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on this week's show, play your GameCube

0:32

online again. Why you

0:34

can't give away some old games.

0:36

And we celebrate classic Apple machines

0:38

with Macintosh librarian. And

0:50

the Retro Owl podcast is brought to

0:52

you each and every Friday with our

0:54

incredible mates at Bitmap Books, who actually

0:56

just celebrated their 10th birthday this week.

0:58

Come on, let's hear it. For Sam

1:01

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1:03

we've actually published over 29 books in

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with our lovely friends at PCBWay, now of

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supporters of the Retro community. To get

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an instant quote right now on their

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website at pcbway.com. Hello

1:42

and welcome to the Retro Owl podcast,

1:44

episode number 422, your

1:46

weekly dose of retro gaming and technology

1:48

news with me, Dan Wood. Me, Ravi

1:50

Abbott. And me, Garif Hamer. And

1:53

a very warm welcome to the podcast, of course,

1:55

to show that every single Friday, takes you on

1:57

a nostalgic trip back through those kind of bendy.

2:00

time things that you see in Bill and

2:02

Ted's Excellent Adventure and other things back in

2:04

the good old days. That's what this podcast

2:06

is like. We take you back to classic,

2:08

Saturday 80s and 90s, the arcades, the 8-bit

2:10

machines, Megazhive, Super Nintendo, Playstations, all of that

2:12

and more. And of course with it being

2:14

the start of the longest weekend here in

2:16

the UK, it is Good Friday, that means

2:18

four days off work for many people, including

2:20

our Joe who's having a bit of a

2:22

scythe today away with the family. So we

2:25

thought we'd get someone to step in for

2:27

him. And actually I don't think you got much say in the

2:29

matter, did you Gareth, whether you came in and talked about it? No, I

2:31

didn't. I was kind of told that I'm coming onto the show. Well,

2:35

anyone that hangs out in our Discord or has

2:37

joined us on our Patreon hangouts, I'm sure we'll

2:39

be familiar with Gareth. He's a huge part and

2:41

a very valued member of our community, Gareth. And

2:43

it's incredible to have you on. For people that

2:45

might not have joined us in those corners

2:47

of the internet where we hang out. Give us a

2:50

bit of your background then. What's kind of your interests

2:52

in retro? What are you into? Well,

2:54

everything, hoarding CRTs,

2:57

all the way, anything from, well,

2:59

actually the Dragon32 was my

3:02

first computer. So anything

3:04

from there onwards, I'm pretty much into.

3:07

And also you suggest quite a lot of news

3:09

in the Discord as well. So you probably had

3:11

quite a lot of input into the retro hour

3:13

as well previously. Well, I do have an easy

3:15

job. So I do get a bit of free

3:17

time that lets me do a little bit of

3:19

internet surfing and what's better to surf than retro

3:22

news. And anyone that's been on

3:24

our Patreon hangouts, I mean, are you doing the show

3:26

from your retro den at the moment?

3:28

Not today, no, because there's a bit nippy in

3:30

there. Because you've got, it's like

3:32

a converted barn, isn't it? It's an outhouse.

3:35

Well, I've been told the Americans don't like

3:37

being called outhouses because it doesn't have a

3:39

toilet. But in the UK, an outhouse is

3:41

just a side-on

3:43

apartment to the house. And yes, that's

3:46

pretty much what my wife calls my house. You've

3:49

got a massive land set of in there,

3:51

you know, some incredible do-mas. Yes, yes, that's

3:53

coming on slowly. But recently, as

3:55

you've been saying, I've been hoarding a

3:57

lot of CRTs. Got to keep that

3:59

reminder. and toasty in the end. Oh

4:01

yes they will once they're fully running. Yeah well

4:03

Gareth I appreciate you taking the time to come

4:05

and do some news with us this week and

4:08

we have got an incredible guest on the second

4:10

half of the podcast as well. This week Ravi

4:12

we're going to be talking all

4:14

things classic Apple. Yeah I

4:17

was thinking you know how long has it been since

4:19

we've done a kind of classic

4:21

Apple show and it was Action Retro

4:24

was the last classic show

4:26

that was about two years I

4:28

literally thought that was about six months ago but yeah we look

4:30

back it was like January 22. Wow

4:33

and yeah you know I love exploring

4:35

like the classic Mac and this

4:38

channel is really interesting like

4:40

Macintosh librarian. She's got such

4:42

a unique kind of approach

4:45

to how she presents on the channel she's

4:47

got a Mackey which is this kind of

4:50

virtual system but it's basically a

4:52

Mac that speaks. A

4:54

cartoon character isn't it? A cartoon character

4:57

a kind of companion and it makes

4:59

the channel really fun and accessible but

5:01

also she's got such a

5:03

good knowledge about Macs. Also being

5:06

a bit of an Amiga fan we talk about that

5:08

kind of connection between Mac and Amiga

5:10

of course you know me and Dan have to

5:12

go down that road and we talk about stuff

5:15

like Haiku as well and you

5:17

know the different generations of Macs so you had

5:19

you know Power PC of course and then 68k

5:23

and then there's all kinds of

5:25

different versions of Mac there's new devices that

5:27

have come out for it like Blue Scuzzy

5:30

and there's loads of really interesting

5:32

information about stuff like some

5:34

of the replacement cases as well that they

5:37

have. Yeah and even going into

5:39

Next as well because obviously that was Steve Jobs company

5:42

when he asked Apple in the 80s to the mid

5:44

90s and kind of the the influence of that had

5:46

on Apple because obviously we know that really it was

5:48

that they took over Next and then Steve Jobs came

5:50

back as a CEO everyone knows that story I'm sure

5:53

but the fact that you know the Apple OS basically

5:55

was you know the Next OS was turned into the

5:58

Mac OS so it's a very interesting story. said

6:00

we've covered this with them a couple of people

6:02

before like crazy Ken we had him on a

6:04

couple of years ago action retro but I think

6:06

you're right because Kate gives a real

6:09

open approach to this I think you know

6:11

if you someone who because particularly here in

6:13

the UK a lot of us aren't all

6:15

that familiar with the Macintosh machines of the

6:17

80s and 90s because it wasn't much of

6:19

a mainstream platform here really was I mean

6:22

we all had like you know Tory ST's

6:24

or Amiga's so I think the fact that

6:26

her channel is so accessible and she explains

6:28

this in you know language anyone can understand

6:30

well she's also come come at it from

6:32

an educational aspect and you know we didn't

6:34

have Macs in in school it's very late

6:36

for me to actually see a Mac I

6:38

think the first one I saw was a you know

6:41

a power PC machine we had

6:43

the BBC's and the you know

6:46

Archimedes but having

6:48

like a kind of educational aspect

6:50

of it is really interesting because

6:52

there's a lot of crossover like

6:55

you know what was the programming language

6:57

as well that they had logo we

6:59

talk about that and we kind

7:03

of talk about some of the edutainment

7:05

and that kind of road

7:07

of the Mac as well yes if

7:09

you've ever been interested I mean you know the

7:11

Macintosh it's such a big platform today if you

7:14

kind of wondering a bit about the legacy of

7:16

it and Kate's channel is fantastic it's called Macintosh

7:18

librarian she actually had a picture she was at

7:20

VCF recently with a Bill Hurd who was one

7:22

of Commodore's famous engineers back in the day hugging

7:24

a Macintosh computer so if she can get built

7:26

I didn't touch one yeah before I go get

7:29

it away but Kate actually made him fall in

7:31

love with the Mac so you're gonna really enjoy

7:33

I guess this week she's coming up the Macintosh

7:35

librarian on the show in around 35

7:38

minutes from now now I did

7:40

go and see the new ghostbusters movie at

7:42

the weekend you guys are interesting

7:44

yeah you've seen it Gareth and then we're talking about it in discord

7:46

a while ago no I kind of

7:49

forgot to go I didn't go but

7:53

I won't get right to it I let not

7:55

seen any of the new guys sisters I've stuck

7:57

to the original kind of stay with them at

7:59

the moment but But I hear

8:01

the new ones are quite good so

8:04

maybe I'll get involved. Well, there's been

8:06

a bit of a mixed reaction to

8:08

it. I'm talking about this because obviously

8:10

I'm a big Ghostbusters fan, a lifelong

8:12

fan of the Ghostbusters. You posted a

8:14

picture of you in the cinema before

8:16

anyone arrived sitting there waiting with your

8:18

Ghostbusters popcorn, mega fan. A Mississippi Cup

8:20

with the Ghostbusters. Do they have the

8:22

me and actors in it more

8:24

than the last one though? Well,

8:27

Ray, without giving too many spoilers,

8:29

Dan Aykroyd, he's in it a lot more. And

8:32

he has a very good role in it actually

8:34

but the rest of them, Winston and Peter in

8:36

it a little bit but not all that much

8:38

really. It's really a story of passing it on

8:40

to the next generation a bit more. I think

8:43

the fact that it was set in New York, I

8:45

love seeing the Ghostbusters back in their native town which

8:48

was awesome. But I think a lot of people

8:50

weren't that impressed with it. I enjoyed the film.

8:53

But one thing that really stood out to me and I think

8:55

this was the only time I spoke to my missus during

8:58

the entire film was to lean over and

9:00

go, see that behind Peter? That's a Commodore pet,

9:02

you know. So you're

9:04

raising it, that's a BBC Micro. I did spot two

9:06

retro computers in it and she just like kind of

9:08

shot me a little back and said, you know, you

9:10

nerd. But yeah, it

9:12

was cool to see some retro computers in the new

9:14

Ghostbusters movie. And I was chatting to a friend of

9:16

mine, Adam, you know Adam as well for every, he

9:19

thinks you might know the museum that kind

9:21

of lent the computers to the film.

9:24

That's really cool. I think, you know, when they're

9:26

doing these like time accurate ones, we're seeing

9:28

a lot more old

9:30

computers in the movies and accurately

9:32

done like I remember the Amiga

9:34

1000 and Stranger Things

9:36

and that was really exciting to

9:38

see. Yeah, it's just really cool

9:41

that retro is everywhere you look these days.

9:43

So long may it continue. And

9:45

lots to talk about on this week's podcast

9:47

as well. It has been another busy seven

9:49

days in the wonderful world of retro gaming

9:52

and technology. And let's start with the

9:54

story that it's actually quite interesting. I think

9:56

Joe would have enjoyed this one as well because he was

9:58

a massive GameCube fan. back

10:00

in the day. You're much of a

10:02

GameCube gamer, Gareth, did you have one?

10:04

I love the GameCube. Online is something

10:06

I've never done. Well, I must admit,

10:08

I was late to the game with the GameCube. I got mine

10:10

probably around 2010, 2011. When

10:14

I think I picked one up for about £15, which

10:16

I'm not sure how much they go for today, I've got to fill

10:18

in probably more than 15 quid. But you're

10:20

right, I mean, obviously it was that era where,

10:23

you know, obviously the Dreamcast was around at that

10:25

time, which was an online capable console.

10:27

We had the original Xbox where, you know, a

10:30

year or two later they really were pushing Xbox

10:32

Live. But I must admit, I've never really thought

10:34

of the Nintendo GameCube as being an online

10:37

system. But it turned out back in the day

10:39

there were actually a few games that were playable

10:41

through quite a rare broadband

10:43

adapter. Yeah, it's interesting because they

10:45

were basically available on

10:48

the service that was on at the

10:50

time, which has now kind of been

10:52

turned off. And the

10:54

broadband adapter was quite

10:57

an expensive thing to get.

10:59

But there's a new adapter,

11:01

which doesn't play all

11:04

the games, but it's starting to become

11:06

something, you know, and you can play

11:08

a few games on it and games

11:11

are getting custom built for it.

11:13

But let's kind of explain

11:15

how it works first. Of course,

11:17

you're going to have to have a modified

11:21

GameCube, which is using

11:23

a thing called Swiss.

