Since the tenth anniversary of Retro Scan of the Week a couple weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the future of the column. I’ve received a lot of feedback from readers, and here’s what I’ve decided.

Looking through the “scan” folders on my computer, I realize that I still have a bunch of important scans that I’d like to share (there are actually hundreds already scanned but not published yet).

If I never post those scans, it’s unlikely that you will see them highlighted on the Internet any time soon. So from now on, I will switch from posting a new scan like clockwork every Monday (which I did for ten years, see above) to posting one whenever the mood strikes me, or perhaps when it ties in to current events.

“Retro Scan of the Week” will become “Retro Scan.”

I am also working on an exciting new feature for VC&G that can hopefully pick up where Retro Scan of the Week left off — at least in terms injecting new life into the site. So stay tuned. In the mean time, thanks for reading. I appreciate your support and your feedback.

On January 30th, 2006, I posted my first entry in the Retro Scan of the Week column: “When to Use Low Speed Modems.” Below that first scanned image, I wrote:

I found this amusing, so I thought I’d share it. More to come.

I was right about that last sentence. Since then, I’ve shared weekly scans on my blog 522 times — every Monday for 10 years.

Yep, Retro Scan of the Week just turned 10.

While it is not an achievement on-par with, say, building the pyramids, working at the same company for 50 years, or hosting a late-night talk show for decades, I am slightly overwhelmed when I try to consider the scope of this anniversary and what it actually means to me personally.

What I think it means is that I have been dedicated to preserving computer and video game history for an officially long time now (this blog itself turned ten last year). And I have always wanted to share it with others. Retro Scan of the Week has been a regular and effective way to achieve both goals.

For years, I have used the column as an opportunity to provide more than just images. When I could, I have attached personal commentary about the scans I’m showcasing because I hope it will give valuable context to future historians (assuming copies of my blog survive that long). Also, reader comments have been equally important in capturing the firsthand reactions to products and events over time.

Without that extra something that gives RSOTW its unique quality, I probably would have quit posting them years ago. But NOPE. 10 years.

The End of an Era?

On the occasion of this colulmn’s fifth anniversary, I wrote a retrospective that is worth reading if you are interested in learning some historical background on my Retro Scan of the Week column. (There’s also more about RSOTW in this interview from last year.)

That earlier anniversary — coming in a different era where blogs and scans were slightly more relevant — felt more meaningful somehow. At that point, I had done something for a long time (in blog years). Now I’ve done it twice as long. And honestly, not much has changed in five years, other than the fact that I finally upgraded to an 11″x17″ large format scanner last year — and that there are twice as many scans on this blog.

But now that I have reached this milestone, I think I might be winding down the column some time soon. While it wouldn’t be too hard to keep going for years on end, I think ten years is a nice emotional and philosophical cap to this project.

For now, I’ll mull it over. It’s a hard considering pulling the plug on something you’ve spent every Monday for ten years doing. But whatever happens, there will be a legacy left behind. At some point I plan to put all my high-res scans on the Internet Archive, for example. And RSOTW images still haunt Google Image Searches like nobody’s business. I keep running in to my own work when I’m trying to research something else.

Whatever happens, it has been a fun 10 years. Thanks for reading along with me as we have rediscovered the past together.

[ Continue reading One Scan Per Week for Ten Years » ]

It’s that time of year again: the Yuletide. Over the past few years, I’ve been posting an annual collection of all the Christmas-related tech material I’ve written (both for this site and for others) into one place for easy reading. Below, you’ll find list of off-site Christmas slideshows, other features, and of course, plenty of Retro Scans of the Week.

I have a soft spot for Christmas, having been raised with the tradition, so this list is for me as much as it is for everyone else. After going through these things again, it’s amazing to see how much Christmas stuff I’ve posted over the years. I hope you enjoy it.

[ Continue reading The VC&G Christmas Collection (2015 Edition) » ]

Today, PCWorld published the inaugural entry of my new column, This Old Tech. In the column, I will be writing about vintage gadgets, games, and computers — pretty much the same stuff I talk about on Vintage Computing and Gaming. So far, the plan is to publish a new piece every Friday.

