All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were all likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in August 1968. It shows some kind of event for kids. Previous sets have included photos from an Olympics style event and some kind of pageant so this is probably one of those.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (441-444)
Byte is one of the oldest computer magazines. In 1979 it had already been around for several years and the original IBM PC was still a few years away. Yet there were still plenty of 'small systems' to cover. The August 1979 issue includes:
Byte: The Small Systems Journal (August 1979)
At one time there were a variety of software products on the market for teaching you how to type. I’m not sure what that market is like today but in 1984 The Wizard of Id’s WizType by Sierra was one of the better such products out there. It was available for many of the computers available at the type including the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit line, DOS and Apple II.
Like most software of its type, WizType offered various options including practice, a game and testing. The most interesting in the options in WizType were probably the game, own lesson, and paragraphs.
The game, along with the theme for all the other sections, was based on The Wizard of Id comic strip. In the game, typing accurately and quickly enough caused the Wizard to zap the spirit from the well. Too slow or inaccurate and the spirit eventually turns into a dragon and breathes fire on the wizard.
The ‘Own Lesson’ option allowed you to enter words or letter combinations for you to practice. This was useful if you had difficulty with something in particular or were just tired of the provided content.
Paragraphs provided paragraphs out of various literary works (Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities for example) for you to practice on. It also allowed you to enter and store your own paragraphs for practice. This feature is what really gave WizType longevity.
All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were all likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in January 1969. These kids appear to be working on making Christmas decorations so this was probably taken in December 1968.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (437-440)
The Pentium 4 wasn't the greatest CPU for a laptop. It used a lot of power which isn't great for either portability or battery life. Nevertheless, there was a brief period of time where the Pentium 4 was the only choice if you wanted a high performance laptop. This meant you were out of luck if you wanted something thin and light but not so bad if you were looking for a desktop replacement.
In the dark ages, before always on high-speed broadband internet connections, people used devices like these to reach out to other machines. Of course in 1989, the year of this ad, there was no Internet to speak of. At least not one that was publicly accessible for most people. However, there were still ways to communicate with the digital world.
From the early 1980s through the early 1990s using dial-up via a modem like the one pictured above to call a local BBS was the way to go about it if you had the right equipment. While you were only connecting to a single machine with your modem, a BBS would provide files to download (freeware/shareware games, apps, etc.), games to play (usually turn based and against other players who would take their turn when they dialed in) and message areas. Many BBSes made use of FidoNet which was a networked messaging system like Usenet in many ways. BBSes that were part of FidoNet would exchange messages and thereby allow you to communicate with people all over the world.
Modems progressed through various speeds throughout the years. In the BBS era these speeds progressed from as low as 300bps (bits per second) to as high as 56kbps. However, one of the longest lasting speeds was 2400bps which is what the SupraModem 2400 provided. Modems providing these speeds were introduced in the late 1980s and were common through the early 1990s. Though faster modems were becoming available at reasonable prices, my first modem was a second hand 2400bps modem for my 486 based computer in 1993. By 1994 I had a 14.4kbps modem which was pretty new at the time but price wars were rapidly driving down modem costs by this point. 9600bps modems were available earlier but they were expensive and by the time the protocol was standardized, work was nearly complete on a standard for 14.4kbps modems.
Supra was known for producing decent modems at a good price. An external model like the one pictured above would work with just about any computer available at the time with the right interface cable (Amiga, Commodore 64, PC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, TRS-80, etc.) and with the right software you could communicate with a BBS running on any type of hardware. I had an internal modem for my 486 based PC that fit into one of the ISA slots because it was cheaper but external modems offered more flexibility (e.g. I couldn’t use my internal modem with anything other than a PC).
The above ad is from the October 1989 issue of Compute!’s Amiga Resource.