11:26

It's something I use. I use the

11:28

Pico Pi and I

11:30

soldered it in the doll

11:32

out myself. And yeah, you need to use

11:34

Swiss that gives you access to

11:37

the my swimming modified software

11:40

to games. Yeah,

11:42

so what it does is the

11:45

the online multiplayer function of it,

11:47

we covered earlier fantasy star had

11:50

redone that kind of servers, you know,

11:52

there was a fan base server that

11:54

was running on that that's available on

11:56

this, but they're started to

11:58

hack. games

12:01

that would be, you know, play most of

12:03

the locally, yeah, co-op, and then

12:05

they're kind of doing it

12:07

so you know, Mario Kart can then

12:10

connect to a private server. And

12:13

it's basically

12:15

hosting it, you know, a

12:17

kind of local game online, people can

12:19

all join and that

12:21

functionality is getting added to other titles,

12:23

but it's going to be a slow

12:25

process doing that. It's going to be,

12:28

you know, you're probably going to have to pick a

12:30

time when everyone's playing online. It's going to have to

12:32

be more quite an organised thing. It's not just going

12:35

to be getting online, going on a

12:37

service, finding people and loading any game

12:41

that you wanted, but it's really impressive

12:44

to see. But do those servers

12:46

connect to people who play it on the

12:48

PC as well? Because that would definitely up

12:50

the player count. Yeah, I don't

12:52

know if it's, if it's compatible with that.

12:56

The idea of modding Zelda Twilight

12:58

Princess to have multiplayer, that's definitely

13:01

intriguing. Yeah, that's bonkers.

13:04

And I think the good thing about this as well is,

13:06

I mean, we mentioned that the, I mean, I've never seen

13:08

a GameCube broadband adapter. I haven't looked at the prices, but

13:10

I imagine rather expensive. I know From Experience of Dreamcast 1

13:12

can set you back like three or four hundred pounds now

13:15

if you want to get one of those. And

13:17

like you said, Ravi, the official online

13:19

functions of, you know, Longson's been turned

13:21

off now. But this is, it's a

13:24

new independent project that actually looks very,

13:26

very inexpensive. And these are

13:28

community made, open source as well.

13:30

And there's two different variants of

13:32

this. And it's called the ETH2GC.

13:34

And they do these in two variations, a Sidecar

13:36

and a Lite version. So you can buy these

13:39

either as a do-it-yourself kit for thirty five dollars

13:41

or fully assembled for forty five. That's a Sidecar

13:43

version. Or there is the Lite one, which can

13:45

be fifteen dollars for DIY or twenty five dollars

13:48

for the assembled version as well. It doesn't mean

13:50

that apparently the Sidecar one is a bit more

13:52

fully featured. It's a bit more plug and play.

13:54

But I think for that price though, I mean,

13:56

that seems like a bit of a no brainer

13:59

of you. if you still play

14:01

your GameCube regularly. Yeah, yeah, that's really

14:03

cool. And like, I think

14:05

also, you know, sometimes these

14:07

devices, they're too expensive and

14:09

that kind of pushes people out. But you know,

14:11

if you want to get more people online, you

14:13

want to get more people onto these servers, do

14:15

something this cheap, chuck it out

14:17

there. And you know, people are going to buy it without

14:20

the second thought and it would just straight

14:22

away become something. And I think the difference

14:24

with the sidecar and the

14:27

Lite version is, the Lite version seems to

14:29

be the open source one, where the

14:31

sidecar seems to be the commercial kind

14:33

of product. So it's a little bit

14:35

slicker looking and it fits kind

14:38

of, you know, it mounts the Ethernet

14:40

from the front. And

14:44

the other ones kind of like into the

14:46

side, but open source as well. So maybe

14:49

we'll see more developments, more add-ons to that.

14:51

You might see a wireless one. Who knows?

14:54

Well, could we see multiplayer for Game Boy

14:56

games in the future with the Game Boy

14:58

player? I think that is

15:00

a connection. Like I know we're dreaming,

15:02

but it's still nice to think that

15:04

it could happen. You're going to have

15:06

a dream, Gareth. I think we covered

15:09

it with the sync cables that people

15:11

were doing, like online

15:13

functionality hacking. I

15:17

do remember the broadband adapters being used in the

15:19

early days to actually back up games. Yeah, it

15:21

was one of the few ways to actually back

15:23

up the games. Now, I'm pretty sure every game

15:25

is backed up now. But

15:28

why keep people are still hoarding the adapters? I'll

15:30

never know. We just say,

15:32

yeah, one of the functionalities of this is that you can

15:34

rip GameCube games to your PC. So

15:36

if you have got a collection of them, you want to play them,

15:39

you know, legally an emulation, I think, you know, feature to have. But

15:41

yeah, very cool. I think enough of the price. I mean, yeah,

15:44

like I said, that kind of feels like you play a GameCube.

15:46

It's, you know, worth a couple of dollars just

15:48

to get one or build it yourself. And you're right,

15:50

they're right. The way these work generally, because I did

15:52

connect to a service, got them probably going back a

15:54

decade or so ago where I played my original Xbox

15:57

online. Had to run like a server on

15:59

my PC. PC and then I

16:01

connected an Ethernet cable from my PC into

16:04

my Xbox and then there's a third party

16:06

service you could connect to but you basically

16:08

had to look at their forums and it'd

16:10

be like Saturday night, 6pm

16:12

GMT, we're all jumping on to play

16:15

Halo 2. So that's how you'd organise a

16:17

game. Generally you get a bit of pre-warning and you plan it

16:19

a week or two in advance. Yeah and

16:21

I think the fact that you've

16:23

kind of got a group that are doing this,

16:25

WebHDX, you

16:29

know they're hosting some of the private servers so

16:33

it's interesting to keep them going as the

16:35

products go in. So I think that's quite

16:37

good. It's not just like a random server

16:39

that's in blokes set up on its PC.

16:41

It's good to turn off. Yeah

16:44

well these are available now so if you want to check that out I will

16:46

link that up in this week's show notes as well. Now

16:50

you know I regularly do this for everybody. We often have a lot of walk around

16:52

charity shops as they're called here in the UK

16:54

and our friends over at the pond call them

16:57

thrift stores. Our friend is down under Op Shops,

16:59

I think they're called in Australia. These are basically

17:01

charity shops. What do they like near you Gareth?

17:03

Are you looking around the charity shops in Europe?

17:05

Oh I'm always in CEX but

17:08

there's a few charity shops and yeah

17:11

you'll always see a very specific game

17:13

here in the UK in

17:15

some of those shops. Yeah normally a

17:17

few of them, normally FIFA. Oh yeah.

17:19

See what I see around here. FIFA, Madden. The

17:22

sports games. Yeah all the sports, all

17:25

the fitness games that people have bought trying to get

17:27

healthy and kind of giving up

17:29

on the charity shop. They had a

17:31

big comeback during Covid. I

17:33

remember the Wii boards,

17:35

they suddenly tripled or quadrupled

17:37

in value. Everyone's trying to get

17:40

a hold of them and like Wii sports and stuff

17:42

suddenly it was like. Just dance and stuff. Yeah in

17:44

same prices yeah obviously people trying to exercise at home.

17:46

But you're right generally if I go around any charity

17:48

shop near here the only thing I ever see and

17:50

I always send pictures normally to you down at Ravvind

17:52

Joe in our little Facebook group. Like oh another copy

17:54

of FIFA 09 and there's FIFA 10, FIFA 11, FIFA

17:56

12. But

17:59

it turns out that. you can't even give away

18:01

these games. So you

18:04

wonder how long these stay in charity shops because

18:06

this story made me chuckle a little bit. I

18:08

spotted this on Reddit and this was a user

18:11

called Steve Lynn who is

18:14

on Blue Sky and he's a member of

18:16

the Video Game History Foundation and he's recently

18:18

at the electronics flea market which is apparently

18:20

a really long-running, basically a swap meet in

18:22

Northern California and obviously you see all the

18:24

usual stuff there, the old consoles, a lot

18:26

of people selling games as well. But he

18:28

said there was one guy who basically

18:32

had a big box of

18:34

NBA 2k19 for the Xbox

18:36

One and there is a picture of this in here

18:38

as well so this is legit, with

18:40

a little handwritten sign on it that says,

18:44

free, take them all

18:46

and these are sealed copies

18:48

of NBA that literally

18:50

nobody wanted for free. Does it shock

18:52

you that he couldn't even give these

18:54

games away? No, not at

18:56

all. I was just

18:58

thinking did he have a CX? I

19:02

think the most shocking part of the article was

19:04

that you could take the games but you weren't

19:06

allowed to take the box that the games

19:08

were in. Because I mean I'm looking at this

19:11

and the way I interpreted that was basically take

19:13

one but yeah basically saying you

19:15

can take them all if you want but

19:17

you're right they're in like a big plastic

19:19

carry-all book. You know I love the NBA

19:21

2k series but it was like in the

19:23

Dreamcast days so NBA 2k2 was

19:26

like really really good fun and I

19:28

quite enjoyed that. You know basketball's not

19:30

a sport that's kind of native

19:33

to me or something that I understood that

19:35

well. Like I was like oh what's a

19:37

backcourt violation and all this kind of stuff.

19:40

I'm too short to play basketball. Yeah that

19:42

series really got me into it you know.

19:45

Yeah well to me then we said I'm looking at this and if I

19:47

was at a retro then, I'd say I was at Play Expo or something.

19:49

I'd always take one if it was offered

19:51

for free so I'm kind of staggered that people didn't even

19:54

Take one or two of them. It Just seems a bit bizarre to me

19:57

because even if it wasn't a game that I was going to play, it's

19:59

still a free video game. And are people you

20:01

know on on this them reddit thread as

20:03

well people thanks to the kind of see

20:05

might you know people valuing like Modern Games

20:07

less now they can also couple years basically

20:09

so disposable you can't even give them away

20:11

when offences says it's not my job. Love

20:13

things as I go. There was this thing

20:16

I was on a by for wild and

20:18

them they had a in the wicker man

20:20

two thousand and six one with Nick. It's

20:22

like it's met met to be. Really?

20:24

Awful felt of have not seen a myself

20:26

but of have heard about it at math.

20:29

As like a job. lot of law in

20:31

a two thousand copies of it and on

20:33

a by everyone's I. I can't give this

20:35

away but then because it's Nick Cage have

20:37

to us I went mad at the gun

20:40

deaths turned into a bidding war. Scintilla, what

20:42

would you do with that build like a

20:44

house out Copies of the Wickham on our

20:46

side of the of floor has some for

20:48

I personally think it's gonna happen more often

20:50

than the line are going to start seeing

20:52

more like and over here you're gonna see

20:55

more Fifa you know and boxes. And.

20:57

Tell it like my you to sort out a loss

20:59

of yeah exactly And hello, everything goes well he did

21:01

you. oh it's gonna happen. I was

21:03

in a charity shop. Hadn't been

21:05

and a while actually couple weeks ago and they

21:07

had some copies I think it was it was

21:09

am one of the. Is a racing game?

21:12

Might be like an old am going to raise my

21:14

letting him i've been actually and dance com a computer

21:16

faces and a playstation see. And. Charges

21:18

Hilton. They had a nicely displayed on the

21:20

stand. On top of a cabinet you know

21:22

kind of my to feature of them out of Amazon

21:24

is quite interesting that they might have a truck. Playstation

21:26

two games now really miss. I'm wondering whether been on

21:28

top that stands like twenty years. And. The

21:30

just don't give them away. With. It as he

21:32

has such as yeah quite as quite shocking to

21:34

see. The thing I always take a free video

21:36

game you those of us offered one but of

21:38

only know am a copy of a and be

21:41

a. Seat. a non seems to be

21:43

exports seven to check out the other darling that

21:45

as soon as as well now we're getting ready

21:47

for rallies big event that is coming up in

21:49

nottingham the summer tix dot o two am i'm

21:51

seeking to be talking more about that on the

21:54

podcast over the next few weeks rather use of

21:56

course them does your big a me to show

21:58

the animal gonna hit a peak there as

22:00

well who's pretty relevant to this story I think. Yeah

22:02

we had Pete Cannon on the podcast a couple of

22:04

years ago. He's actually someone who makes

22:07

music that actually is very mainstream

22:10

successful isn't it you know, music stuff on

22:12

the Amiga and we had

22:15

that video recently of Calvin Harris backstage

22:17

at the Brit Awards playing around

22:19

with his Amiga 1200. I think he actually using

22:21

his onstage performance looking back at that but

22:23

it turns out the sound of the Amiga

22:26

is becoming quite popular at the moment and there

22:28

is a brand new plugin that basically means people

22:30

can make pretty authentic sounding

22:33

Amiga music for 10

22:35

pounds using a modern

22:37

digital audio workstation. I

22:40

think this is really really cool because it's

22:45

Amiga emulation but

22:47

it's cheap so when

22:50

people would originally do the samples they

22:53

would do it either using

22:55

a little pack which is you

22:57

know something that you'd have on the back

22:59

of your machine that would probably be in

23:02

the serial or the parallel port and it

23:05

would be a like little sampler one of

23:07

the Techno sound turbo ones. I remember Fred

23:09

and mine had that and he had his

23:11

Walkman with like basically a cable between his

23:13

Walkman and the sampler and he pressed play

23:15

at the moment he wanted a drum. Yeah

23:17

and sometimes they'd be a mono as well so

23:19

you'd have to take like the left channel

23:22

and then replicate it on

23:24

the right you know and like yeah the

23:26

sampling wasn't amazing it was kind of limited

23:28

as well but also it had a certain

23:30

quality that I'm not sure this has which

23:32

is the buzz which you know

23:35

I DJ a lot of mods and I

23:37

love when someone's really badly sampled

23:39

something and you've got like a

23:43

ground loop in the background or

23:46

they've got you know some interference

23:48

from electricity I love that kind of sound.