For the first column, I talk about the first MS-DOS computer I ever learned to use, the Toshiba T1000 laptop. I still have the same machine from all those years ago, so aside from just waxing nostalgic, I also attempt to get it working again.

So spread the word — I am looking forward to exploring my personal tech history in this new column. I hope you enjoy it.

[ Earlier this year, I asked readers what they wanted to see on VC&G’s tenth anniversary. Most people said “behind the scenes coverage,” but I wasn’t sure how to approach that. So I asked my longtime editing partner Harry McCracken to interview me in the hopes that I might accidentally say something interesting about the history of the site. Happy Anniversary, VC&G readers. — Benj ]

I first met Benj Edwards back in 2007, when I worked at PC World magazine and he submitted an article — “The 10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time” — over the transom. (Actually, we didn’t meet in person until later, and his submission arrived in my inbox like any other email, but you get the idea.) Even then, I was already a fan of his Vintage Computing and Gaming website, which was then a couple of years old.

We ended up publishing Benj’s keyboard slideshow at PCWorld.com, where it became a monster hit with readers. Since then, Benj and I have continued our writer-editor relationship: first at Technologizer, and today at Fast Company, where I’m an editor and he’s a frequent contributor, writing deeply-reported pieces about fascinating topics which everyone else has forgotten about. He’s also contributed to The Atlantic, Macworld, PCMag, Wired, and other publications.

Benj has never stopped blogging at Vintage Computing and Gaming, which celebrates its tenth anniversary today. To commemorate the occasion, he asked me to interview him about the site, his other writings, and his pursuit of collectible tech products and the stories behind them. I learned a lot from his answers — and so will you.

–Harry McCracken

10 DAYS OF VINTAGE: Day 1

[ Continue reading VC&G Interview: Benj Edwards, Creator of Vintage Computing and Gaming » ]

Ten years ago today, I posted my first entry on Vintage Computing and Gaming. It was a long, rambling piece about my personal history with computers and video games.

Ten years later, I’m still rambling. It’s been fun.

Little did I know when I started this blog how long I would be doing this, and what it would lead to. These past ten years, I have been fortunate enough to meet or interview many of my childhood heroes. I have been able to contribute, in a positive way, to the world’s understanding of computer history. And I have scanned enough material to wrap around the…

Wait a minute. I’m getting a feeling of deja vu — like I’ve been in this exact position before. Same blog software and everything. Same familiar white form box starting at me with unflinching eyes, yellow JavaScript-enabled editing tags lined along the edges like they want to jump in and join the party.

Oh, that’s why. I just checked, and I have previously celebrated the anniversary of this site four times. Every time, I pretty much say the same thing over and over again: “Thanks, this is amazing.” Here’s the proof:

The History of Celebrating VC&G Anniversaries

• Vintage Computing and Gaming Turns One (2006)
• VC&G Turns Three (2008)
• VC&G: Still Here After Four Years (2009)
• Five Years of VC&G (2010)

There may be more secret VC&G anniversary celebrations hidden away within these ten years of posts for all I know. Either way, that’s a lot of celebrating. To put an end to this, I propose a five year moratorium on VC&G anniversary celebrations.

…Starting next year, of course. For now, I’ve got something special planned.

[ Continue reading Vintage Computing and Gaming Turns Ten: Announcing 10 Days of Vintage » ]

“I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT AN INVOICE”

Although Vintage Computing and Gaming turns 10 years old today, I actually registered the “vintagecomputing.com” domain name back on June 8, 2000. This is what Network Solutions sent to me in the mail. I was only 19 years old — now I’m 34. Time flies.

It wasn’t the first domain I’d ever registered, but it was an early one. I wanted to use vintagecomputing.com for an online computer museum that would show off my vintage computer and video game collection. I never got around to creating that.

Another project got in the way of all of those plans, and I ended up working on music at Request-A-Song.com instead until October 2005.

I finally put my vintagecomputing.com domain to good use — over five years later — when I decided to make a blog on that fateful day in November 2005.