PC Clones was a short-lived spin-off of Computer Shopper. I'm not sure what the point was as Computer Shopper already covered PC related stuff. I guess maybe they were trying to publish a more normal sized magazine vs. the phone book sized monstrosity that Computer Shopper was. The premiere issue from 1987 includes:
PC Clones - Premiere Issue - 1987
All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and all were likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The last photo was processed in February 1968. This photo appears to have been taken on Christmas as I see decorations and presents being opened so this was probably Christmas 1967.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (433-436)
Most of the photos in this set are probably from the late 1960s and early 1970s. All except one were probably taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo is undated and unlabeled. It shows a kids baseball game. This looks like it could be either the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (429-432)/a>
Computer Gamer is a computer gaming magazine that was published in the U.K. in the 1980s. It covered gaming on home computers that were popular there. Some of which were not familiar to us in North America (like the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC) and some were (like the Commodore 64). the May 1986 issue includes:
Computer Gamer (May 1986)
The photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and they were all likely taken in the Lansing Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in December 1968 and was taken at a senior citizen Christmas dance.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (425-428)
If you were a PC user in the 1980s and 1990s and wanted a good PC specific magazine, it was hard to go wrong with PC World. The October 1990 issue includes:
PC World (October 1990)
All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s. All were likely taken in the Lansing Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in November 1967 and is labeled 'Senior Thanksgiving Dinner'. 'Senior' in this case referring to those 55 and older, not seniors in high school. This was probably taken in a community center in Lansing, Michigan.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (421-424)
Antic was one of the most popular Atari 8-bit magazines. While primarily covering the Atari 8-bit, it also covered the 16-bit Atari ST once it came along. The January 1985 issue includes:
Antic: The Atari Resource (January 1985)All of the photos in this set were taken in the early 1970s. All were likely taken in the Lansing Michigan area.
The first photo was taken in January 1973 and is labeled 'Grandma'. It looks like it was her birthday based on all of the cards on the table.
Mindshadow was first released in 1984 and is essentially and illustrated text adventure game. The text adventure genre is perhaps best illustrated by Infocom and the Zork series. Adding illustrations was basically the next step in the evolutionary development of these games. This game was developed by Interplay and published by Activision.
Mindshadow (Activision/Interplay
Most of the photos in this set are not labeled or dated but it looks like that range from as early as the 1960s to as late as 1980. These were all probably taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo features a girls softball game. This is probably from the late 1960s or 1970s.
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (413-416)
This post includes the contents of INFIDELI.DOC. This file is dated September 2nd, 1985 and is in a subdirectory called TELEPSYC
Digital Archaeology: Floppy Disk #14 – INFIDELI.DOC
The photos in this set were all taken in the early 1960s and they were probably all taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.
The first photo was processed in May 1963 and was presumably taken at a golf course since it features a bunch of signs with golf rules. $2 for 18 holes doesn't seem bad...
Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (409-412)
I posted previously about "demakes" on the Atari 2600 which are basically just clones of newer games on an older system. There can be a fine line as to what is legal and not, particularly when selling such products. But then there are those who just don't give a crap.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy was released officially on various home platforms in 1996 and 1997 but these were 32-bit releases on the PlayStation, Saturn, Nintendo 64 and DOS/Windows. There were no official releases on older platforms. However, that didn't stop Cony Soft from developing an unlicensed bootleg version for the original Nintendo in 1998.
Cony Soft, a Hong Kong based company that went by a variety of other names made a number of bootleg games for the NES from 1993 through at least 1998. Most of them were fighting games. I suppose there must have been some demand for them somewhere at some point but it's hard to imagine that they are very good. Though I suppose given the limits of the system, Mortal Kombat doesn't look half bad on the NES.
By 1993, PC World was pretty ubiquitous. You could find it in grocery stores, book stores, etc. It was probably the most popular magazine dedicated to PC compatible computers. I bought my first PC in 1993 several months after this issue hit the stands. The February 1993 issue of PC World includes:
PC World (February 1993)