Entries – Page 2 – MediaArchaeologyLab

Entries, Fall 2024, Newsletter

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 22: Suite Dreams on Pixelating Screens Next Tuesday, Nov 19 @ 5p.m.!

Hello all!

We hope you’ve been doing well! Although the semester may be rapidly approaching its end, we still have a few events up our sleeves. 😉

Suite Dreams on Pixelating Screens!

Next Tuesday on November 19th from 5:00p.m.-8:00p.m., we will be collaborating with the Games & Media Library to host the Suite Dreams on Pixelating Screens event! Come on down to our lab, located in ATC 1.705, and create some magnificent works of art on vintage versions of various art programs!

Thanksgiving Break

As usual, we will not be hosting open lab hours over the week of Thanksgiving break.

Demo of the Week

Our demo of the week is Marble Blast Gold on the iMac G5!

Stop by the lab and play this vintage Super Monkey Ball clone on a vintage machine!

Object of the Week

The object of the week is the Panasonic Dynamite 8 Track Player!

This particular machine, released in 1976, is designed to play 8-Track tape cartridges. This now defunct audio format was the 60s’ and 70s’ version of a portable music player. The way an 8-track player is designed means that once it has finished playing the final track, it automatically loops back to the beginning.

If you would like to learn more, this article from collector’s weekly has information about our specific model of 8-track player. This article, from recording-history.org, explains the history of the 8-track format itself.

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Tuesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Friday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Fall 2024, Newsletter

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 21: Ghost in the Shell Next Week!

Hello all!

Welcome back! We hope you’ve been doing well. We had fun at the Gaming Gauntlet and enjoyed seeing you all there!

Ghost in the Shell Screening

Next week, the Media Archeology Lab and the Games & Media Library are collaborating again to screen a vintage copy of Ghost in the Shell!

This screening will take place on November 5th at 7p.m., inside the Games & Media Library’s room, ATC3.705, as usual. Come join us and watch this iconic film together!

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week is Microsoft Flight Simulator 1998!

Stop by the lab to play a vintage video game and fly airplanes from 20 years ago!

Object of the Week

The object of the week is the iBook G3, also known as the Clamshell!

These computers, released in 1999, were the contemporary laptop counterparts to the iMac G3s. Like the Jellybean iMac G3s, they were colorfully themed and ran versions of Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. Despite looking like a plastic kid’s toy, these were fully functional and used for professional work. One of the more interesting parts of the outside design is that they have a built-in plastic handle near the hinge, so you can carry them around like you would a briefcase. To me, this sounds like an incredibly anxiety-inducing way to carry around a laptop, but the option is there for those that find it convenient I suppose!

Our iBook is a surprisingly solid machine for the time; it has 128MB, so I assume the original owner upgraded it (the original and SE iBook G3s both came with 64gb of RAM maximum, according to EveryMac). If you stop by and are interested in seeing it turned on, feel free to ask the student researcher hosting open lab hours when you visit.

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Tuesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Friday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Fall 2024, Newsletter

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 19: Alien Screening Tomorrow @ 7pm!

Hello all!

We hope you’re doing well and surviving midterms! It has been a busy two weeks for us at the lab.

Alien Screening on October 1st!

Tomorrow, located in ATC 3.705 at 7p.m., The Media Archeology Lab is once again collaborating with the Games & Media Library to host a movie screening! You will need your Comet Card to enter, so make sure you remember to bring it with you!

We hope to see you there.

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week is Unreal Tournament on our Dell PC!

Stop by during our open hours and enjoy a session of this classic game.

Object of the Week

The object of the week this week is the Apple Lisa!

If you are not already aware of it, the Apple Lisa is an extremely historically important computer. The computer cost $9,995 USD in 1983 upon its release, which is roughly equivalent to $32,171.64 today according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ online inflation calculator. Its operating system was called Lisa OS, and featured a very early graphical user interface (as opposed to being an Apple DOS or another command-line based operating system). You can read more about it from its article on computerhistory.org by clicking here.

The Lisa: Apple’s Most Influential FailureCHM publicly releases the source code to Apple’s Lisa computer, including its system and applications software.computerhistory.org

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Tuesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Friday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Fall 2024, Newsletter

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 17: (Not) Your Parents’ Board Game Night!

