maybe I could run off and join the circus. Maybe I could run off and join Burger King.

[ Continue reading Need Feedback on a Potential Patreon Campaign » ]

“Santa left us Trash for Christmas, and we like it!”

Radio Shack always knew how to market at Christmas (see links below). In the 1970s and ’80s, the firm produced more Christmas-themed computer ads than any other company in the US.

Here’s one of the earliest ones from 1978. It features the company’s first personal computer, the TRS-80, which first launched in 1977. After other models of TRS-80 computer came out, Radio Shack began referring to it as the “Model I.”

But that wasn’t the only name this pioneering computer earned. The original TRS-80 was the first personal computer my dad ever bought, not long after it launched. He found it frustrating, sold it, and later bought an Atari 800 for my brother — then hand-built an Apple II clone for himself.

Thereafter, my dad always referred to that first TRS-80 as his “Trash-80,” which was a common nickname for the computer. It could double as a derogatory play on words or a beloved pet name, depending on whom you asked. For my dad, I suspect it was more of the former than the latter.

Discussion Topic: What’s the worst present you’ve ever received for Christmas?

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See Also:

A Very TRS-80 Christmas (RSOTW, 2006)
Hot CoCo (2) for Christmas (RSOTW, 2007)
Give The Gift of TRS (RSOTW, 2009)
Santa’s TRS-80 CoCo (RSOTW, 2014)

Some of you may recall that from 2002-2005, I ran a band/website called Request-A-Song.com. Well, since March of this year, I’ve been publishing music online again as part of a musical project I call Tech Songs.

Tech Songs, for me, is essentially a writing prompt for music — a concept that inspires me to write songs about a certain topic. In this case, the topic is the past, present, and future of technology. In some ways, I think of Tech Songs as an open-ended album about tech.

Today I am officially announcing the release of “Baked At Atari,” a lighthearted, ficticious song (but inspired by true events) about engineers at Atari in the mid-1970s. Atari fans amongst you will likely pick out several familiar names and references in the lyrics.

You can listen to the song on my SoundCloud page, or click on the embedded song below.

When you’re done listening, I’d love to hear some suggestions for new tech history song topics — just leave a comment, and I’ll see what I can cook up.

I plan to post future VC&G-related Tech Songs on this site, but you can also follow Benj’s Tech Songs on Twitter: @techsongs