Today is the 24th of July 2010, and that can only mean one thing – the 25th birthday of the Commodore Amiga. Launched on this day in 1985, this Motorola 68000 powered beast helped popularise home computing in the 80s and early 90s, and like its predecessor the C64, helped bring affordable computing power to the masses.

The machine even had its own set of fanboys back in its day, constantly at war with owners of the far superior Atari ST line of computers. But let’s put all that aside today and celebrate the Amiga for what it is – an important piece of computing history in those exciting early days, before everything became just Mac vs. PC.

Twitter is everywhere these days … Everyone’s jumping on the tweetin’ bandwagon, including the best website in the whole world. So it’s not surprising that retro computer enthusiasts would also want to get in on the action, and now C64 owners can do just that using the excellent bit of software you see pictured above.

BREADBOX64 runs in an emulator, and will even work just fine on a regular ol’ 64 with some suitable nbetworking hardware. It allows Twitter users to sign in using their own account and even post status updates directly from their very own little biege plastic box.

Also, like all the best things in life, BREADBOX64 is free! Go download it here.

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When it comes to the early days of home computing, a lot of people seem to focus on the American side of things, with the likes of Apple, Commodore, and Atari featured prominently. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – these companies helped change the world of computing forever. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that, over here in Britain in the early ’80s, our very own computer revolution was happening thanks to the likes of homegrown companies like Sinclair, Acorn, and Amstrad.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there were plenty of others, and let’s not forget the software and games companies that helped push these machines into people’s homes, but I like to think that these “big three” epitomise everythign that was great about those early British home computer pioneers.

So, let’s begin with probably the best-known of the bunch, shall we?

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I have a rather sad looking collection of yellowing old computers tucked away. An Atari ST, an Electron, a 486 gaming PC, and even a couple of old Macs. Trouble is, the yellowing is damn near impossible to remove, being as it’s the result of a chemical reaction (the flame retardant in the ABS plastic) and not dirt as commonly believed.

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Chances are, you’re reading this on a “PC”. A few years ago this meant a Windows-based system, but anything that uses the x86 architecture is technically an “IBM Compatible PC”, including those Linux-based netbooks and even modern Intel Macs. But do you know where the “PC” designation actually comes from?

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Today we all take MP3 players for granted. iPods are ubiquitous, mobile phones can play the format, even most new car stereos support MP3 right off the showroom floor. But it wasn’t always like this – Back in 1998, highly illegal sites like Audiofind were giving away artist’s songs quite openly and completely for free in pretty poor-sounding 112 and 128KBps MP3 format, and we were downloading them with our 56K modems – often taking up to half an hour a time.

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This is either the latest in the mounting pile of evidence that I am indeed turning into a crazy cat lady, or just another example of how I love anything Atari-related. I’m not sure which is worse, so I’ll leave it to TTB’s readers to decide.

Click the image to go to a much bigger uncropped version. The picture was taken in 1987 by Flickr user sniktaWP.

Satta van Daal is a German street artist living in Melbourne, Australia. While he’s not out stencilling people’s rubbish, he’s working on his next big project – an art installation known as iPaint myMac, and as you can see from the pictures, this guy’s work is pretty damn impressive.

Above we have a Mac Plus painted up to look like the classic Happy Mac startup icon, and below there’s an Apple LC II stencilled with the iconic image of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs working on the first Apple computer in 1976. Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend, members of the Cincinatti Commodore Computer Club had something a little special to unveil at their 2008 C4 expo: an 8-player multiplayer game called NetRacer, which makes use of some of the modern ethernet cartridges available for these awesome retro machines.

What makes this special is that NetRacer is the first network-enabled game for the C64 which includes realtime support (an earlier game, Artillery Duel, was turn-based), up to 8 players, and even internet gaming. Whoever said that the C64 was dead?

There’s a gallery of pictures from the event here, and the official C4 site is here.

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The games industry these days is a multi-million dollar business, ruled over by huge multinational corporatons such as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, as well as the third party games developers, and the entire PC gaming industry, of course. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that boffins were using their computers for more than just “serious business”, putting simple games together up to 20 years before the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari’s PONG hit the scene in 1972.

Let’s take a look at three of these early games, and explore what made them unique and important to the early videogames, and indeed computer, industries.

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“OXO” In An EDSAC Emulator For MacOS. Screen Outputs Are Top Left And Right.

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