23:50

Well before we get into this did you

23:52

ever try and make music on your computers

23:55

back in the day I'm quite curious. I

23:57

probably tried but I probably got stopped very

23:59

quickly I have torn death. Yeah,

24:02

by a good friend. Oh yeah.

24:05

I was just saying I tried to make stuff in

24:07

Pro Tracker and stuff like that and I remember my

24:09

brother and I messing around with him and I think

24:11

I might still have some on this

24:13

somewhere that kind of made my ears bleed when I

24:15

was- Best I would have tried to probably remex lemon

24:17

tunes. Yeah. At best. Well

24:20

this makes it really easy then Ravian. I actually feel that Pete

24:23

Cannon has approved. He's given his

24:25

positive review to this plugin. So what does

24:27

this offer? So what this

24:29

does is it does it in

24:31

the Akai style. So the

24:33

Amiga obviously you'd have your home

24:36

sampling and you'd do it like that and you'd

24:38

have the sampler that would look a lot

24:41

like the GUI interface on this. But

24:44

the real kind of producers that use

24:46

the Amiga, they used a separate Akai

24:48

sampler. So you know we had Alastair

24:50

Brimble who talks on the podcast and

24:53

he talked about how they would get

24:55

16-bit samples. They

24:57

would reduce them down to 8-bit. So

24:59

if you want a really clear drums

25:01

you would use one of these Akai

25:03

samplers, you know, sample

25:06

it in 16-bit, then reduce it down, then

25:08

put it onto the Amiga and

25:10

do it through one of the trackers. They'd

25:13

also do the time stretching for

25:15

like all those jungle tunes on the

25:18

Akai samplers. I

25:20

thought you were going to try and copy these time stretching effect with your

25:22

mouth, everybody. Why? And

25:27

that's kind of put me off. Yeah,

25:29

they'd kind of use the Akai

25:31

functions. They have certain sounds

25:34

that, you know, really represent at

25:36

that time that kind of jungle

25:39

production. But they're very expensive to

25:41

buy. Now if you're using the

25:44

actual hardware, it's going to

25:46

cost you loads, then you're going to have

25:48

to put it into the Amiga. It's a

25:50

long laborious process where this is 10 pounds.

25:54

Run it on your Mac, run it on your

25:56

PC. You can straight

25:58

away convert it to that 8-bit. format,

26:01

really clear, you can downsample it.

26:04

Yeah, this is just a really

26:06

useful kind of piece

26:08

of software and emulation. What

26:11

it offers as well, you can actually load, because

26:13

the Amiga had a format called ISS, didn't it?

26:15

Which was what you'd load the sound samples in.

26:17

This supports that as well. So if you've got

26:19

some of those vintage libraries, you know, like your

26:21

old Soundtracker disks from back in the day, they

26:24

will work on this too. Yeah, you're not sitting

26:26

there converting or doing any of that. It does

26:28

it all and then you fire it out and

26:30

you could probably even build it in an emulator

26:32

using Protracker or something or OpenMPT,

26:36

which is a

26:38

tracker program that's based on the PC. And

26:41

even the look of it as well. It looks like

26:44

Protracker. Well, it looks

26:46

like Protracker, but also you see one

26:48

called Audio Imager. It looks pretty much

26:50

exactly like this. All Amiga samplers had

26:52

this and, you know, the little modes

26:55

that you have and reverses and stuff.

26:57

Yeah, and it's got some great reviews. Yeah, Pete

27:00

Cannon said, hands down the best Amiga emulation

27:02

I've ever used. And he loves the time

27:04

stretch and the chord options in there as

27:06

well. Cheetah, I'm sure you're familiar with Ravi.

27:08

He said it's bangin' for old school. And I've also

27:11

been playing as well. But

27:17

also those bass tones as well,

27:19

like getting that really low Amiga

27:21

bass was really important and

27:23

this does that. Yeah, so for

27:26

all the jungle is massive. Yeah, ten pounds. You've got to

27:28

get that on your Amiga and I like that on the

27:30

show notes as well. Now this next

27:32

story I thought was quite interesting. I mean,

27:34

how many Tetris clones have there been over

27:36

the years? Probably more than we

27:38

care to remember. I did quite get into Tetris

27:41

99 on the Switch a couple of years

27:43

ago. That's where the last big Tetris game that got into.

27:46

And also, do you remember Tetra Copy

27:48

on the Amiga? Did you ever use that back

27:50

in the day? No, no. No, not so many I

27:53

used. Well, this was a disc copy program, a bit like

27:55

X copy, but you'd actually play Tetris while it copied your

27:57

discs. So that was very cool.

27:59

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so the Saturday afternoon used

28:01

to fly by as a kid, with that. But

28:04

now, this is quite interesting because this

28:07

is basically, it was meant to be

28:09

a modern Tetris sequel that

28:11

kind of stalled, but the headline here is,

28:13

you know, never mind all

28:15

the millions of clones and everything. This

28:18

was by the original Tetris creator. He

28:20

was co-working on this, Alexei Pajitnov. So

28:23

what is this Gareth? Explain how Tetris reversed

28:25

work and what it is. It

28:28

looks like you get your

28:30

shapes and they move down, but

28:32

you kind of have to delete

28:35

the shapes, not the lines. So

28:37

I don't know if it's kind of a fill the

28:39

gap, but you have to get through the other gap

28:42

or the other shapes. So

28:44

it's very confusing. One

28:46

thing, part of it is that we've only got

28:49

screenshots of it not being able to, like if

28:51

we saw it play and we might kind

28:53

of be able to work it out a bit more. Which

28:55

is weird because apparently they were showing a demo of

28:58

it on stage for 10 minutes at GDC recently and

29:00

there's an article about it on IGM where it says it

29:02

doesn't look like anyone actually filmed it. Which

29:05

is quite bizarre in this day and age. It looks to

29:07

be like mind-free epitome. The

29:09

game was so good it just shocked people they

29:12

couldn't even record it. Yeah, couldn't

29:14

take their eyes off the screen to get the phone out. Well,

29:16

the headline on Time Extension in their article is,

29:19

it is Tetris for 300 IQ people. Which

29:22

might explain why it took me a bit to get my head around this.

29:26

But I love the story of this because obviously we had,

29:28

I mean, we talked about the Netflix

29:32

docudrama about Tetris on the podcast a couple of

29:34

years ago and that came out. Obviously it became

29:36

a very famous story of Alexei Pajitnov creating it

29:39

behind the iron curtain back in the day. Obviously

29:42

it became a massive smash on the Gameboy when it

29:44

was a pack-in on that. Did you guys have any

29:46

favourite versions of Tetris that you played back in the

29:48

day? For me it was

29:50

Wetrix. What was that then? That

29:53

was a game where you captured water but

29:55

you had to use the shapes that dropped

29:57

down to build the land up. of

30:00

made ponds but you

30:02

had certain obstacles like bombs dropping

30:04

that would put holes in or

30:06

asteroids that would actually make the

30:09

water evaporate and even ice

30:11

cubes that would freeze the water. So

30:13

that was my favourite. So

30:15

many of that word Tris. I remember that one

30:17

being around. Well Tris, Hat

30:20

Tris, all sorts of different variants and spins on

30:22

the game. Well I know one

30:24

that you liked, you know it influenced a lot of

30:27

games. And you

30:29

also had some of the best I

30:32

was about like a Dr. Mario kind of clone that

30:34

one. I mean yeah they're all kind of columns as well.

30:36

They're all kind of spin-offs that Tetris really weren't they

30:38

all influenced by it. But this

30:40

story is quite interesting. Now this started

30:42

back in 2011 when a Croatian developer

30:44

called Vedran Klanak, he went to the

30:46

NLGD festival of games in the Netherlands

30:49

and he basically had this idea of doing this

30:51

sequel to Tetris. And

30:54

he had a chat with Alexei Pajitnov

30:56

there about making this Tetris sequel

30:58

and obviously having Pajitnov behind it really gave it

31:01

some credibility. And apparently they were working on this

31:03

for a couple of years including

31:05

getting a prototype version of it off

31:07

the ground but for some reason he

31:10

said most of the work happened in the summer of

31:12

2012 but then it kind

31:14

of ran out of steam and nothing really happened

31:16

on it after that. But it turns out that the pair actually

31:18

hooked up again at GDC 2024 in

31:20

recent months and he

31:23

still had the prototype of the game and they did

31:26

this little presentation on stage. Now it looks like it

31:28

might be back on again. Which

31:30

sounds quite interesting. I mean will this be something you guys would

31:32

be interested in playing? Well what I think

31:34

to do with Tetris will definitely get a shot but you

31:36

just said you need an IQ of 300 so

31:39

this is going to hurt. I wonder if I

31:41

could get some AI to play it for me or help

31:43

me out. That seems to be the end thing there. We'll

31:46

end up creating Skynet. Yes inadvertently.

31:50

But yeah I think the fact that there

31:52

are so many different versions of it but having Pajitnov

31:54

involved in this and if he kind

31:56

of sees this as a worthy successor to

31:59

his original Tetris concept. I think that in itself

32:02

lends a lot of credibility to this and I think a

32:04

lot of people would like to play it. So fingers crossed

32:06

there is a bit of a resurrection and like you

32:09

said Ravi, it's just been nice to see a video of it. Yeah.

32:12

So hopefully someone will get one uploaded at some point.

32:14

You want to read about that and see those few

32:16

screenshots that are out there. I'll link those in this

32:19

week's show notes as well. Now

32:21

this story is quite interesting

32:23

and quite bizarre as well because I'm looking

32:25

at this. My first initial reaction was like

32:27

a bit jaw-dropping really and then I started

32:29

to do a bit of digging and I

32:32

must admit I am slightly sceptical

32:35

about this story but I'll see what you guys

32:37

think as well. Now this is apparently a 20

32:39

year old patent from Nintendo or a patent, however

32:41

you like to say it, that

32:43

appears to show a Nintendo 64

32:46

like console that appears

32:48

to sport a DVD drive. Any

32:51

takers on this one? Oh no, I love

32:53

this idea. This makes me think of some

32:55

sort of prototype that they were working on

32:58

because by the looks of it, it's a

33:00

standalone system. It's not. It's like

33:03

they probably used a Nintendo 64

33:05

motherboard and just kind of

33:07

connected the DVD drive to it. But I

33:09

think this is probably the GameCube

33:13

in some form. Yes. Because

33:17

that used DVDs but many discs

33:19

which held 1.8 GB I believe.

33:24

Yes, still not enough for a lot of games. No. But

33:27

again, most Nintendo games, if not

33:29

all of them, all came on one disc.

33:32

So I think for them they were happy with

33:34

that. Well they had some

33:36

piracy devices. There was

33:38

the CD64 as well

33:41

which would do backups of a

33:43

huge CD-ROM attached to the bottom

33:45

and you'd have your car in

33:47

there and you'd be able to

33:49

put the images onto

33:51

the CD. I don't know if

33:54

it was DVD too early then.

33:56

I don't know if I've got my timelines

33:58

messed up and also with... was and

34:00

created what 96 97

34:03

I believe and that was made by Phillips

34:05

and Sony I think there is

34:08

just the an advanced CD of course just

34:10

differently as or I'm assuming

34:12

some sort of nano range I'm

34:16

now confusing myself now. Do

34:18

you think that would have been a

34:21

more of a deal with Phillips

34:23

then? Nintendo have a habit of

34:26

using their previous systems to prototype

34:28

their next one because Mario

34:30

3 was the prototype to Mario World

34:32

and then we end up getting Mario

34:34

All-Stars was the FX

34:37

chip was the prototype to Mario

34:40

64 and you

34:42

got to remember the GameCube was prototype the

34:44

controller the Wii controller was prototyped for the

34:46

this I can't even talk now. The GameCube

34:48

and the Wii were basically the same system

34:50

under the hardware. Exactly

34:52

and so Nintendo have a habit of just using

34:55

their own systems to test their new system so

34:57

I think this is exactly what that was. Well

35:00

I'm looking at this and apparently because this is

35:02

where the story to me kind of gets a

35:04

little bit confusing because there's only two sources on

35:07

this story although they're both credible sources one

35:09

of them is Game Rant which

35:11

is obviously a very well-known website which is the one

35:14

we're looking at right now and I'm

35:16

looking through the article here and basically the story is that

35:18

a Nintendo patent from 20

35:20

years ago has just surfaced.

