I know this was mentioned by BeginnerGuy about a month ago in a post of a (otherwise unrelated) thread, but I thought this deserved some dedicated recognition.
Computer Chronicles is on YouTube! All episodes it seems. I had never heard of it until now (I assume it simply didn't air in Canada) so I have no nostalgia for it, but it is a very interesting retrospective nontheless.
wrote:I had never heard of it until now (I assume it simply didn't air in Canada) so I have no nostalgia for it
My cable company back in the day would carry the closest PBS affiliate, and I think it was even possible to get it over the air on a good day.
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I watched some on archive.org years ago. It's interesting stuff a lot of the time.
wrote:wrote:I had never heard of it until now (I assume it simply didn't air in Canada) so I have no nostalgia for it
My cable company back in the day would carry the closest PBS affiliate, and I think it was even possible to get it over the air on a good day.
I watched it back then. But I can't recall if it was on a PBS station or the local station in my area. It was actually somewhat popular among the computer geeks during its heyday. Kind of like the equivalent of what's new on Siskel & Ebert's At the Movies but for Computers. I don't remember why it went off the air but it's definitely retro.
Watched a bunch of these a few years ago on archive.org, great fun to go back and see all kinds of things. Enjoyed the episodes with Gary Kildall (creator of CP/M) who seemed a genuinely nice guy.
wrote:I know this was mentioned by BeginnerGuy about a month ago in a post of a (otherwise unrelated) thread, but I thought this deserved some dedicated recognition.
Computer Chronicles is on YouTube! All episodes it seems. I had never heard of it until now (I assume it simply didn't air in Canada) so I have no nostalgia for it, but it is a very interesting retrospective nontheless.
I only saw it occasionally. I recall one episode where a guy was demonstrating some add-on for one of the big word processing programs that allowed you to change the tab settings in only about five steps instead of a dozen, and the host seemed to be awestuck by it. I was sitting there thinking "What's the big deal? Amiga word processors take about two steps to change the tabs." Another episode (maybe the same one) reviewed a horizontal shooter game for (I think) the Apple II, which they raved over. It didn't look like anything special to me.
I watched this show every week for awhile. It was on our local PBS station. This was probably in the mid-to-late 90s?
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OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
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I stopped watching it on PBS (WGBH) in 2001. It's been mostly repeats of it that year so I assumed it was cancelled (plus TechTV had more of my attention)
I'm really glad these are online, there a lot of very interesting technologies and presentations in that show.
wrote:I'm really glad these are online, there a lot of very interesting technologies and presentations in that show.
I also enjoyed the old 1970s-1980s retro clothing and styles of the people on the CC. All it needs is David Hasselhoff storming in his black leather jacket promoting his Knight Rider game for the Apple ][. K.I.T.T. would be speaking on the Amber monitor pulsing.
It used to be available for free here, also, via UHF antenna. We had access to strong signals from two PBS stations, one of which ran Computer Chronicles every week. I found that, as the years passed, it became more of a marketing show than a real presentation of anything worthwhile. You almost never heard them ask guests how something would actually benefit buyers, or why something was designed in an obviously sub-optimal way. There was a little more of that sort of questioning on matters of design and implementation when Mr. Kildall was the co-host. My favourite broadcast of the show was the Gary Kildall Special, which, fortunately, is also on YouTube.
I don't know if they have the exact same content, but there is also https://www.youtube.com/user/ckmogo that hosts a number of their shows, though I suspect both are unofficial (for the record, it is not my channel).
I find that the later episodes without Gary Kildall to be kind of hard to watch because Cheifet seems to rush everything and repeatedly talk over everyone, when Gary was still around he kind of brought a relaxed balance to the show.
