Retro

Nostalgia for vintage PCs knows no bounds. I still have my Apple IIc in storage, and God knows why. But I don't think I'd spend thousands on a 30-year-old machine like one eBay buyer did.

A bidding war for the rare Texas Instruments TI-99/8 has turned heads among fans of these early PCs. The winning bid of $3,240 was also unusually high for a computer of that era that's sold on eBay.

The machine is an engineering prototype designed to bolster TI's precarious position in the brutal home computer wars of the early 1980s. … Read more

If you think searching the Internet is way too fast and easy, I have the perfect online game for you. Google-Asteroids makes you slow down and really savor the search experience, one laser blast at a time.

Created by Masswerk.at, Google-Asteroids is labeled as an "info-shooter." You have to blast your way through the alphabet letter by letter to set your search term. Launch the search and you find yourself in an old-school-gaming asteroid field. Blast away at the asteroids floating by and you slowly reveal the search results in your score list.… Read more

Some would have stormed out.

They would have called their agents and stammered that they couldn't possibly work under these conditions.

But not hardy weatherman Andrew Kozak. The sunny front man from Tulsa, Okla., quickly realized that computers are a mere crutch, there to make us believe we don't have to think or imagine. … Read more

Did one or two of your childhood crushes ever make you a treacly mix tape? Chances are good you listened to it -- over and over and over again -- on your Sony portable cassette player.

If so, it's time to get sentimental. Last week, a nondescript announcement out of Sony's Japanese division sounded a death knell for the portable cassette recorder/player -- a product category that helped the company rise to prominence decades ago.

The consumer electronics giant detailed how its current line of portable cassette recorders -- including the TCM-400, TCM-410, and TCM-450 -- stand as the company's last and will be discontinued by January. In a side announcement, a Sony representative noted that the company plans to continue selling blank cassette tapes, tape decks, and boomboxes with cassette support -- for now. … Read more

Every day this week, a different CNET writer or editor is recalling a tech or geek-centric present that left a mark. Read past stories by Eric Mack, Jeff Sparkman, Jay Greene, and Dan Ackerman, and look for another installment tomorrow at midnight PT.

On a chilly autumn day in 1997, I came home from school to find that my mom had a brand-new IBM PC 350 in her office. It was an astonishing computer, especially considering our previous machine was a DOS/Windows 3.1 slowpoke that could barely run Wolfenstein 3D.

For its time, the PC 350 had it all -- a screaming Pentium 133MHz processor, a 1.6GB hard drive, 64MB of RAM, and 4MB of video memory. Though my mom bought it for the household and not for me exclusively, it was the best tech gift I ever got, as it truly turned me into a geek and gamer (and therefore the person I am today). … Read more

Picture eliminating camera shake with what looks like an old film canister. Japanese brand Gizmon, which brought us the quirky iCA case, has released a remote shutter that looks like a used roll of 35mm film.

Hidden within the "film cartridge" is a retractable cable that plugs into the headphone jack of any iOS device, with a button on top of the canister acting as the shutter button. This makes the remote shutter useful for long-exposure shots or even self-portraits. The button can also be used to start or stop video recordings. … Read more

Here's a generational test. Look at this table. What do you see? If you see a weird-looking coffee table, then you're young enough to have no idea what a VHS tape or landline telephone is. If you see a floppy disk, then you should probably spend the $930 it takes to get a Floppytable for your living room.

The Floppytable is anything but floppy. It's made from hot-rolled steel and stainless steel, making it much stronger than the plastic originals. The table is nearly 28 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 26 inches tall, so you won't be able to cram it into the floppy slot on your ancient PC.… Read more

Photography diehards and fans of printed T -shirts will like Dodge and Burn's latest camera-inspired collection. The New York-based company's latest Evolution TLR design highlights the history of the Twin Lens Reflex camera, a medium format film camera used in the '60s.

The site also offers a variety of other print designs, from the iconic Leica rangefinder camera to the classic SX-70 Polaroid film camera. Each shirt is printed using plastisol inks to create designs with textures that have a vintage and worn-out effect. … Read more

Ever wish you lived in the '20s so you could go to parties at Jay Gatsby's house and call your friends up on rotary phones to tell them how much fun you had doing the Charleston? We're still working on a time machine to get you to Gatsby's mansion, but Pyle Audio can help with the antique phone.

The company's out with a new line of retro-style home telephones that also serve as smartphone docks.

The four classically designed phones, handcrafted from real wood and adorned with brushed copper parts, have buttons for answering landline and smartphone calls and easily switching between the two. They also have standard phone features like last-number redial, flash function, and ringer high/low selection. … Read more