35:23

Now the thing is neither of the

35:25

articles I've seen actually say where it's a

35:27

surfaced or kind of what the sources on this

35:30

story. It wasn't the Giga leak was it? Well

35:33

that's what I was looking at I was like is has

35:35

this come from like a new leak from

35:37

Nintendo and obviously you think that we probably

35:39

hear about that but also the other sources

35:41

is MSM. So you think that

35:43

is you know it's a pretty credible news site msm.com and

35:46

they've picked up on this as well but it just

35:48

kind of struck me that there's an image here of

35:51

what appears to be a kind

35:53

of a square looking system maybe something

35:55

that looks a bit like maybe an

35:58

Apple Pippin or a Sega Saturn. in

36:00

terms of forms like that. That's a Dreamcast. Yeah,

36:03

or it could be a slightly chunkier Dreamcast. It's

36:06

got four ports on the front. And is

36:08

it got some German in there as well?

36:10

Yes, which I'm looking at. The

36:13

thing that stands out to me is it's

36:15

a boxy system and it's got a

36:17

Nintendo 64 controller plugged into it. There

36:19

appears to be a slot on the front for

36:21

what looks like a memory card. They're called a

36:23

cassette port. That's how accurate CRT is, isn't it?

36:27

Yeah, well, a cassette in a lot of

36:29

languages is interchangeable for cartridge. So

36:31

it looks like it's some kind of very

36:33

thin cartridge format there. But yeah, it looks

36:36

like the main storage method is on this

36:38

figure here, it says DVD Lathwork. And

36:41

I did the translation what Lathwork means, and

36:43

that means storage disk. It

36:45

could be like the Nintendo PlayStation,

36:47

you know? Do

36:51

you think Philips might have actually kind of said

36:53

to Nintendo, look, we're working on this, you know,

36:56

you didn't want to do the CD, but let's have a look at

36:58

the DVD. Wasn't

37:01

it Sony who did the DVD, wasn't it?

37:03

It was a Sony Forma, I believe. Except

37:06

the reason it was in the PlayStation 2. So

37:09

whether... It's interesting, the timing of this,

37:11

I reckon this patent's from 2001. So

37:15

that would have put this, you know, a good few years after the N64, but

37:18

just before the GameCube came onto the market,

37:20

it was around like November 2001 from

37:22

memory. So yeah, like

37:25

you said, Gareth, it looks like it could be more in

37:27

line as a prototype GameCube, really. But

37:30

interesting to see that N64 controller and

37:32

full-size DVDs in this

37:34

pattern that's apparently come from somewhere

37:36

we don't know where. It's

37:39

just about to be internet this week. So it's

37:41

interesting. Oh, we love leaks. Yeah,

37:43

we do. That's the thing. I mean,

37:45

that's the big thing for me is, because you mentioned

37:47

there, Ravi, how would that change things? Because, I mean,

37:50

the PlayStation 2 was on the market already for a

37:52

year at this stage. Admittedly, you know, still in

37:54

2001, it was quite hard to get hold of. But

37:57

if the GameCube or the N64... in-between

38:00

system. I'm thinking something like

38:02

the Sega Neptune or the Atari

38:05

Jaguar 2. It was weird when they released

38:07

the N64. I do remember a lot

38:09

of what

38:11

they're still using

38:13

carts. Obviously that

38:15

was disproved later on with some of the

38:17

absolutely amazing titles on there and what they

38:20

could fit on it. A lot of developers

38:22

left like Final Fantasy. Yeah when that first

38:24

came out it's like what they're using carts

38:26

but also piracy as well maybe

38:28

that could have been more rampant

38:30

on there. Yeah so I mean

38:32

DVDs are still quite hard to pirate at that

38:35

stage but obviously we kind of you know CDs

38:37

were easily clickable so I guess the new DVDs

38:39

wouldn't be long until they're before copying them everywhere

38:41

but it would be interesting if they released that

38:43

whether it was just to prove a concept or

38:46

something but how weird would that have been if

38:48

they released basically an N64 the DVD drive in

38:50

2001? Joe would have just

38:53

gone mad. Conker's Fur

38:55

Day with full FMV and all

38:58

that air. Can you imagine that?

39:00

That would definitely be an 18-move.

39:02

Even more swearing in it. They

39:05

wouldn't have the Banjo-Kazooie language would

39:09

they? I was one

39:11

of the few people that actually weighed it for the N64 and

39:14

I got it just as it dropped

39:16

to 150 pounds and I'm glad

39:18

I did but so many people didn't weigh it

39:20

and this is what I think gave the PlayStation

39:22

such an advantage because especially here

39:24

in Europe the N64 came so far behind

39:26

the PlayStation. Well they ran those adverts didn't

39:28

they? Like oh you know wait for it

39:30

wait for it and then tell everyone then

39:32

for like two years I think in games

39:34

magazines. Oh absolutely I remember the VHS tape

39:36

you got with the first N64 magazine

39:39

and that definitely enticed me

39:41

you know seeing GoldenEye and my mother's

39:43

not a gamer but when she first

39:45

saw GoldenEye she was blowing away. Yeah

39:48

incredible system and I think you know if it had

39:50

come with some kind of optical media now it would

39:52

have obviously changed. Well we have the 64DD or Japan

39:55

has the 64DD. Which

39:57

even now they didn't think it was going to be enough of a success

39:59

to release it well. worldwide so maybe it wouldn't have

40:01

changed its fortunes much and we've probably got the

40:03

GameCube have this had to come along so it

40:05

would have held us back a generation anyway so

40:07

probably a good thing that it didn't but very

40:09

interesting to see that and like I said I'm

40:12

not really sure where it's come from I'm slightly

40:14

skeptical so far but obviously if any

40:16

new stories hopefully more details will emerge in the coming weeks

40:18

so we'll keep you posted on that story so if you

40:20

want to check it out and check out those figures that

40:22

have been released at that little patent that's on there just

40:24

a one pager at the moment but we'll put that and

40:27

of course everything else we talk about you don't have to

40:29

Google around I save you the job I put them

40:31

in the podcast show notes or head to our

40:33

website at theretrorour.com now

40:35

patrons keep it here a couple of big

40:38

new stories to talk about just for you

40:40

a new creepy platformer for the ZX Spectrum

40:42

and an incredible new shoot them up that

40:44

has got one of the best soundtracks I've ever

40:46

heard for the Sega Mega Drive we'll talk about

40:48

that in just a minute before we do let's

40:50

take a quick second to give a massive thank

40:53

you to a regular supporter of the Retro Hour

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podcast and that is our wonderful mates at

40:57

Shopify now Ravi you should know what

40:59

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it means a sale on Shopify that means

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you've made some money on Shopify now it's

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not familiar with Shopify you need to get

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sell anything online or in

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person Shopify is the all-in-one

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now everyone's got some you know kind of side

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a lot of people are doing that right now and

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Shopify is the commerce platform that

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see these in person we talked about it

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last week with Joe you know he goes to

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retro gaming markets where people are using Shopify card

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readers there as well to take the hassle out

41:46

of having to deal with cash I've seen people

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using these at you know craft stores my missus

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goes to for example and even doing

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it online as well Ravi used to be a web

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dev you know trying to set up your own commerce

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platform how much of a nightmare is

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that updating and you know I can't

42:01

offer 24-hour support but Shopify can and

42:03

you know we've also got a big

42:06

kind of cupboard full of books and we've

42:08

had quite a few people asking about the

42:10

books and I think we're going to set

42:12

up our fight with Shopify. Oh it would

42:14

be stupid not to wouldn't it because Shopify

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today and hear a lot more of

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this right

43:13

well thank you so much for checking out the news

43:15

this week thank you Gareth for stepping in as well

43:17

for Joe any time now can I go now am

43:20

I free to leave yeah I think I think go

43:22

back to what you're doing now Gareth you're off the

43:24

hook yeah you've been

43:26

anytime guys anytime and

43:29

stay tuned because we have got an

43:31

incredible guest on the podcast next celebrating

43:33

classic apple max apple leeches go way

43:35

back in the day apple twos as

43:37

well with our special guest the Macintosh

43:39

librarian she's next on the retro hour

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podcast away today with a Macintosh

44:53

librarian a fog and she rubs

44:55

it. Absolutely awesome Shadow all about

44:57

the mark and you know men

44:59

don't have a bit much and

45:01

is is gonna focus on some

45:04

of the educational specs a month.

45:06

Both are some of the earth

45:08

or reduce your side of the

45:10

Apple offering system and also machines

45:12

are so how you don't take

45:14

some. Doing great! Thanks for having

45:16

on or his grades. Our view on

45:19

Under you probably heard on the Retro

45:21

before we always ask what's your first

45:23

computer experience My first computer experience was.

45:26

Probably using the Apple two

45:28

e. Over at my

45:30

elementary school and kindergarten and

45:33

in first grade we harder

45:35

to. He. Computers that are the

45:37

green and. Than the

45:39

monochrome green black monitors and

45:42

playing Oregon Trail and number

45:44

Month Yours And ah, Her.

45:46

Attica. I probably mispronounced

45:49

that, but that the stats apple too

45:51

easy or my first. Love.

45:53

Soccer. to a the an experience to

45:56

us because we didn't have any and he

45:58

monks in our schools in the You

46:00

know BBC micros

46:02

stuff like that So

46:04

essentially what we had is in each of

46:06

the classrooms We would have to Apple

46:09

to ease sometimes the nicer classrooms

46:12

had a 2gs in them so

46:15

there would usually be I Missed

46:18

have been some school funding. I do

46:20

have a video about How

46:23

Apple's gotten to school, but it was essentially

46:25

just two computers They were networked together through

46:27

Apple talk and it would pull software

46:30

from the local network and there would be

46:32

a selection of games and So

46:34

it would be like during recess or

46:37

something We could

46:39

play outside, but I think on Fridays. They

46:41

would give us the opportunity to Jump

46:44

onto Oregon Trail and have fun and

46:46

since it was networked everyone was sharing

46:48

the same image So

46:51

you could see when people died you can

46:54

see people's gravestones from other

46:56

people so you can see like hair lies Fat

46:59

head or something and we would just all start

47:01

cracking up It's interesting about how the the Apple

47:04

machines got into the classrooms in America's

47:06

like Ravi said over here we had the you know

47:08

that the BBC and literacy project where it was Yeah,

47:11

be a con BBC micros and a con

47:13

Archimedes another Steve Jobs was a

47:15

big supporter of having his machines in education

47:17

There was a program called them kids can't

47:20

wait. I believe that's how a lot of

47:22

them got into American classrooms, right? Yeah Yeah,

47:24

that's correct. Yeah, that was something

47:26

that you know when I started my Channel

47:29

and you know, the reason why I got

47:31

into making videos was the

47:33

Apple computers in schools My parents were

47:35

teachers and I grew up

47:38

with Apple computers and I was always wondering why

47:40

why why are there so many Apple

47:42

computers? in school, especially in the 90s in

47:44

America and It turns

47:47

out there was a program that Apple

47:49

pushed forward and it was part Lobbying

47:53

program lobbying senators in California

47:57

Lobbying other legislators to push for

48:00

essentially a tax incentive to

48:03

where Apple would

48:05

essentially get back in

48:07

taxes the amount of money that costs

48:09

for an Apple IIe. So essentially

48:11

the government was paying Apple to

48:14

give computers to the school.

48:16

That's how the kind of the law

48:18

worked and they made it to where

48:22

what they tried to do is it was school

48:24

participated each, I think it's

48:26

each classroom got an Apple IIe. So

48:29

it was just one per

48:31

classroom but that was enough to

48:33

where it sparked other

48:35

teachers getting it. Now we have a

48:37

computer sometimes it was that school's first

48:40

computer so that was their entry

48:42

point and that

48:44

program kind of spearheaded

48:46

into or created

48:48

a bunch of Apple heads here in the

48:50

United States that kind of made

48:53

us all used to the concept of

48:55

Apple computers. I mean there were some

48:57

things in common like for example I

48:59

remember using the logo programming

49:02

language on the BBC Micro at school

49:04

and also having a we had like

49:06

a physical like a little robotic turtle

49:08

that were kind of plot coordinates and

49:10

it move around the floor and did you use logo as

49:12

well because I know that was on the Apple IIe wasn't

49:14

it in the early minutes. Yeah so I'm first of

49:17

all I'm jealous that you guys got the robots.

