Hasta La Gadget!

Back in the dark days before the internet, piracy took one form, whether software or music. It was the cassette tape, able to make hissy recordings of vinyl LPs, CDs and Commodore 64 games alike. My own nerd father used to sit at the "music center" every Sunday night for a couple of hours while the week’s Top 40 was played. He wore big headphones, twiddled the analog VU meters and kept one forefinger constantly hovering over the pause button.

Now, of course, we have BitTorrent, Handbrake and all manner of other methods to help us steal bits and bytes. Which is why I’m happily surprised to see the PlusDeck Ex USB Cassette Deck, a cassette recorder which can slurp in almost everything.

It has a built in radio, a phone pre-amp for recording from vinyl turntables and a ridiculous array of inputs: USB, RCA, phono, 7.1 surround (in!), and the mysteriously named "cellphone input" and "adapter input".

There’s a timer to control things when you’re out and an IR remote to control them when you’re in. All of this is pushed to your ears via the 7.1 surround sound output. It’ll probably even hook up to an old ZX Spectrum and load Manic Miner for you. The price is a little steep, though, for something now rather niche — it’s $300. And good luck finding the tapes to put in it.

Product page [ThinkGeek via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Bye-Bye Cassette Tape: UK Chain Kills Romantic Format
• Retro Cassette Tape Case for iPod Nano
• Rip Cassettes to MP3 with 5.25" Tape Deck

This is the Casio Memory B-1, a 30 year old calculator which, although it has sustained a few dents and scratches, works as well as the day it was born. And as you can see from the picture snapped via Skype last night, my father, despite being twice the age of the adding machine, still thinks like a schoolboy. Apparently he spent several hours yesterday working out rude words to write on the thing.

This calculator is still in frequent use, and why not? Here are the specs:

1 x cpu: NEC D1877C E87346, 28 pin DIL, 0.6" width
1 x 8 digit VFD display: flat faced glass unit; NEC FIP LD8225/FIP8A5 No. 8J, Japan
1 x transistor
8 x diodes
12 x capacitors
3 x resistors
1 x transformer

The display is clearly the best part, a bright and crisp vacuum fluorescent display (VFD). These glowing blue digits are related to both the nixie tube and the cathode ray tube found in older TVs. The Japanese made box also features two real aluminum panels and can be hooked up to the mains via a DC-in socket.

I don’t know what the best part of this is — my father’s nerdy schoolboy sensibilities, the fact that this retro tech has lasted so long, or the awesomeness that my dad thought it was ok to hijack my conversation with mother by holding the word BOOBS in front of her face. It’s lucky she hadn’t already started on the day’s gin ration, or he might have gotten a whack.

In-depth specs [Vintage Technology]

Have a Symbian S60-based handset in your pocket, do you? If you’ve a fever that can only be cured by more Commodore 64, you’re in luck. The FrodoS60 application brings C64 emulation right to your N95, N96 or any other S60 mobile, and the updated version (1.5) even includes accelerometer support. Head past the break for a quick look at how much joy this little app could bring to your life, and hit the read link if you’re interested in getting in on it. Which you are, so stop denying it.

[Via digitoday, thanks Antti]

Continue reading Commodore 64 emulator brings retro joy to Symbian S60

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

Commodore 64 emulator brings retro joy to Symbian S60 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Take a bunch of cast-off 80s CD players, stuff in a distinctly modern dual-core Atom 330 processor, a couple gigs of RAM,  a DVD superdrive and 7.1 surround sound and you have MSI’s new NetTop D130.

MSI is calling it Nordic Simple Style. We’re calling it Smoked Glass Bachelor Pad Style. If Charlie Sheen had had a computer in the movie Wall Street, this would have been it (although it would have been perched atop a stack of graphic equalizers and spectrum analyzers).

Clearly this is aimed at the living room. The styling is all set-top box and the quiet-running, low-power internals mean easy 24-7 usage. It’s dirt cheap, too, at just $240, which MSI claims is the equivalent of the box’s power savings over two years. That means its technically free!

Product page [MSI]

This floppy-shaped recordable CD is, at first glance, a splendidly retro device. Push it down onto the spindle of the drive and you can look forward to 200 whole Megabytes of storage.

Unfortunately, that’s where it ends. Try cramming this into a modern, slot loading drive and you’ll need to take the computer apart to get it back again. And that’s before we even get to the price.

A 50-pack of rewritable discs can be picked up for a few bucks these days, which makes the price of these novelties even more shocking. A single floppy will cost a hard $10, plus another $4 for shipping. Insane.

Much better, and a great idea for a future how-to project, would be to hack a USB stick together with a floppy. That way you could cram a fistful of Gigabytes into a mere 3.5 inches.

Product page [Design Boom via BBG]