GOSHtastic - Game shows, Options, Software, & Hardware!

In my retrocomputing adventures, I have sought things not purely based on style alone, but based on combinations of processor, wide 3rd-party adoption and support, and "interesting" factor.  Having picked up at least one system from each common type of processor (8088, x86, Zilog Z80, 6502, 68xx, 68xxx) and the schemes popular in the USA (IBM & compatibles, Apple, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Tandy), I thought it was time to try for something from overseas.  Plenty of computers were made for the UK market, such as the Amstrad, Acorn, and BBC Micro, and Japan had many interesting varieties of computers offered by NEC alone, not to mention their other manufacturers such as Sharp and Fujitsu. However, really not much is known (in English) about computers from behind the Iron Curtain. A Brief History of Why This Is a Thing One thing that is for sure: in the 1970s, the Soviet Union, in an effort to keep up with rapidly-evolving Western technology, decided to put an end to ...

Recently, I dug up an old email where I was musing on the big marquee on an old television game show called The Magnificent Marble Machine .  It was a very fancy prop at the time, as most television shows of the era relied on art cards with big, bold letters that would be flipped, slid, or otherwise revealed by stagehands upon the emcee's verbal cue.    k Slide it, Earl! ( Match Game ) - Survey Says?! ( Family Feud ) - Sources: YouTube, Game Show Utopia This is about as fancy as it got for electronic graphics on game show props in the 1970s ( Tic Tac Dough ).  However, they never upgraded this board during the 1980s... Source: Dailymotion And a couple shots of the Magnificent Marble Machine game board in action.  Looks like a plain ol' marquee, but really an astonishing feat of engineering given normally chintzy television props, especially for its era... Source: Gameshows Wikia Cashing In On a Fad Now, the Magnificent Marble Machine w...

Since last time I wrote in, I have been extremely busy preparing for Texas Pinball Fest 2016 -- tried to get four machines ready, then three, and then... oh well... only the two I had working to begin with were actually working by showtime.  Meanwhile, I had started to investigate a couple other projects, but never got something going nice enough to warrant writing a blog post on. Now that Texas Pinball Fest is over, and I swear my games are acting like rabbits (if you know what I mean ;), I'm trying to step back and work on some of the projects I had going before this massive push to restore a bunch of pinball machines happened.  However, I have another great big push for this weekend to get prepared for the North Dallas Area Retrocomputing meetup.  I've had vintage computers hanging around me since they were new, but have acquired some "new" stuff since around Thanksgiving (especially from Fred's "Warehouse of Wonder"), and need to get all the new ac...

It Was a Dinosaur Back Then... At some point a very long time ago in my life, I acquired an IBM 5150 PC from my grandfather.  I'm not sure why he wanted to give it to me at that time, but I did have fond memories of playing old games on 5.25" floppy such as Grand Prix Circuit and Wheel of Fortune with my cousins on hot summer days in Grandpa's garage in Houston (along with a similarly vintage Ferrari 308GTB which always remained under wraps -- I didn't even realize it was blue until after he died), so I was definitely happy to take it.  (The computer, of course. ;)  By most people's definition, the 5150 is the root of the modern personal computer, but in the late '90s when I received the machine, I did not have the right skills nor tools to get it up and working; moreover, with no expansion cards installed (no floppy disk controller nor video card in particular), it would not have been very useful nor even easy to triage and fix.  Fast forward 16 or 17 yea...

Everyone has their favorite pricing game on The Price Is Right, whether it be Plinko, Lucky $even, Hole In One, Clock Game, or whatever the case may be.  Some may fancy retired games such as Hurdles (1976-83) or Super Ball!!! (1981-98).  Long-time producer Roger Dobkowitz once said "every pricing game is somebody's favorite," and with over 100 pricing games played over the show's long history, it's been sufficient to keep millions of viewers still watching loyally every morning. For as many memorable games as the show has, they have certainly had some, shall we say, "experiments" that did not go so well.  Some games were dull; others simply did not mesh well with the spirit of Price is Right (like Professor Price or Double Bullseye).  Still others have grown old (like Barker's Bargain Bar), were killed off due to inflation (like Walk of Fame), were plagued with mechanical issues (like Hurdles), or became too confusing for today's contestants to...