Beautiful papercraft retrocomputing models to print and love and hang from your tree

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/10/the-best-future-past.html

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That’s… that’s… beautiful.

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The disks make a nice addition.

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Hey, I bought my copy of Bruce Lee, thank you very much.

And I ain’t folding anything that doesn’t say “Atari” on it.

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Too floppy for me.

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I wonder where my disk notcher is? It would work on both the real and the paper simulacrum disks.

Does anybody else hear the sounds of each of the computers booting in their heads when they look at these paper renditions?

I can hear the sound of the floppies werring around as they, berrrrrrrr…berrrrrrr…berrrrrrr-
damn it, bad sector.

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Well done

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From the page: “As a young Commodore 64 user, I was shocked to discover that school’s Apple II did not have BASIC in memory”.

No, all Apple ][s had Basic in memory. The very early and uncommon ones had Integer Basic (written by Woz himself), and the ][+, //e, //c, //gs had a version of Microsoft Basic called Applesoft that had (among other features) floating point support that Integer Basic lacked. But it was slower and so it was common for boot disks to load Integer Basic onto the later machines. But that was totally optional.

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Wow! That brought back memories! Years and years ago I used to draw a comic strip for a UK trade journal called “Computer Talk”. The strip was called “The Filing Dutchman”. One Christmas I posted paper cut-out-models of computer terminals (as they then were) for people to make and decorate with. Not anything like as good as the ones pictured here, but my goodness, what a flashback!

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A disk notcher? Luxury!

Kangaro%20One%20Hole%20Paper%20Punch

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The computer lab at school didn’t allow any double sided disks that weren’t intended as such by the manufacturer. Some of my disks were caterpillar nibbled to the point of comedy. There was no hiding my intent to use a single sided as a double sided disk. I got a good lecture from the lab teacher one day “look at the difference in the sheen on this disk, well not this one, but yes this one in your stack. It’s like sandpaper on the disk heads.” It didn’t stop me, nor did it stop him from not allowing me to use the lab or accept my homework, as no disk, regardless of side, was allowed if it was modified.

My father was exasperated at the number of disks we were going through. While at the computer store, back when such things existed, a guy sold him a disk notcher along with two boxes of colored disks. My sister and I were ecstatic. We had twice the storage that was lab friendly and colored disks!

My parents had a firm rule, you have to make a game to get a game. There were no consoles in our house. Luxury- yes. But our parents made us work for our kibble.

Well, okay then.

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