Discussion Topic of the Week: What was the first domain name you ever registered?

It is no secret that Vintage Computing and Gaming is in its 10th year of publication (the site’s 10th anniversary is November 2nd of this year).

Ten years is like a century on the Internet. Throughout these long 100 metaphorical years, I’ve done a lot of side work for features both on VC&G and in my offsite freelance features that have never been published before.

That is going to change. Today I’m announcing a new series on this blog called VC&G Anthology. It’s just a fancy way of saying “old stuff from my archives.”

To fuel the Anthology, I’ve dug up old interviews, outtakes, notes, and other writings from my history that have previously never appeared on VC&G or anywhere else.

Additionally, some of the upcoming Anthology material will come from my work on other publications that is no longer accessible. This will be one way to remedy the Web’s propensity to forget things when host sites go belly up or get URL-confused or database-addled in their old age.

So stay tuned — this should be fun.

I just looked at the calendar and realized that Vintage Computing and Gaming is turning 10 this year. I started this blog in November 2005.

I’m not quite ready to break out the party hats yet, but I’m wondering if you guys had any ideas of what I could (or should) do to celebrate this milestone.

I’ve considered possibly compiling some of the site material into a book of some kind, but I’m not sure how well any of the VC&G content will translate to book format. Of course, 99% of the posts on this site over the past 7-8 years have been Retro Scans, so maybe there isn’t much to celebrate. There are a lot of stories buried in there, however — maybe I could pull them out into some kind of collection (although I am loathe to be responsible for yet another crappy eBook or print-on-demand tech memoir).

So…any ideas? Contests? Retrospectives? Or just sit back and do business as usual? (Not a bad option.) I’m all ears!

[ Major Update: 4/12/2017 – Keep an eye on my Flickr account where I will be posting galleries of Prodigy screenshots and other artwork. ]

[ Major Update: 6/6/2017 – Our Prodigy Reception System reverse-engineering tools have been released. ]

[ Major Update: 1/15/2021 – Phillip Heller has begun reverse-engineering the Prodigy client. ]

[ Major Update: 8/6/2022 – I wrote the first new Prodigy content in 23 years. How is that possible? Phillip Heller has reverse-engineered the Prodigy Client/Server architecture, and you can connect yourself with Prodigy Reloaded! Prodigy Reloaded debuted at VCF West on August 6, 2022. Finally, the Prodigy Restoration Project is coming to life. ]

Since last year, I have been working with Jim Carpenter, a freelance programmer by trade, on hunting down old Prodigy data so that we may preserve it, display it again, and perhaps even one day use it to recreate Prodigy itself.

We’re calling it the Prodigy Preservation Project.

By now you may have seen my latest piece for The Atlantic entitled Where Online Services Go When They Die: Rebuilding Prodigy, One Page at a Time. That article describes the genesis of the project while also diving into the technical back story of the Prodigy service.

The reason we have any hope of doing something like this is because Carpenter discovered that Prodigy screen data can still be found in the STAGE.DAT and CACHE.DAT files located in used Prodigy client directories.

Those two files were used as cache files to speed up load times when using the service. When connecting to Prodigy, the client would download page data into the files. Whenever the client last connected to Prodigy, that data got frozen in time. If a vintage Prodigy client install still exists, we can get at the “frozen” data today.

Here are some screens that Carpenter pulled from a STAGE.DAT I had in my personal archives (these are from a STAGE.DAT file dated October 6, 1996):

We can extract these screens using a series of Python programs written by Carpenter. They read through a previously used STAGE.DAT file, generate a list of pointers to the pages or object data contained within, then direct the Prodigy Reception System client to display them one at a time so we can take screenshots.

Jim’s code is not ready for release yet, but he hopes to polish it up enough to put up on GitHub soon. It has a long way to go before becoming a turnkey solution to extracting and displaying the data found in STAGE.DAT files. We’re working on it.

With that in mind, I’ve written the rest of this post in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions.

[ Continue reading The Prodigy Preservation Project » ]