The Dell Latitude D531 is an AMD based laptop. The Latitude was Dell's business line of computers. Recently, they've changed their naming schemes to be much more generic as if to obfuscate things. The vast majority, even at this time, were Intel based. However, the D531 was released as a budget model.
Digital Archaeology: Dell Latitude D531
All of the photos in this set were processed in August 1979 and it looks like they were all taken the same day. These show some people out on a lake waterskiing probably somewhere in Michigan.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (201-204)
Micro Adventurer is a 1980s era computer gaming magazine that emphasized adventure games, simulations, and war games. The March 1985 issue includes:
Micro Adventurer (March 1985)
Etrian Odyssey was the first in a fairly long running series of role playing games for Nintendo's handhelds. Etrian Odyssey was released in early 2007 by Atlus for the Nintendo DS. The game is completely turn based and can be compared to classic, primarily computer based RPGs like Wizardry and Bard's Tale (though with better graphics).
Etrian Odyssey even requires you to do your own mapping but does allows you to do so with the stylus and lower screen of the DS. It even provides a variety of ready made symbols for your use so it isn't quite like the graph paper days of old. Etrian Odyssey provides a lot of dungeon crawling for you to enjoy if you like that sort of thing. It allows a party of five characters of various classes and you can swap out with other characters when you are taking a break from dungeon exploration back in the town at the guild hall. As is typical with RPGs your characters will advance levels when enough experience is gained. When this happens you can allocate skill points to specific skills.
The pace can be slow, the difficulty relatively high and the story is somewhat lacking but fans of old school RPGs should love this one nonetheless. It received mostly positive reviews and sold reasonably well for a game of its type. Unfortunately, prices tend to be pretty high for this one on eBay today, particularly for a complete copy.
There have been a number of sequels and remakes as part of this series. Sequels include Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth and the upcoming Etrian Odyssey X. In addition, the first couple of games have been remade. The original game was mostly remade as Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl and released in 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS. There have also been a couple of spin-offs: Etrian Mystery Dungeon and Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2.
If you try the first game in the series and are a fan then you have plenty to look forward to though the game system does tend to change-up some between iterations.
All of the photos in this set were processed in August 1974 and were probably taken in the Lansing, Michigan area around that time.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (198-200)
Computer Gaming World was the best computer gaming magazine for the years it was around (which was quite a few). It covered games on a variety of computers over the years, not just IBM PC Compatibles. It eventually became Games for Windows and though the content was much the same, it didn't survive for long in that form. The March 1991 issue of Computer Gaming World includes:
All of the photos in this set were taken between 1967 and 1974.The first photo was processed in August 1970 and is labeled Girls Golf. It shows a girl practicing her swing. This was probably somewhere in the Lansing, Michigan area.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (194-197)
Byte was really meant more for computer hobbyists than just your average user. As such, it tended to have more technical content though it had plenty of typical reviews and other coverage as well. The July 1986 issue includes:
Source: Byte (July 1986)
This expedition is a search through the boneyard of my very first PC. And by PC, I really mean DOS/Windows/X86 compatible computer since my first computer was a Commodore 64. This was the first computer I ever bought myself and I spent most of my summer earnings on this thing the summer before I went to college. It was a whopping $3000 (really more like $2995 plus somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 for shipping). But for this massive sum you got what was a massively powerful computer for the day (we are talking Summer 1993 here).
As you can see, the highlights include a 66MHz 486DX2 processor, a whopping 16MB of RAM plus 256k of cache, a CD-ROM drive (single speed) and a VESA Local Bus video card. It looked just like this except the CD-ROM drive in mine (a Philips model) had a manually operated tray:
By comparison, in my dorm area my first year of college, three out of five people came with a computer including myself. One person came with a 386DX-40 with 2 or 4 MB of RAM and my roomate came with a 486DX-33 with 4 MB of RAM (later upgraded to 8 MB I think). I had bragging rights for a couple of years until someone I knew bought a 133 MHz Pentium.
This computer was used to call a lot of BBSes, play a lot of DOOM, DOOM 2 and the first couple of X-Wing games. It was also used to play Hexen, NASCAR, Rebel Assault (one of the first CD-ROM based games for PCs) and no doubt many others that I am forgetting. This was the first computer I used to access the Internet (via a local freenet and a university shell account with a SLIP emulator). At first it was largely usenet and text based web browsing but later graphical web browsing. This computer was also responsible for me meeting my first serious girlfriend (a blessing and a curse) via Talk on my university account. I even did a little school work with it.
Paradoxically, at the time BBSes were probably near their peak but also on their way out as the Internet was just becoming popular. It's a shame because they were a lot of fun and while the Internet certainly has more of everything it has never managed to recreate that type of environment. I played tons of Legend of the Red Dragon, downloaded tons of stuff much of which I never used, and participated in FIDONET and local message discussions galore. One BBS even hosted a DOOM or DOOM 2 ladder tournament (basically you would challenge anybody you wanted and if you beat them you took over their position on the ladder).
This machine did not come with either a modem or a sound card but by Christmas I had both a Sound Blaster 16 ASP and a second hand 2400 bps modem. The modem was upgraded on a regular basis from 2400 to 14400 to 28800 to 33600 and finally to 56K (USR X2 and then the final standard). Sometimes an upgrade meant a new modem, sometimes a ROM chip swap and sometimes a ROM flash. For a time when USR and Hayes had competing standards dial-up could be frustratingly buggy or incompatible depending on what you were connecting to but that's another story. Other than those things, I never really upgraded anything on this machine. I contemplated upgrading to 32 MB RAM but that meant I had to disable the motherboard cache (which was important for speed at that time) or getting one of those fancy Pentium Overdrive chips but it was never really cost effective. This was my primary machine from August 1993 until December 1997 when I got a brand new Pentium II-300 (also from gateway) and this one was given to my parents (sans the original monitor which had recently died). I got it back several years later but it was stored in the garage for a while and eventually tossed except for a few parts I held on to:
This, of course, is the brain of the machine. Not sure why I kept it but here it is. Maybe I'll put together another 486 machine for nostalgia's sake one day. It only ran at 66 MHz and that was a clock doubling of the system bus which ran at 33 MHz. But it was the fastest thing available at the time.
While the package size of desktop CPUs has not changed too much over the years, the size of the core, the number of transistors packed into it, and the number of pins have all changed drastically.
The one other piece I kept was the Sound Blaster 16 ASP card. The Sound Blaster 16 was THE sound card of the day. The Pro Audio Spectrum 16 was arguably better but not as well supported. The ASP version of the card added hardware compression among other things. I don't think ASP features were ever really used in games but it did allow you to do nifty things like record and playback lossless compressed .wav files. One other thing to note was that the CD-ROM interface was often on the sound card in the early days so I had to have the particular Sound Blaster card that had the appropriate interface for my Philips CD-ROM drive. Later CD-ROM drives were SCSI or IDE based like hard drives.
The photos in this set were takin in Michigan between 1957 and 1967.The first photo is undated but shows the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan under construction. This bridge opened in November 1957 so this was probably some time earlier in 1957.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (190-193)
Byte, subtitled 'The Small Systems Journal', was around for the birth of personal computing. It was still covering a wide variety of systems in 1984. The March 1984 issue includes:
Source: Byte (March 1984)
The photos in this set range from 1957 to 1967 and I believe they were all taken in Michigan.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (186-189)
These photos are all likely from the 1960s to early 1970s.The first photo features someone who has just graduated high school with probably his grandmother.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (182-185)