49:19

Oh yeah that's very cool. That

49:21

is really cool I've seen I

49:24

actually saw them at VCF West

49:26

but yes logo was another

49:30

way that we use computer we had computer lab

49:33

I think about to like second and third grade

49:35

at my school and in that room they would

49:37

have you know it was kitted out with like 25 30 Apple

49:39

IIGS and 25 or 30 Apple IIGS and

49:41

there you know they

49:43

would teach us

49:47

logo and what logo was

49:49

is essentially a very simple

49:52

scripting program that allowed you

49:54

to to draw shapes

49:56

on a screen to draw lines it

49:58

was a great way for

50:01

teaching kids how to program

50:03

and think programmatically. And I

50:05

do have a video on

50:08

my YouTube channel, and I can

50:10

talk to a librarian. I'm going

50:12

to plug right there. But all

50:14

about the logo and how Seymour

50:16

Papert, who was a researcher

50:19

in education and computers, and how

50:21

he thought of this

50:23

logo concept so that he could help

50:26

kids think about how to think

50:29

mathematically. To not be afraid of

50:31

math, was really what it was

50:33

all about. Not be afraid of

50:35

programming. And he

50:37

saw that computers were a

50:39

great way to get kids

50:42

excited about, you know, we're

50:44

not just, you know, two plus two

50:46

equals four, it's not just arithmetic. And now

50:48

it's, oh cool, you actually

50:50

can draw awesome shapes on a screen. You

50:52

can make cool rainbow art and

50:55

make it look nice. And it was actually one

50:58

of the first times where I personally got to

51:01

feel like I could make something happen on

51:03

a TV screen. That's something

51:06

that we take for granted now. We all

51:08

have monitors and screens and whatnot, but you

51:11

know back in the 90s and late

51:13

80s, you know, that unless

51:16

you're in a TV production house or

51:18

you were into computers, especially as a

51:20

kid, you know, seeing something

51:22

that you can create on a screen

51:24

that's unique and kind of expressing your

51:26

own creativity through logo is something

51:29

very powerful. I think one

51:31

of the first times that I used a Mac was

51:34

at college actually. And it

51:36

was, you know, those G

51:38

free towers and they

51:41

just had logic audio on

51:43

there. Do you think like software

51:46

has kind of driven the

51:48

use of creativity for the Macs in

51:51

educational settings? I

51:53

think so. I think that because

51:56

Macintosh hardware is

51:59

Apple computers, you know, your Macintosh

52:01

software is only historically

52:03

for Apple software

52:05

and that kind of helped

52:08

software developers hone their

52:10

software for that specific hardware. So

52:12

like your G3 Mac with that

52:15

sound software, you know, you're getting

52:18

folks that are a little

52:20

bit creative. They don't really want some folks.

52:24

They may be intimidated by Windows and

52:26

the command line. They see an Apple

52:28

computer and they see something easy. They

52:30

see something friendly and at

52:32

least from what I've

52:35

seen, you know, a lot of people feel

52:37

like a Macintosh is something that works with

52:40

you and works to meet

52:42

your needs rather than you are trying

52:44

to force it to do something. And

52:47

I think that's why a lot

52:50

of creatives kind of

52:52

leaned more towards Apple

52:54

computers. And it feels a

52:56

bit more professional as well in the

52:59

creative world with stuff like desktop publishing

53:01

and, you know, looking

53:04

at an office you'd often see an Apple

53:07

like in the 90s office in the corner. It

53:09

would be used as the kind of creative machine.

53:12

Yeah, especially in the 90s, Apple

53:14

under CEO John Scully

53:17

and John Louis Gassé, you

53:21

know, after Jobs was out,

53:24

they really pushed desktop

53:26

publishing, Apple's focus in the

53:28

90s, which is kind of my, you know, that's

53:30

when I grew up with Macs. So I grew up

53:32

with this kind of non Steve

53:35

Jobsian Macs, so to

53:37

speak. But they really pushed on the

53:40

desktop publishing because that's where the profit margins

53:42

were. But also, you

53:44

know, you're making money with

53:46

your computer, you want to invest in something

53:48

that, again, just like I said,

53:51

you don't want something that you're going to have to

53:53

fight against. You want something that

53:55

works, you want the software to be

53:57

compatible, you don't want to worry if

53:59

you're motherboard or if you have

54:01

enough memory for such and

54:04

such software. If you have the latest

54:06

Mac it's going to be

54:08

compatible with Illustrator or

54:10

with CorelDRAW

54:12

or whatever the publishing software they use at

54:14

the time. But yeah

54:17

Apple had some really innovative displays also

54:19

in the 90s. I know we're not

54:24

on camera but actually in my room right

54:26

now I have a really

54:28

massive 18-inch monochrome

54:31

display from 1989.

54:33

It's an Apple

54:35

two-page display. That takes about

54:37

three people to list that does it? Yeah

54:39

no it's really heavy. Easily

54:43

it's a hundred pounds I think.

54:45

I haven't listed it. I definitely

54:47

got help when I picked it

54:49

up at VCF Southwest. It's

54:52

meant to show two eight

54:55

and a half by eleven pages side

54:58

by side. As kind of a wissy wig

55:01

what you see is what you get situation to

55:03

where that was made for magazine

55:06

editing, desktop publishing, writing

55:09

newsletters and other types

55:11

of advertisements because it

55:14

was special to be able to actually move

55:19

and typeface change fonts, move stuff around

55:21

and actually see what the final

55:23

product is going to be without having to do a

55:25

lot of zooming. Yeah I mean we take

55:27

that for granted today but it was very

55:30

special at retirement. It's interesting kind of Apple's

55:32

relationship to DTP because that was where I

55:34

first encountered a Mac. My aunt who ran

55:36

a print shop I remember her using a

55:39

Quark Express and that was the

55:41

first time I ever got my hands on a

55:43

Macintosh but obviously in that era like the late

55:45

80s to the mid 90s so many different systems

55:47

you know you generally use a different machine at

55:49

home to what you'd use at school or at

55:51

work you know because there's a lot of platforms

55:53

around then and I'm quite interested in what you

55:55

said Dan about you know obviously that that kind of post

55:57

job zero before he came back I

56:00

know Apple had quite a trouble time like a

56:02

lot of companies did in the mid 90s. Is

56:05

kind of the max something that

56:07

stayed in the American education system

56:10

or when Apple were

56:12

pretty close to bankruptcy at one point? Did it

56:14

kind of go the way of the PC? What

56:16

kind of happened there from your memory? Yeah.

56:19

So it was a little definitely

56:21

a hard time for Apple, especially

56:23

in the late 90s. From

56:26

the schools that I

56:28

went to, primarily even

56:31

towards the iMac, they specifically they

56:33

stayed with Apple. I think you

56:36

have the infrastructure for Apple Talk,

56:38

you have the legacy software with

56:41

even from

56:43

the Apple 2GS. That

56:46

was something that kind of kept

56:48

schools grounded into the

56:51

Apple ecosystem. 2GS was

56:53

a kind of a reimagining

56:55

of the Apple 2E, but with

56:57

a new color,

57:00

just higher faster

57:02

graphics, faster processor, basically redone

57:04

everything. And with

57:07

that machine, it also had backwards compatibility. So

57:09

you can still load your old floppy games.

57:11

And actually most of the software that we

57:13

ran was just old Apple 2E games

57:15

running on this now new computer that

57:17

came out in I believe 91. So

57:21

the Apple 2 line was still being

57:23

pulled into the 90s. Eventually

57:27

around like 94, 95, that's when

57:29

we start seeing the low

57:32

cost Mac start to get introduced.

57:34

And those are typically the Macintosh.

57:37

Well, you usually see them as LC, like the LC

57:39

575, the LC 3. Those

57:43

computers were all

57:46

over schools at home. I

57:48

had one at home myself. They

57:50

were that they were low cost. They

57:53

were easy to get. They were an all

57:55

in one little package that you could easily

57:58

put your floppy disk in, instant

58:00

messenger running on it if you wanted to and

58:02

chat with your friends. It

58:05

was kind of like the iMac before the iMac, just beige

58:08

and not as

58:10

glamorous. Eventually

58:14

schools unfortunately for Apple

58:16

and once

58:19

the iMac came out and Apple kind of

58:21

positioned themselves as more of a premium brand

58:23

and more of a brand

58:26

that's more for creatives and

58:28

their marketing more towards the high

58:30

end with the G3s, with

58:33

the iMac. I noticed

58:36

with my parents being teachers, I noticed that

58:38

they were starting to swap out their legacy

58:41

Apple machines or PCs. A

58:47

lot of that unfortunately was

58:49

also led by just the

58:51

business industry. When

58:54

you go out into the

58:56

workforce, most

58:58

of the time here in the States, you're

59:00

not given a Mac for your work PC.

59:03

It's that, it's a PC. You're given a

59:05

little think pad. Unless you work in

59:08

marketing or advertising or something. Right,

59:11

right. In order

59:13

to train the workforce, I

59:16

think they were starting to get away from

59:18

a lot of

59:20

what I feel is the more creative

59:22

side, like a logo. They were

59:25

getting away from that, getting away from

59:27

the entertainment software like Oregon Trail and

59:30

moving more towards teaching kids how to

59:32

use a computer for the

59:34

sake of writing.

59:36

Microsoft Office. Right,

59:39

the boring stuff. I

59:42

think it's more of, personally speaking,

59:44

if you want somebody to be

59:46

interested and really big and

59:49

excited about computers and you

59:52

want somebody to understand how it works, that

59:54

you should try to get them excited. Like

59:58

the logo thing. Let's actually get a kid. excited

1:00:00

and actually can manipulate stuff on screen,

1:00:03

not just write a

1:00:05

one-page story on Microsoft Word

1:00:07

or make a chart with Excel. I

1:00:10

was wondering how you got your knowledge

1:00:12

about the Macs. Did you read any

1:00:14

magazines? Were you ripping

1:00:16

them apart as well? Because looking

1:00:19

at Macs, they're kind of out of all

1:00:21

the computers. They look like ones which are

1:00:23

like, don't touch my insides. Well, you know,

1:00:26

of ones you kind of

1:00:28

take them apart quite easily. Yeah,

1:00:30

when I was younger, I would

1:00:34

always flip through my

1:00:36

friends at elementary school, Macworld

1:00:38

magazine. But

1:00:41

magazines were a little

1:00:44

bit harder to come by, I guess. I

1:00:46

grew up in a smaller town, so we didn't have like

1:00:49

a big bookstore or anything. So

1:00:51

usually what I did was get

1:00:54

as a sneaker net, right, get

1:00:56

floppy disks with like demos and

1:00:58

stuff from my friend Kyle

1:01:00

from down the street or some of my

1:01:03

elementary school friends. You

1:01:05

know, at school, they'd bring some shareware games

1:01:08

and we would play them during recess. And

1:01:10

that would be how I learned about the new

1:01:12

software. You know, my friend, his

1:01:15

dad was an attorney and he had like, he

1:01:17

would always be getting the latest and greatest

1:01:19

Mac. So I would go to

1:01:21

his house and there would be a

1:01:23

Power Mac tower. I was like, oh, I didn't

1:01:25

even know they came in that shape. And

1:01:29

I just had my LC575 and I

1:01:32

was trying to, you know, expand my

1:01:34

knowledge. So then that started the whole like, okay,

1:01:36

how do I upgrade my Mac? How

1:01:38

do you upgrade the memory? Those

1:01:40

towers were easier to take apart, weren't

1:01:42

they? Because they were just a latch

1:01:44

that you'd pull and they would all

1:01:47

open up. But I also,

1:01:49

you know, I hate to admit, but I did

1:01:51

go, my parents eventually did

1:01:53

move to the PC route because

1:01:55

that's what they ended up moving to in school. So

1:01:57

I think by the time I

1:01:59

was. than 14 or so.

1:02:01

That's when we got a PC

1:02:04

at home. And that's when I

1:02:07

started learning, okay, how do you open

1:02:09

a PC and IBM Aptiva. And so

1:02:12

I learned, you know, I'm not

1:02:14

just all Apple actually did

1:02:16

have an Amiga too when I was younger. Nice.

