Awesome Retro

Do you keep all your computer icons sitting out on your desktop? Does Netscape Navigator no longer spark joy? Go back in time to the 1990s for some advice on how to tidy things up, Marie Kondo style, with a little help from the folks at Squirrel Monkey.

The original Bulova Computron LED watch was released in the 70’s and has since become a collector’s item. Bulova is re-releasing the model this fall 2019 with a couple of upgrades, such as a dual-time feature. It will come in gold, silver, or black.

This little gem dates back to 2011, when Intromix decided to sell his vintage Bode 7702 Vocoder. Rather than just show some pictures of the device, he decided to perform a little sales pitch with the analog wonder. Perhaps he was inspired by its creator.

From Siri, to Google, to Alexa, voice based systems are pretty much ubiquitous these days. But how can a computer speak so many different words so well? The 8-Bit Guy looks back at the early days of digital speech synthesis, and how that led us to today’s innovations.

Retro gadget expert Techmoan fixes up a wonderful gizmo from the 1950s, a turntable about the size of a book, known as the Wondergram. It doesn’t sound great, and clearly isn’t good for vinyl, but it’s a nifty bit of engineering for its time.

While the Super Nintendo system provided us with countless hours of memorable gaming, it turns out that making music for its games was extremely difficult given the system’s memory limitations. The Nerdwriter explores some of the clever workarounds composers employed.

Featuring a look inspired by 1970s and 1980s pocket calculators, Lofree’s wireless numeric keypad features round keycaps, responsive Gateron Blue switches, backlighting, and doubles as a standalone calculator. Looks great with the Lofree wireless keyboard.

When TV shows and movies want to go back in time, they head to an unlikely place, the LES Ecology Center. This Brooklyn, NY urban sustainability organization has found a new use for old E-Waste, operating a prop shop housing thousands of retro gadgets.

SuperImpulse makes tiny versions of classic toys, from Stretch Armstrong to the Etch-a-Sketch. But one of our childhood favorites was the precursor to pixel art – the Lite-Brite. This mini version measures just 3″ wide x 2.75″ high, and includes 150 tiny pegs to lose.

Animorphs’ book covers are more famous than the actual stories. Lazy Game Reviews got his hands on the software that artist David Mattingly used for his covers. But due to the software’s limitations, he painted about half of each cover to make them look, uh, better.

Bull Motor Co. makes vintage-inspired board track motorcycles with weathered hand-painting and airbrushing. Their standard models are based on classic board track models, but they also accept custom orders. The bikes are powered by a 66cc two-stroke motor.

ROKR’s bass wood replica of a classic film projector is one of the coolest flat-pack model kits we’ve ever seen. Not only does it look awesome, it actually can project a short loop of film that’s included with the kit. The hand-cranked projector isn’t bright, but it requires no batteries to operate.

A brief demonstration of a rare piece of office equipment c. 1953. The Keaton Music Typewriter made it relatively easy to create sheet music much in the same way you’d type a letter. If you made a mistake, however, you’d have to wait until 1956 for correction fluid to be invented.

A wonderful time capsule of the early 1980s, this fantastically cheesy promo clip for the Magnavox Magnavision VH-8000 Laser Video Disc Player featured a mustachioed Leonard Nimoy as the curious consumer as he learned about the player from a talking light-up rock.

These days, if you need a calculator, you simply use your smartphone. But there was a time when calculators were popular standalone problem solving tools. Techmoan checks out another retro oddity – a 1970s calculator crammed into a clunky writing instrument.

After coming across his dad’s old 8mm film camera, Paul Howard Allen decided to see if he could shoot an episode using the antiquated photo gear and a cassette recorder. He was able to pull it off, but it’s clear that today’s tech is superior in every possible way.

Techmoan shows off some more more awesomely weird retro tech. The Roland MT-80S was a compact music player that played back MIDI files using songs stored on a 3.5 inch floppy disk. Since it was designed for learning music, it also packed a digital metronome.

A modern take on the mechanical flip clock designs of the 1970s. This version features a vertically-oriented case made from bamboo wood and has a swinging pendulum at the bottom. Measures 18.9″ tall, and runs on one C-cell battery.

Crosley goes old school with this a portable retro tape deck. It also has an AM/FM radio as well as access to two short wave radio bands. It can also play music from USB drives or an SD card. It also has a record feature, a built-in microphone and a headphone jack.

This NES-inspired retro console comes pre-loaded with 600 remakes of 8-bit games, along with a pair of wired controllers. It’s on sale now in The Awesomer Shop, where you can grab an extra 20% off with promo code BFSAVE20 (valid thru 11/27/18).

What you’re looking at may look like an old dot-matrix printer – but it’s been turned into a musical instrument by Midi Desaster. By manipulating the print heads, it plays music – in this case, some classic Foo Fighters. More printer tunes here.

Techmoan looks at the history of the DataPlay, a tiny optical disc format. Launched in 2001, it could carry up to 500MB of data in a disc just a tad bigger than a dollar coin. Unfortunately, its reliance on other companies and non-rewritable nature spelled doom for the disc.

While the song’s sound is distinctively 1980s, the music video for I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME’s track Do It All the Time looks like it was created by Kraftwerk back in the late 1970s. Even if they got their dates a little wrong, the track is a serious earworm.