Old Guy Does Stuff

madned.substack.com

Old Memories 2: Magnetic Boogaloo!

The Dance of Magnets Moving To and Fro has Enabled Information Storage Since 1898.

My roundup of old computer magnetic storage systems from back in the day. (Even older than me, and that is saying something)

hardware vintage technology 1950s computers retro

hackr

danismm:
““The Star Trek Game” SCCS Interface Age, 1976.
”

Source: danismm

The DSKY (display and keyboard interface) for the Apollo 7 guidance computer. Shown running program P11 - boost monitoring during liftoff. This program measured change in altitude and other critical metrics during launch.

vintage computer apollo retro computing 1960s retro electro physics nasa space exploration

The Xerox Alto from 1973. It still puzzles me why Xerox did not dominate the mini computer market. This machine was so far ahead of it’s time, first machine with a mouse, one of the first if not the first with a graphical user interface, WYSIWYG editing of documents on a portrait format display. Apple and Microsoft later (infamously) lifted many of these concepts and features for their product lines.

retro computing retrocomputing vintage computer 1970s apple microsoft xerox

awkwardsloth404

Class is over for the day and I have no homework, which means I get to do whatever I want until work. I’ve had the PO20 for a couple of weeks and it’s so much fun. I got an audio interface - the Scarlett Focusrite Solo - to record its audio properly. The Solo seemed like it would be a good fit since my needs are pretty simple, and I’ll need one in the future for all my other musical endeavors, like getting a bass guitar or getting a proper XLR mic eventually. Also, I expected the Solo to be much bigger than it is, but it’s good that it’s so small, since it’ll save me space. Not to mention that it’s so cute!

Soon, I want to take sounds from the PO20 as samples, put them in Ableton, and make a whole track out of them. I’m sure there are ways to make entire tracks with the PO20 on its own, but I’d like to add other synth sounds to it, and I only have VSTs right now. Speaking of other synth sounds, I can’t wait until I can get some more hardware synths, but for now the PO20 and some VSTs will have to do.