1:02:19

Good to hear. Yeah. I

1:02:22

think in that regard, if the Amiga and the Mac have

1:02:24

kind of got, you know, a lot in common in terms

1:02:26

of the the fan base have both got, you know, a

1:02:29

very loyal community around them. Obviously

1:02:31

the Mac was much more successful

1:02:33

and continues to this day. And it's

1:02:36

great to be, you know, you've kind of been a lifelong Apple

1:02:39

fan as well. And tell us about

1:02:41

kind of the process of deciding to

1:02:44

document this stuff then. So how

1:02:46

did Macintosh librarian become a

1:02:48

thing? And why did you decide to start

1:02:50

a YouTube channel and show off some of

1:02:53

this classic Apple hardware and software? Yeah.

1:02:55

So I think like a lot of nerds, we

1:02:57

want to relive our

1:03:00

our retro past right now

1:03:02

we were adults, we want to start

1:03:04

collecting, we want to get

1:03:06

stuff that we couldn't afford back then when

1:03:09

we were younger. Like I said, my friend was

1:03:12

his dad was an attorney and so he was

1:03:14

able to get these nice Macs. And now when

1:03:17

I was older, I was like, okay, well, I

1:03:20

want to get back into

1:03:22

it. You know, I was into PCs, I

1:03:24

was, I had Macs as like

1:03:26

my normal everyday machine. But then I want

1:03:29

to say this is about six

1:03:31

years ago or so I started looking

1:03:34

into classic Macintosh

1:03:36

is again, you know, trying to find

1:03:39

my old machines that I had when I was younger. I

1:03:43

bought a Macintosh classic and

1:03:46

started to I wanted to learn how to re

1:03:48

solder it. So I did that and

1:03:51

I was, you know, felt pretty proud of

1:03:53

myself. It wasn't the best soldering job. But and

1:03:56

then I kind of went from there of like, Okay, what

1:03:58

else is out there? And I realized that there was a

1:04:01

great community of folks out there like you mentioned.

1:04:04

I had been listening to the G.A.L.L.S.

1:04:07

podcast and to the

1:04:09

Amigos retro gaming podcast

1:04:12

as well. So I was into the Amigos stuff and

1:04:14

that was kind of some of my

1:04:16

nostalgia. There wasn't actually too much nostalgic

1:04:19

Mac stuff, I guess, like back six years

1:04:21

ago. And it wasn't until I saw

1:04:24

Mac 84 Steve stream or he would stream,

1:04:28

he would have videos and use them

1:04:30

in the past tense, but he still does now. And

1:04:34

I realized that, oh, there's an awesome

1:04:36

community out there, YouTube

1:04:38

and forums like 68k MLA

1:04:40

forum. And I

1:04:46

started asking people questions. Then I,

1:04:49

I wanted to kind of, you know,

1:04:52

throw my hat in the ring on YouTube. I've, I

1:04:55

used to fly drones and

1:04:59

I loved editing videos and I loved kind

1:05:01

of putting a story together. And

1:05:04

I wanted to emerge

1:05:07

my kind of photography

1:05:09

hobby, my computer hobby and

1:05:11

my video editing hobby altogether

1:05:15

into the

1:05:17

Macintosh library and YouTube channel. I mean, for

1:05:19

me, it's fascinating to watch your videos because

1:05:21

I'm someone who kind of came really into

1:05:24

the Apple world in the early 2000s. I

1:05:26

mean, I was kind of aware of, you

1:05:28

know, kind of what was going on in

1:05:30

the 90s, but I didn't really, you know,

1:05:32

get my first Mac until 2001. So kind

1:05:34

of looking back at kind of the earlier

1:05:36

machines, because there was quite a lot of

1:05:38

different models and, you know, it was quite

1:05:40

complex. Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah. And

1:05:44

you make your channel really accessible as well. I mean, for

1:05:46

people who haven't checked out your channel yet, obviously, we'll link

1:05:48

it up in the show notes. I think

1:05:50

one thing that most people are drawn to

1:05:52

initially is your AI assistant,

1:05:54

you actually have a little helper

1:05:56

on the channel called Mackey. So

1:05:58

tell us about. and kind of

1:06:01

why you decided to have Mackie on

1:06:03

the channel. Yeah, so

1:06:05

yes, Mackie is very

1:06:08

popular. I don't want him to upstage me,

1:06:10

but no, he's, I have a

1:06:13

little AI sidekick named Mackie,

1:06:15

and he's not really AI,

1:06:18

he's a sentient Macintosh. He's

1:06:20

real. But I

1:06:24

wanted to make a YouTube channel,

1:06:26

so for anyone that hasn't seen my

1:06:28

channel, I do go

1:06:30

over kind of the history of different

1:06:33

aspects of Apple, go

1:06:35

into some of the Macintosh hardware, but

1:06:37

I also wanted to make

1:06:39

it a little bit more me, I guess.

1:06:43

I wanted to have something that was

1:06:45

a little whimsical, something

1:06:48

that was cute, something that was fun,

1:06:50

and something that would make people smile.

1:06:54

And I originally thought

1:06:56

of having a puppet sidekick, like

1:06:58

an actual muppet, that

1:07:00

I would make out of felt and have a

1:07:02

talking computer, and then I realized

1:07:06

that I could actually

1:07:08

program one using hypercard

1:07:12

and some video

1:07:14

editing tricks as well to

1:07:17

actually get a computer to talk and

1:07:19

be my sidekick. Mackie

1:07:22

is kind of a

1:07:25

personification of a

1:07:27

young kid that's really interested in things.

1:07:30

He's always asking questions, he's always wanting

1:07:32

to play a computer game. In

1:07:35

a way, he's kind of like all of us were when

1:07:37

we were younger, in the

1:07:39

90s and 80s, just wanting to play

1:07:41

games, just wanting to learn about everything. He

1:07:44

makes the channel, from what I hear from a

1:07:46

lot of fans, it's something

1:07:49

that they can, it's a retro channel that they can

1:07:51

watch with their kittens, and even their kids are

1:07:53

interested in it. I prefer

1:07:55

him than Siri and Cortana, definitely. I

1:07:59

would love to. get and it's

1:08:01

something that we're working on internally is

1:08:03

a actually a Mackey

1:08:05

that can actually respond to

1:08:08

you talking to him live

1:08:10

at a con and

1:08:12

stuff. So that's something in the

1:08:14

works. Step aside chat

1:08:16

GPT Mackey is coming for you. Well

1:08:21

you also cover the next

1:08:23

systems on your channel

1:08:25

as well obviously Steve Jobs company after

1:08:27

he left Apple in the 80s and

1:08:29

obviously there's a big kind of crossover

1:08:31

with the Mac world there when Jobs

1:08:33

came back to Apple in the late

1:08:36

90s and obviously Next Step went

1:08:38

on to form the what is now the current

1:08:40

Mac operating system for the last 20 odd years.

1:08:42

So I mean when's your interest in Next come

1:08:44

from then and tell us

1:08:46

kind of how that relates to your interest then

1:08:49

and is getting hold of that hardware

1:08:51

a little bit more difficult than the Apple machines because

1:08:53

I know they were very expensive when they were on

1:08:55

sale. Yeah they were

1:08:58

they were very expensive machines.

1:09:01

But yeah I think I

1:09:03

wanted to you know there's a whole

1:09:05

while I am interested a lot in the non Steve

1:09:09

Jobs Mac but I do like the

1:09:11

Apple too but when I grew up

1:09:13

it was the 90s Steve Jobs was

1:09:15

kind of a little bit of an

1:09:17

enigma. He wasn't at Apple but you

1:09:20

know there's still rumblings of this man

1:09:23

Steve Jobs and he was off to this

1:09:25

other company called Next. He

1:09:27

was investing in Pixar. He was

1:09:29

doing other stuff and

1:09:32

when he came back it

1:09:34

was a really big deal and some of my

1:09:36

nerd friends were talking about it and I was

1:09:38

like who is this guy and

1:09:40

then that's when kind of

1:09:42

sparked my curiosity of like okay he's he's

1:09:45

you know he helped found the company

1:09:47

and everything while he

1:09:49

was gone you know he was creating these

1:09:52

mysterious computers that were

1:09:54

used for college and

1:09:56

research and you're

1:09:58

really marketed at the higher end

1:10:01

technological user. And

1:10:05

for next machines are

1:10:07

68K based machines. Just,

1:10:11

you know, they have a lot of custom

1:10:13

chips on them. They have a lot of RAM. They're

1:10:16

kitted out to where you can have a

1:10:18

lot of extra slots for extra cards, you know,

1:10:20

even though they didn't really make that many extra

1:10:22

cards for them. But I

1:10:25

was lucky enough to have a

1:10:28

friend that was nearby and she,

1:10:30

for a very generous

1:10:33

price, donated the next

1:10:36

queue and two next labs and

1:10:39

two giant monitors

1:10:42

to the channel. And I kind of

1:10:44

have a separate room. It's

1:10:46

kind of a built-in office that I called the Jennifer

1:10:49

Library Annex, which is all

1:10:51

my next machines. And, you

1:10:54

know, it's great seeing

1:10:57

essentially what is kind of like an

1:10:59

early revision, early,

1:11:01

early, early revision of what we use

1:11:04

now in our modern Macs. Yeah,

1:11:07

that's an interesting thing to look back at as well,

1:11:09

isn't it, that kind of next step Mac

1:11:11

OS 10 kind of transition. I mean, I've done

1:11:14

a video myself on my channel about the Mac OS

1:11:16

10 Cheetah, like the

1:11:18

initial version of it and the server, you

1:11:20

know, and Rhapsody as well. It's all interesting

1:11:23

to look at, isn't it, that intersection of

1:11:25

how next step became Mac

1:11:27

OS. Right, and there was

1:11:29

a little bit of time where that may

1:11:32

not have happened. I think there is, well,

1:11:34

I haven't used too much BOS, but

1:11:37

that was an alternative Jean-Louis

1:11:40

Gasset, who

1:11:42

was working on Apple, made

1:11:45

his own company B, and that

1:11:47

was being touted as

1:11:49

possibly the next Mac OS.

1:11:52

You know, after OS 9

1:11:54

and they wanted to revamp it,

1:11:56

you know, what was next, what was gonna be the next

1:11:59

revamp. operating system, and next

1:12:03

ended up winning out, which I,

1:12:05

you know, we're still using. There's

1:12:08

code base of next

1:12:12

step still being used today in Mac

1:12:14

OS and on iPhones and all the

1:12:16

iOS systems. And

1:12:18

so I think they made the right choice. I

1:12:21

think that I think

1:12:23

that I'm actually dreams about the beebox

1:12:25

still. I

1:12:27

like Haiku, which is kind of a spiritual successor

1:12:30

to BOS. You know, I use that in a

1:12:32

couple of my machines, but yeah, that original beebox,

1:12:34

the hardware with those blinking lights on, you know,

1:12:36

people haven't seen that. They're, you know, check it

1:12:39

out on YouTube. It's like a beautiful machine. So

1:12:41

that was an exciting time in computing all these

1:12:43

different platforms and just kind of, you know, not

1:12:45

knowing kind of what would make it and what

1:12:48

wouldn't. Right. Yeah, I think I,

1:12:50

you know, I was a kid during

1:12:52

all this time. So these were computers

1:12:54

that you would read

1:12:56

it out in Mac world, or you would

1:12:59

hear glimmers of when you're at the computer store,

1:13:01

or you might see a poster for it. But

1:13:04

even at like your normal best

1:13:06

buy computers, you're not going to see a

1:13:08

next machine. That was mail order. You had

1:13:10

to be in California to get that fancy

1:13:12

stuff. So it's nice being able

1:13:14

to actually have it now, even

1:13:17

though it's obsolete. It's still nice to have. And

1:13:20

there was also those clones as

1:13:22

well, which are really interesting because

1:13:24

everybody, you know, looks at a Mac and thinks

1:13:26

it's a Mac, but then suddenly

1:13:28

there's a power computing machine or

1:13:31

something like that. Did you have

1:13:33

any clones back in the days and were you

1:13:35

aware of them? I actually did

1:13:37

not know when I was younger that

1:13:39

clones were a thing. I

1:13:43

know that, you know, I would go

1:13:45

to CompUSA with my dad and

1:13:48

we would look at the computers and I don't

1:13:50

think I put two and two together that some

1:13:52

of these computers that we're looking at were Mac

1:13:54

clones. It wasn't

1:13:56

until I was older doing research

1:13:59

on. you know, the history

1:14:01

of Apple, especially during the 90s, that I

1:14:03

realized that, oh yeah, during OS8,

1:14:07

there was a

1:14:10

lot of clones, and Apple kind

1:14:12

of opened up their platform to

1:14:16

be accessible to clone manufacturers.

