Early 1980's Tom Baker (Dr. Who) Computer Ads

Tom was THE Doctor Who when I was growing up. In fact, I didn't really know that there had been (or would be) others playing the role.

Online C-64 Emulator

80's fans rejoice! There is now an ONLINE Commodore 64 emulator. You can even play games. Well, actually, it seems that play games is all you can do right now but if this is really a full fledged emulator you should be able to do anything that you could do with a real C-64. No M.U.L.E. though!

From the 'I never thought I'd say that' category.

Link

Star Wars - in ASCIImation

As far as I am concerned there is only two Star Wars movies (the first one and the Empire Strikes Back). Enjoy this low bit-rate representation of one of the greatest movies of all time but be forewarned that this guy never finished the story - as if we all don't know it by now.

Link

ASCII Printer Art

I posted about a vintage IBM PC today and dropped the term 'ASCII PRINTER ART' so I wanted to share some examples of this 'lost' art form with any of you kiddies that are reading the blog and have no idea to what I am referring.



This is an example of pre-ASCII art but it follows the same principle. Use keys to match picture areas, very similar to those photo collage programs of today that use thousands of tiny pictures to make up one big picture. Imagine trying to do this on a typewriter!



Here is a better example of what can be done with the art. There are computer programs that do this automatically now but I know that in the late 1970's the guys in my dad's office would do this stuff by hand.

Watch as the ORIGINAL IBM PC Plays a Video

Today's post may not be so impressive to the youth of today but for those of us who grew up in MY era it's quite amazing. No, it's not DVD quality or anything like that but who would have thought that back in the age of ASCII printer art we could have been watching videos on our DOS command line PC's? Of course I didn't have $3500 to blow on an IBM PC back then so I had to settle with a Commodore but that is another story for another day. I do remember being amazed when I heard a very horribly digitized audio clip of a Led Zeppelin song (about ten seconds worth) on my C-64 though. Ahh, the days!