Greetings and Salutations!

Last week’s film screening, which was located in the Games & Media Library.

Hello all! We hope you have been having a good first month of the semester. 😊

Before we get things started for this week, we’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who came and watched Part 1 of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with us last Tuesday! We had an absolute blast hosting you all, and we hope you had a great time too.

(Not) Your Parents’ Board Games Night

Next week, on September 17th from 5:00pm-9:00pm in the ATC Lobby, we will be collaborating with the Games & Media Library to host a vintage board game night! Come stop by and experience old and forgotten table top games with us. If you have one of your own, feel free to bring it with you!

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week this week is Neverwinter Nights on the iMac G4!

Stop by the lab to play this classic RPG on a contemporary vintage machine!

Object of the Week

Our object of the week is the Tomy Chatbot!

The Tomy Chatbot was a remote-controlled robot from the mid 1980s that also had a built-in tape recorder. This allowed the owner of the robot to “deliver” a message. Because of the way the arms of the robot were designed, it was also able to carry a small tray around.

Unfortunately, it seems the poor Chatbot was overshadowed by its more well-known cousins, the Tomy Omnibot line of personal robots, as there is not as much information about it available as there are for the Omnibots. If you are interested in various personal robots from the early 80s-90s, this website hobbyist website from 2008 has a massive collection of information on them available. If you don’t like dated websites from 2008, they’ve also been briefly mentioned in a PCMag article as the “ultimate platform for vicarious, vulgar jokes” due to the ability to record pranks on them and send them into another room.

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Tuesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Friday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Fall 2024, Newsletter

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 16: Happy Labor Day! & Movie Screening on 9/3 @ 7pm

Hello World and Happy Labor Day!

For all new students, welcome! For all returning students, welcome back! The Media Archeology Lab is once again open to visitors for the semester.

New Open Lab Hours

As is typical at the start of a new semester, our open lab hours have been updated. You may find the updated hours at the end of this letter, or on our website’s home page!

New Website

We’ve had an informational webpage up in the past, but over summer we designed and finalized a complete website! You can visit us at https://labs.utdallas.edu/mediaarchaeologylab/ and find information about upcoming events/exhibits, items in our collection, as well as read every archived newsletter entry.

Upcoming Events: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

Tomorrow (Sept. 3) at 7pm in room ATC 3.705, the lab is collaborating with the Games & Media Library to host a movie screening! More details are provided in the poster below.

Demo of the Week

This week we will be demoing Prince of Persia on the iMac G3 Grape!

Object of the Week

The object of the week for this week is the Star Adding Machine!

The Star Adding Machine is an analog calculator from around 1925. This machine is definitely heavier than it looks; I was not able to weigh it, but it felt about the same weight as one of our iMac G3s. In order to use it, it seems that you would find the digit you want to add and then pull it down to the bottom. This number is then added to the top register; if you pull down a digit in the same column as one you’ve already added, it will add that number to the top register, automatically handling carrying digits as needed. The red lever on the right resets the register to 0.

If you’re interested and want to learn more, this page by Jaap Scherphuis explains how it works and showcases a video demonstration. You can also find one located in our lab! 😊

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATC 1.705, right next to ATC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Tuesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thursday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Friday: 2:00pm-4:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Newsletter, Spring 2024

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 15: Good Luck and See You Soon!

Good Afternoon!

Hello all! We’re at the final stretch. We hope you’ve been doing well and wish you luck with all exams and projects coming up!

Due to exam season and summer coming up, this will be the last newsletter for this semester. We will be present for the upcoming Vintage Computing Festival this summer, though, and of course we will be back during the fall semester. We hope to see you there!

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week is Aussie Joker Poker on the Apple //c!

If we had a nickel for every time we’ve had a gambling related video game demo’d on the Apple //c, we would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Come and stop by the lab during our open hours to play it with us if you have time to spare!

Object of the Week

The object of the week is this POW! WHAM! sign we have displayed on the shelf at the lab.

When you look at it head on, it says “POW!”. When you look at it from the sides, it says “WHAM!”. Simple but effective. Not sure where this piece originated from; our faculty sponsor, Professor Balsamo, just brought it in one day as an interesting art piece.