1:14:19

So Motorola, Power Computing

1:14:21

out of Austin, UMAX,

1:14:25

and probably some others I'm forgetting, all

1:14:28

had, you know, they

1:14:30

could develop their own

1:14:32

PowerPC-based Macintosh. And

1:14:36

I think while that was

1:14:38

really good for consumers, and it

1:14:41

made for very accessible

1:14:43

and low-cost Macs, I think

1:14:45

Apple ended up

1:14:48

kind of cannibalizing their own

1:14:50

sales, because they, these

1:14:52

clone manufacturers, and I

1:14:55

have a video on the

1:14:57

Power Computing Clone Machine, you

1:15:00

know, it was easy to

1:15:02

upgrade, it was cheaper, probably

1:15:05

buy it like a thousand dollars or so,

1:15:07

and this was back in the 90s, these

1:15:09

are Clinton dollars, that's a lot of money. And,

1:15:13

you know, they were outperforming

1:15:16

and outclassing the regular

1:15:18

Macs that were for sale, and I

1:15:21

think that was, while

1:15:23

it was great, that more, there were more macOS

1:15:25

users, I think in the

1:15:28

end, Apple's, at the

1:15:30

time, Apple was mostly a hardware company, not

1:15:32

a software company, so they were definitely shooting

1:15:34

themselves in the foot there. Yeah,

1:15:36

they had some really fast, crazy

1:15:39

upgrades, and I actually heard

1:15:41

of them from the Amiga scene, because

1:15:43

Amiga had gone to PowerPC at that

1:15:45

point, and company by Power

1:15:47

Computing kind of moved on to

1:15:49

doing accelerators for the Amiga as

1:15:51

well. Yeah, there was

1:15:54

definitely a parallel path

1:15:56

almost for the Apple

1:15:59

architecture, and some of the Amiga

1:16:01

architecture, you know, both 68k based. And

1:16:04

then there was no, you know, what's after

1:16:06

the 68 060.

1:16:08

Oh, for sure. But you know,

1:16:10

what it 060 was rare

1:16:13

and wasn't really utilized. And then, then

1:16:15

it was power PC, and the

1:16:18

accelerators and upgrade cards

1:16:20

for I have a couple

1:16:23

upgrade cards and Apple develop some

1:16:26

themselves that helps upgrade

1:16:28

some oh for machine with

1:16:31

those sonnets Sonic cards as well. That

1:16:34

came out. I've

1:16:37

seen people with those in their

1:16:39

Amiga 4000 and hacked drivers. And

1:16:42

they're running power PC stuff on there.

1:16:44

It's pretty amazing. It's pretty crazy

1:16:46

what you were able to do back then

1:16:48

because you for

1:16:50

example, the power computing,

1:16:53

power computing computer, so tongue twister,

1:16:56

but that machine originally shipped with,

1:16:59

I believe a 100 megahertz

1:17:01

power PC, but it

1:17:03

had a processor card that essentially kind

1:17:06

of like a PCI card

1:17:08

that you can just pull the processor out. And

1:17:11

then it could accept all

1:17:13

the way up to a

1:17:16

G for processor or a

1:17:18

higher end G three. And

1:17:21

I was able to upgrade my power PC machine

1:17:23

up to to 400 megahertz.

1:17:25

That's great. So that's, that's

1:17:28

actually no 500 megahertz. Oh,

1:17:30

five x five x upgrade, right? If you

1:17:33

had the right card and assured those cards,

1:17:36

it look at the old magazines and you

1:17:38

realize that that card itself would have cost

1:17:40

more than the computer that

1:17:42

you're putting it in. But now you know, you

1:17:44

can find a great deal on eBay or we

1:17:47

could trade and get some of

1:17:49

this power that we could have had. Yeah,

1:17:51

I mean, my favorite, you know, Amiga in

1:17:53

quotes is actually a Mac mini G for

1:17:55

running a an operating system called morphos, which

1:17:57

is kind of a descendant

1:17:59

of the the Amiga OS, so there's definitely

1:18:02

that big crossover there, the PowerPC hardware. One

1:18:06

thing I love in your channel as well is all the modifications

1:18:08

that you do as well. One video that I

1:18:10

loved that you did a few months ago is

1:18:12

when you converted a beige Macintosh

1:18:15

SE30 into a red

1:18:17

Mac case, like a candy apple red

1:18:19

case from macfx.com as well. So these

1:18:21

kind of modifications and stuff that you

1:18:23

did. Tell us about some of your favorite mods that you've

1:18:26

done and any that you've got your eye

1:18:28

on at the moment that you'd like to do in the future. Yeah,

1:18:30

no, that wasn't also a mod.

1:18:33

The MacFX team,

1:18:35

they're a store online. They developed

1:18:37

clear injection molding cases that are

1:18:40

really good reproductions of

1:18:42

old compact

1:18:44

Mac cases. And so I

1:18:47

was lucky enough to get my hands on

1:18:49

all the colors. They have a clear, red, green, and

1:18:52

blue. And I

1:18:56

built out the red one, you swap

1:18:58

out the old yellow case,

1:19:01

still keep the case for a different

1:19:03

project for later. But maybe

1:19:05

retrobriated or something. But then you get

1:19:07

to replace it with

1:19:09

this transparent red

1:19:12

case that's very reminiscent of toys and the

1:19:17

transparent Game Boys and even the

1:19:19

iMac. All

1:19:21

those clear plastics are really big in the 90s.

1:19:23

So it's really awesome to

1:19:25

see folks make

1:19:28

some of this new

1:19:30

hardware for these old machines. And

1:19:34

you know, some of there's been a lot

1:19:37

of other stuff too, like the blue SCSI,

1:19:39

SCSI SD, all

1:19:41

these drive emulators that I'm sure

1:19:43

you guys are familiar with. So

1:19:46

that helps extend the life of

1:19:48

our old machine, get rid

1:19:50

of those spinning platter drives and replace it

1:19:52

with SD cards and

1:19:54

solid state memory and adds

1:19:56

Wi-Fi to it and adds virtual SCSI devices

1:19:58

to where you can and hot

1:20:01

swat CDs from an ISO and all

1:20:04

these neat things that are adding

1:20:06

a lot of creature comfort. A lot of

1:20:09

this wasn't even there just six, five

1:20:11

years ago. We're starting to

1:20:13

see a lot more folks with this

1:20:15

technical knowledge come into the field. Yeah,

1:20:18

I saw your blue

1:20:20

scuzzy video as well

1:20:22

and I've got a 512K and

1:20:25

I'm kind of thinking about hooking

1:20:27

that up with some kind of

1:20:30

hard drive solution but also there

1:20:32

was another scuzzy device, RASSCuzzy and

1:20:35

you had an online connectivity

1:20:37

with that and I thought that

1:20:39

was really cool. Yeah,

1:20:41

the RASSCuzzy project is

1:20:44

now called PyScuzzy but

1:20:47

essentially it lets you use

1:20:49

a Raspberry Pi, even a Raspberry

1:20:51

Pi 4, maybe even 5,

1:20:54

I haven't tested it yet, but to act

1:20:56

as a scuzzy emulator and

1:20:58

it acts as a, you

1:21:00

can have a web demon running

1:21:03

on the Raspberry Pi, you can connect to it with

1:21:06

your PC or your Mac and

1:21:08

modify which image you want loaded,

1:21:11

download files from the web and even

1:21:13

act as a virtual ethernet

1:21:16

card so that it can essentially trick

1:21:19

your Mac to think that it has a scuzzy

1:21:22

ethernet card connected to it but it's

1:21:24

all virtual. So that

1:21:27

project and the BlueScuzzy

1:21:29

project which also now

1:21:32

has integrated a lot of that ethernet emulation

1:21:36

features into it which

1:21:38

is really awesome because the Pi

1:21:40

Zero, Pi Zero W, that

1:21:42

allows people to

1:21:46

use WiFi easily connected

1:21:48

to the BlueScuzzy and

1:21:53

allows people to send files and it

1:21:56

can really, adding WiFi to a computer

1:21:58

from the A's or the NIE's. is

1:22:00

pretty amazing to see. And

1:22:03

I thought it was great that you had the

1:22:05

file sharing in there because that's something really powerful

1:22:09

that other systems don't really have

1:22:11

and really took advantage of

1:22:13

that and you did that in the Basilisk

1:22:17

emulator video as well. Yeah, there's

1:22:19

a lot of Apple had,

1:22:21

thankfully, a lot of, they wanted

1:22:23

their computers to be used in offices

1:22:26

and schools, so they had this Apple

1:22:28

Talk network protocol that allowed,

1:22:31

essentially, it was a token ring network. So

1:22:35

it would, it was slow, but

1:22:37

it allowed the computers to talk to each

1:22:39

other, send files one to

1:22:41

another, allow users to print to one

1:22:43

shared printer. And

1:22:46

there's actually a group of folks now that are

1:22:49

starting a project that

1:22:51

they call, what is

1:22:53

it called, GlobalNet or

1:22:56

GlobalTalk. And it's an

1:22:58

Apple share that's on the internet. And so

1:23:01

a bunch of folks are getting their Macs

1:23:03

connected like a, you know, a

1:23:05

Golan party, but it's online. So that's something I

1:23:07

need to hop into now. I

1:23:09

haven't done it yet, but I think when you

1:23:11

all are listening to this, try to

1:23:13

check out GlobalTalk. You know, it's interesting that

1:23:15

in the last few years, I mean, obviously it's

1:23:17

been, it's been almost 20 years, amazingly, since

1:23:20

Apple started to hop off

1:23:22

the PowerPC platform and transition to

1:23:24

Intel in 2005, 2006. Does

1:23:27

it kind of feel like to you that

1:23:29

there's been a resurgence of maybe nostalgia for

1:23:32

the PowerPC era? Because, I

1:23:34

mean, you know, you've got websites like Macintosh

1:23:36

Garden, for example, which is a great archive

1:23:38

of Mac software. And you can

1:23:40

see there are modern web browsers for PowerPC. There's

1:23:43

one called InterwebPPC, which lets you surf

1:23:45

the web on classic PowerPC.

1:23:47

Macs is also projects like the Sorbet Leopard

1:23:50

operating system, which is basically a bit of

1:23:52

an update for, you know, the Leopard OS

1:23:54

for the PPC. Does it kind of feel

1:23:56

like the PowerPC scene is becoming more

1:23:59

active again recently? and people are more

1:24:01

nostalgic for it? Definitely, definitely.

1:24:04

I think

1:24:06

it's actually the M1 and Apple Silicon

1:24:08

processors. It kind of maybe

1:24:11

reminded some folks that, oh

1:24:13

yeah, at one point Apple was using these kind

1:24:15

of bespoke processors

1:24:18

and they were running, especially

1:24:21

the early Mac OS 10 days, Mac

1:24:25

OS 9, Mac OS 8 with

1:24:28

PowerPC. That's

1:24:30

kind of the sweet spot for a lot

1:24:32

of nostalgia. You're hitting that

1:24:34

early internet time period where

1:24:37

the technology was still nascent and people

1:24:40

were still using

1:24:42

AOL chat rooms and stuff. And I think

1:24:44

there's a lot of, especially for us millennials,

1:24:46

a lot of nostalgia tied around that. And

1:24:51

there's the PowerPC challenge that the

1:24:53

Mac Yack folks put on every

1:24:55

January. And there's

1:24:57

a lot of folks like Dostud

1:25:00

that are still doing a lot

1:25:02

of great upgrades for PowerPC software

1:25:04

machines to try to

1:25:07

keep those machines alive. And I

1:25:10

have a few PowerPC, I have a G5 tower, G4

1:25:14

tower, G3 tower, and the

1:25:17

bubble IMAX, the colored ones. They

1:25:20

are really great machines and it's

1:25:22

nice to, it's a

1:25:25

time when it

1:25:28

was kind of Apple's Renaissance in a way. And

1:25:30

I think a lot of people like that about

1:25:33

Apple. And I think they're kind of

1:25:35

going through a little bit of a Renaissance now, or

1:25:37

they at least were with the M1

1:25:39

people started, once they

1:25:41

dropped Intel, a lot of people started

1:25:43

seeing that kind of revitalization of kind

1:25:46

of how it felt like in the PowerPC era. Yeah,

1:25:49

because it felt then that you obviously, like you said, Apple

1:25:51

had the custom hardware and even the other tagline then was,

1:25:54

think different, which, you know, it

1:25:56

felt like you're using something different to the mainstream, which

1:25:58

like you said with the M1. one M2,

1:26:00

M3 processes, it kind of feels a bit like that's

1:26:02

returned again. I mean, I guess it's more of an

1:26:04

attitude thing, isn't it, with Apple

1:26:06

users in that regard, just kind of having their

1:26:08

own hardware, their own ecosystem and something

1:26:11

to be proud of that's different to the mainstream.

