There has been a lot said about Apple’s development of the iPhone, and the history and inspiration behind the device – such as this notable 1983 concept of a “Telephone Mac.” One of the most notable examples of this is Apple’s lesser known desk phone known as the W.A.L.T. (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone). The W.A.L.T., which was announced at MacWorld 1983, was never released to the public, and only a very small handful of prototypes were ever constructed for the device.

A few years ago, I was out at the W6TRW swap meet at the parking lot of Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. Tucked away between TVs shaped like polar bears and an infinite variety of cell phone chargers and wall warts was a small wooden box. There was a latch, a wooden handle, and on the side a DB-25 port. There was a switch for half duplex and full duplex. I knew what this was. This was a modem. A wooden modem. Specifically, a Livermore Data Systems acoustically coupled modem from 1965 or thereabouts.

There are challenges that come with running the last Blockbuster Video on the planet. The computer system must be rebooted using floppy disks that only the general manager — a solid member of Gen X — knows how to use. The dot-matrix printer broke, so employees write out membership cards by hand. And the store’s business transactions are backed up on a reel-to-reel tape that can’t be replaced because Radio Shack went out of business.

Sales are soaring and current stars are releasing tracks on the format… but is anyone actually listening to them?

A copy of the original NES game 'The Legend of Zelda' has sold at auction for more than $3300.

These are the sitcoms that filled our bellies with laughter growing up in the 90s. Even though we got to spend 30 minutes with these shows, their jokes, characters and stories shaped our childhood. These sitcoms were a huge part of our lives, and that’s why they are memorable. Plus, they formed part of the legendary TGIF lineup.

Shot by photographer and lifelong gamer Evan Amos, The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox does exactly that, as a visual history of video game hardware released by San Francisco-based publishing company No Starch Press. Photographed in intense, loving detail, the book quite literally unpacks 86 consoles and examines their innards, from the Magnavox Odyssey to the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Commodore 64, all the way to the Game Boy, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U.

The PC Classic is a miniature game console that lets you play classic DOS games at home, at parties, conventions, and wherever else computer games from the 80s and 90s are required. The system is joystick-enabled, pre-configured, licensed, and incredibly easy to use. The system is scheduled to begin crowdfunding in late November/early December 2018, and is slated to release in late Spring/early Summer 2019. Our target price is $99! If you’d like for us to tell you about updates to the project and when you can buy a PC Classic for yourself, sign up for our newsletter:

Jeremy Roenick scored 513 goals in 20 NHL seasons. He twice played for the United States in the Olympics and is in the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. The former center remains highly visible as an outspoken "NHL on NBC" analyst.

No better time capsule exists than ads for old technology to show you exactly how far humanity has come. These vintage tech ads shill obsolete technology that was, at one point, not only top-of-the-line, it was considered a bargain. The concept of paying $200+ for a calculator makes little sense when you consider the touch-screen in your pocket can do that, call you a taxi, and take a photo all at the same time. Ads for old technology highlight the major shifts in technology...

Once we could hardly imagine such things as video games. Then, all of a sudden, they appeared, though for years we had to go out to bars — and later, purpose-built 'arcades' filled with video game machines — in order to play them, and we paid money to do so.

Going into this series, I hoped I’d get back to the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream and be able to romantically wax about where Android came from. How the G1, though dated, still held up the promises made by Google's first Android effort back in 2008. Analytically, it's all true, but time has not been kind to the phone, and using it has made for a pretty rough week, even by my recent standards.

Right from the seventies & eighties onto your screen. You can't snort pixels.

A recent study has revealed which kinds of tech have stood the test of time – in terms of recognition, if not use. Would your children recognise these? (And would you?).

In 1993, writer/director Steven de Souza battled a military coup, an ever-growing cast list and a self-destructing Jean-Claude Van Damme – and came out with a profitable picture ‘With hindsight, Street Fighter: The Movie is a charmingly camp and self-consciously silly action flick.’ Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock It was the early 1990s and every teenager in the world knew about Street Fighter II. Originally released in the arcades and then on the SNES and Mega Drive consoles, the game featured a cast of weird, semi-magical...

Ten years after Polaroid stopped making instant film cameras, and nine years after it stopped making the film those cameras use, the Polaroid instant camera is back. Well, kind of. Announced today, the new $99 Polaroid OneStep 2 is not made by Polaroid, if only because Polaroid largely exists these days as a brand and a nebulous collection of patents and intellectual property.

They were an explosion of graphic design, cheating audiences with promises of raunchy scenes that never materialised. Collector Tony Nourmand reveals the real sordid truth about X-rated movie posters

Walt Mossberg is retiring this year — he’s already written his last column, hosted his last Code Conference, and taped the final episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete in front of a live audience in New York. But Walt’s also assembled an impressive collection of notable gadgets over his two-decade run as a reviewer and columnist, and we asked him to talk us through some of the more notable items as he cleared out of his office.

Disco ducks and dancing queens can no longer shake their booties since these dozen decrepit abandoned discotheques took down their mirror balls.

Roughly a year and a half ago, I made a pitch that we were due for a magnetic-tape comeback similar to the one we’ve seen for vinyl. (I titled it after a Frank Turner album, because Frank Turner is cool.) Now, we haven’t seen that magnetic-tape comeback just yet, but it might help if I did my part by highlighting tape-format obscurities.