Images like these are an example of Lenticular printing, which involves the interlacing of two or more images where each image has its light refracted in a different direction, resulting in the illusion of the image “changing” as you view it from different angles. I was not able to quickly find any particularly interesting articles, but the Wikipedia page for Lenticular printing is still a pretty good read if you are interested in how it works. This type of printing is also responsible for the “3D” props you sometimes see at illusionist exhibitions or for movie advertisements at the theatre, where they’ve interlaced many images to achieve the effect of the image “moving” as you view it from different angles. Our POW! WHAM! sign has only two different images interlaced, but there is a lot you can do with this kind of technique. 😊

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Tuesday: 1:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Thursday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Newsletter, Spring 2024

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 14: Brownie Cameras!

Hello all!

We hope you’ve been having a good week and that your studies have been going well. We can’t believe the semester is almost over!

Brownie Cameras!

Recently, the lab had a brownie camera workshop for our student employees where we deconstructed Kodak Brownie cameras, cleaned their innards and inspected any damage, and put them back together. Hopefully we will have some interesting black and white photography to share here in the future. 😊

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week is Top Fuel Eliminator for the Apple //c!

Stop by and enjoy a retro racing game originally released in 1987.

Object of the Week

The object of the week is the black and white movie Godzilla (1954) by Ishiro Honda!

Did you know that this film is free to borrow and watch on the Internet Archive? Almost 70 years old this year, this movie still holds up as an excellent watch. It is a lot more somber than you would expect. Most people nowadays associate Godzilla with tacky merchandise and an epic scale of destruction, but originally Godzilla was posed as a very frightening consequence of nuclear war. If you have only seen Godzilla, King of Monsters!, I would still recommend giving the original version a watch-through; the ending has a noticeably different tone.

There is quite a lot of interesting retro technology featured in the film. Old telephones, antenna TVs, and automobiles, it is a fascinating movie for media archeology purposes. This movie epitomizes our lab’s motto “We dig culture.”

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Tuesday: 1:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Thursday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas

Entries, Newsletter, Spring 2024

Media Archeology Newsletter Week 13: Happy Eclipse Day!

Happy Solar Eclipse!

We hope you have your eclipse glasses ready. Total solar eclipses are rare, and according to CBS news, one that are visible from the continental U.S. are “even rarer.”

We’re within the area of totality and all classes during the eclipse event (from 1pm-2pm) are canceled, so we hope you take some time to enjoy it!

Demo of the Week

The demo of the week this week is HIGH ROLLERS for the Apple //c!

Drop by and try some low stakes gambling on a computer from 1984!

Object of the Week

The object of the week is Java’s Eclipse IDE!

Photo from an archived version of Wikipedia’s Eclipse article December 2005.

Originally first released in 2001, Eclipse as an IDE has survived and remained relevant for an impressive 2 decades. It was created by IBM, and then transferred over to the Eclipse Foundation, an independent non-profit. Many other IDEs, such as Visual Studio or NetBeans, have names that are more obviously related to programming, but Eclipse’s name is rather vague for what it is. Why did IBM decide to name it Eclipse?

The main story (and the one that Wikipedia cites) comes from this 2005 eWeek article, where supposedly Lee Nackman explained during EclipseCon 2005 that it was named this way because IBM wanted to “eclipse” Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE. I wasn’t able to find any footage of the speech, but I did find what looks like a transcript of that keynote on this blog. The only other article I could find on this was from techtarget, which says this story has “been said, though not confirmed.”

If you’re familiar with software development companies at the time, it should also be noted that one of Eclipse’s major competitors at the time, NetBeans, was being developed by Sun Microsystems. The fact that an eclipse blocks out the sun is something that was likely not overlooked by the designers when choosing the name, and maybe even intentional.

The history behind the IDE is interesting, and I recommend looking at any linked sources here. Going onto the Wayback Machine and looking at what Eclipse looked like in 2005 is also a very interesting experience. 😉

Lab Hours and Room Number

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:

Monday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Tuesday: 1:00pm-4:00pm

Wednesday: 1:00pm-3:00pm

Thursday: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.

Sincerely,

The Media Archeology Lab

The University of Texas at Dallas