1:26:13

It makes, it definitely differentiates

1:26:17

the user or at least the

1:26:19

product whenever you can. It's hard to put

1:26:22

like an Apple's to Apple's comparison against like

1:26:24

a M3 Mac

1:26:26

versus a you

1:26:28

know, whatever Intel i9. They're

1:26:31

just two separate animals, right?

1:26:34

One's very low power, one's very high power,

1:26:36

blah, blah, blah. And I think

1:26:39

it helps, you know, there's always

1:26:41

a little bit of a smugness with a

1:26:43

lot of Apple users, but

1:26:46

it definitely helps differentiate the

1:26:49

crowd. Will you ever

1:26:51

like do some real gaming

1:26:53

content? Because, you know, there's the Apple

1:26:55

Pippin and I'd love to actually see

1:26:57

Mackey appear on the front of

1:27:00

the computer. I'd be controlled with

1:27:02

a wireless controller, that would be really cool. That

1:27:05

would be awesome. I've been eyeing some

1:27:07

Japanese auction to get my hands on

1:27:09

the Pippin. I've spoken to

1:27:11

a few Pippin fans at

1:27:14

VCF West and I have

1:27:16

some software hookups.

1:27:19

But yes, we have

1:27:21

plans to do some Mackey

1:27:24

plays videos and get

1:27:27

into some more games. Whether it's

1:27:29

Mac related, I also when I

1:27:31

was younger was into Sega

1:27:34

stuff. Yeah, I kind of

1:27:36

want to start incorporating some of that Sega

1:27:38

Genesis, maybe even throw in some of my

1:27:40

old Amiga games in there as well. Well,

1:27:42

you have you have actually done

1:27:44

some gaming on their kind of joking

1:27:47

aside. You've done like,

1:27:49

well, Oregon Trail, but

1:27:52

also the edutainment kind

1:27:55

of software there as well, which is really

1:27:57

important. And I think that stuff really stands

1:28:00

out. out when you're

1:28:02

learning on a computer and you know people

1:28:04

have huge nostalgia for kind of

1:28:07

like edutainment and those kind of titles

1:28:09

as well. Yeah I think

1:28:12

Apple and gaming especially

1:28:14

in the 90s didn't really

1:28:16

go together right? Most people were

1:28:18

gaming on their consoles or something but when

1:28:21

Apple since they were in school you know

1:28:24

a lot of companies were trying to find something

1:28:26

that can not only

1:28:28

be entertaining for a kid but

1:28:30

also help them learn. So

1:28:32

whether that's learning the history

1:28:35

of the American trail

1:28:38

towards the west, the Oregon Trail, or

1:28:40

learning how to type through like

1:28:43

Mavis Beacon or you know

1:28:46

learning math through like Matt

1:28:48

Blesters or number munchers or

1:28:50

word munchers learning English. There's

1:28:52

definitely a lot more edutainment

1:28:56

titles for the Mac which

1:28:58

I find to be you know those

1:29:01

are a lot of my nostalgia growing up

1:29:03

in classroom settings those are

1:29:05

the games that I played on. And of

1:29:07

course the cooler share racing that they had

1:29:09

as well. Yes yes that

1:29:12

was games like Glypha,

1:29:16

Glider, Power

1:29:18

Pete it was like a top-down shooter

1:29:20

game those are some

1:29:22

of my favorite games that were shareware

1:29:24

if not pirate. Yeah there was

1:29:30

a lot of great games. It was nice to see

1:29:32

that there's you know when I was a kid I

1:29:34

thought like oh I'm the only one that knows about

1:29:36

about Glypha for instance which is a

1:29:38

joust clone for the Mac

1:29:40

and you know start doing the YouTube

1:29:43

channel. I have a video that's

1:29:45

all about Glypha which is one

1:29:47

of my favorite games and the

1:29:49

creator of Glypha ends up reaching

1:29:51

out to me he was a

1:29:53

ex-Apple employee and he was saying

1:29:55

he's retired and he's remaking

1:29:57

Glypha for Steam and gave me

1:29:59

a bunch of the skin keys and got

1:30:01

an early preview. It was

1:30:03

really awesome to actually meet your childhood hero

1:30:07

in a way. Well, that's one great

1:30:09

thing about today. The Mac community, I mentioned

1:30:11

Macintosh Garden before. You've also got macintoshrepository.org, which

1:30:13

is a great website. All that software you

1:30:16

may have missed back in the day before

1:30:18

we were all connected is readily available now

1:30:20

to download. But if people are maybe listening

1:30:22

to our chat, and they're thinking, I'd

1:30:25

like to get into this retro Mac scene.

1:30:27

I do find that over here in

1:30:29

the UK, in particular, the PowerPC Macs

1:30:31

are still quite affordable. I mean, you can pick

1:30:33

up a G4 or a G5, generally for

1:30:36

less than £100. What would be

1:30:39

your advice for people that want

1:30:41

to explore this scene, maybe in

1:30:43

terms of what's the best machine to

1:30:45

pick up and any things to look

1:30:47

for, like maybe leaking caps or

1:30:49

batteries, any that are more reliable than others?

1:30:51

Maybe operating systems as well. I know that,

1:30:54

for example, OS 10 Tiger is

1:30:56

generally regarded as maybe the sweetest box you can run

1:30:58

the classic stuff as well. Is there any kind of sweet

1:31:00

configuration on machine that you'd say people should jump into

1:31:02

if they want to explore it? Yeah,

1:31:04

it really depends on what era of nostalgia

1:31:07

you want to jump into. For some people,

1:31:09

that would

1:31:14

be like the System 7, 755 era. That would

1:31:16

be like a 68040 Macintosh, like an LC575. I

1:31:18

think if

1:31:27

you can get your hands on a

1:31:29

SE30 or even a Macintosh SE, those

1:31:31

typically are easier to repair.

1:31:38

The boards are bigger. The

1:31:40

components are mass produced. They're

1:31:42

a little bit easier to

1:31:46

repair, find the parts for. That's

1:31:48

kind of the black and white compact area. That would kind

1:31:50

of be like if you want to go really

1:31:52

old school. Then if

1:31:54

you want to get something that's a little

1:31:57

bit more advanced, like version 3. I

1:32:00

think getting a G3

1:32:03

blue and white tower, you

1:32:06

see those a lot in recycling

1:32:08

centers. Those are fairly

1:32:10

easy to come by. And save them if you

1:32:12

see them in recycling centers. Yes,

1:32:15

for sure. I think those are

1:32:17

great machines because those are not only powerful

1:32:21

enough to run early versions

1:32:23

of OS X, but they

1:32:25

can run the classic Mac

1:32:27

OS 9 and Mac OS 8.6. So

1:32:31

you can live kind of that border

1:32:33

of the late 90s Mac. You can

1:32:35

play some of those more towards

1:32:38

the end of the 90s. You're getting

1:32:40

games like Tomb Raider and the

1:32:43

original Halo was supposed to be a Mac

1:32:45

game, but Bungie made a marathon

1:32:48

for a Mac. So you get starting to get some

1:32:50

3D accelerated games in there too as well. I

1:32:53

went to VCF East and I was amazed

1:32:55

at the amount of Mac that was there.

1:32:58

Action Retro was there, but also there was a

1:33:01

lot of Mac users coming

1:33:03

up and people intrigued. That

1:33:05

whole American Mac culture, I wasn't really

1:33:08

aware that it was that big. What's

1:33:11

it going to like going to VCF and

1:33:13

seeing everyone and taking Mac out there to

1:33:15

the public? Everyone

1:33:19

loves Mackey because I have him.

1:33:22

He has, for

1:33:25

the radio listeners out there, he's

1:33:27

an SC30 with a little

1:33:29

face on it and he talks and

1:33:32

his eyes move around and his

1:33:34

face is on the screen. Everyone

1:33:38

thinks he's really cute. Kids want to come over

1:33:40

and pet him and talk to him. It's

1:33:43

really nice to see the positive reaction

1:33:46

for everybody. Some

1:33:48

people have maybe never even heard of

1:33:50

the channel before, but they recognize the Mac

1:33:55

as being a friendly computer and

1:33:57

a personable computer. I

1:34:01

think You know all

1:34:03

the folks in the United States,

1:34:05

of course There's a lot of Apple fans and

1:34:07

it's nice to see that kind

1:34:09

of connection that they have So

1:34:12

not only to Mackey but just to Mac's and

1:34:14

Apple in general. Yeah, I saw a

1:34:17

photo of Bill heard hugging Mackey as

1:34:19

well Yes,

1:34:23

he actually I met him at VCF West or

1:34:26

actually invited me out to VCF West to be

1:34:28

on a YouTube panel and He

1:34:31

held Mackey and he said this is

1:34:33

actually the first time I've held one of

1:34:35

these Meaning an

1:34:38

Apple Macintosh. Oh, wow Because

1:34:40

Bill was a Commodore engineer for people that

1:34:42

don't know. Yeah, so getting him to hug

1:34:45

a Mac was a big step I think.

1:34:47

Yes It

1:34:52

was a big step for him he was I

1:34:54

was proud of him Well

1:34:56

your channel, I mean it just goes from strength

1:34:58

to strength I mean you cover some incredible subjects

1:35:01

on there as well. I'm looking through some of

1:35:03

your recent videos You know running Mac OS on

1:35:05

a an Apple Vision Pro is your latest one

1:35:07

and we do great community videos

1:35:09

as well where you know, you unbox things

1:35:11

from your audience and You

1:35:14

know, obviously we mentioned about those upgrades that you

1:35:16

do as well So a great selection of all

1:35:19

things kind of classic Mac and next as

1:35:21

well Like we said to what's kind of

1:35:23

your future plans for the channel and anything coming up

1:35:25

over the next like couple of months That we should be looking

1:35:27

out for Yes, so actually

1:35:29

this month is March in Tosh. So

1:35:31

it's yes the all

1:35:34

The retro community comes together. We

1:35:36

celebrate everything Macintosh and retro Macintosh

1:35:39

related and You

1:35:41

know my channels always about the Macintosh

1:35:43

but I Wanted to participate

1:35:46

too and have a video that was kind

1:35:48

of taking us back to our roots and

1:35:50

let's talk about the original Macintosh the

1:35:52

original 128 K 1984 Macintosh

1:35:57

and you know what it was like

1:35:59

running system one on it, how

1:36:01

to get that set up, you know, what does it

1:36:03

look like inside, how do you revamp it and,

1:36:07

you know, the history of what

1:36:09

led up to the original Macintosh.

1:36:11

So that's one video that I'm currently working on

1:36:13

now. I also have a couple

1:36:15

of hardware videos where I'm planning on,

1:36:18

it's in the works, been the works for a

1:36:20

while now, but I'm planning, I'm developing a

1:36:22

way to connect an LCD panel to

1:36:26

a SE or SE 30 with some

1:36:29

parts from one of my friends, Ron,

1:36:31

of Ron's computer videos, were

1:36:33

able to get VGA out of

1:36:36

a SE board and, you

1:36:39

know, with some 3D printed parts that

1:36:41

I designed, we can mount an LCD

1:36:43

screen in there. So I'm working on that LCD

1:36:45

Mac. Fantastic. Well, obviously I'll link up

1:36:48

your channel in the show notes as well, particularly

1:36:50

now we have a, maybe a lot of European

1:36:52

listeners because the Mac wasn't all that big over

1:36:54

here, you know, in the 80s and 90s. So

1:36:56

I think for us, it's kind of getting our

1:36:58

eyes on a, maybe a platform that we didn't

1:37:00

know all that much about. And I find that

1:37:02

aspect of it really interesting as well. So I'd

1:37:04

encourage everyone to go along and check out your

1:37:06

channel because you present it in such an accessible

1:37:08

way and a really fun way as well. And

1:37:10

your knowledge is second to none. So keep

1:37:13

up the good work on the channel, Kate. And it's been

1:37:15

an absolute pleasure reminiscing about all things

1:37:17

Apple with you on the podcast this week. Thank you. It's

1:37:19

been fun. Thank

1:37:28

you.