string can phone

Ye Olde House of Boinge nudged me awake and shoved me in the direction of the Virtual Apple ][ Online disk archive, a nice little enclave warehousing over 1,100 “disk images” of vintage Apple ][ software. According to the proprietors,
ActiveGS by Olivier Goguel (FTA and Second Sight Software) is an ActiveX port of the Kegs Apple IIgs emulator originally written by Kent Dickey. Thanks to their wonderful work, anyone can now easily access and relive a golden era of computer history and Apple II forever!

It sounds swell! If only they had the “Flying Walloons.”

Those effervescent boffins at MetaFilter have directed us to a minimal listing of Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present. The document glosses that is not intended to be an exhaustive compilation of microprocessors, but rather a description of designs that are either unique (such as the RCA 1802, Acorn ARM, or INMOS Transputer), or representative designs typical of the period (such as the 6502 or 8080, 68000, and R2000).

String Can Phone is satisfied with this effort.

A MetaFilter thread on an Old Computer Ad [for] The Exidy Sorcerer is generating some interesting reminiscences, and not a few misconceptions.

Fortunately, somebody did point out that those are not 8-track tapes.

:::sigh::: Kids these days….

The wee folk at Chez le Boinge have directed us to the PocketBeeb a BBC ‘B’ emulator for the GBA. According to Old-Computers.com,

[i]n 1985, the Acorn BBC Model B+ was released. The Model B+ had new features : 64k of RAM instead of 32 KB, internal circuitry for the Econet and Disk Drive as standard, they were both available as an upgrade in the models A and B. The later models included disk support as standard, using either a 8271 or 1770 disk controller.

The RCA Nostalgic Stereo is available for purchase from that discount retailer, Nieman-Marcus.

Our brief, daily perusal of Gizmodo alerted us to this new model from RCA. We are not entirely sure what we think of it, but we note the Ornamental metal horn and hand crank with sadness at their delegation to ornamentation. We note with some joy that we can play our 78s upon this device, even though we are unaware of any 78-RPM records available in stereo.

Eclectisaurus is the business nom de plume of Leslie Zysman, who sells all manner of antique and vintage items through eBay and on her site. Though many of her best items are long lost to capitalism, she has blessedly preserved pictures of all of her past wares, going to far as to set aside portions of her site as nicely-photographed radio and typewriter museums. Perhaps best of all, she has set up an audio stream so one can listen to bygone jazz and big band music whilst browsing.

Once again, bOINGbOING has contributed to the betterment of mankind by pointing the way to The postcards of the Keown-Boyd Family. One Mr. Sent of London has procured a wonderous assembly of one family’s postcard correspondence from the years 1898 to 1922, and is sharing them with the world via his “fotoblog”.

Though we are unfamiliar with these so-called “fotoblogs” (or why the word should be spelt so poorly), we thank Mr. Sent for utilizing the moderne to preserve these lovely artifacts.