In 1980 I had scraped together enough cash to get a second hand Atari VCS. By this point the machine was 3 years old, but a local rental store allowed me to play so many classic VCS games.
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My Tech History CH02: 1980 – Money, Money, Money
In this chapter I discuss the economic differences between the USA, where may early micros were produced, and the UK in the early 1980s. The world was less globalised, our exchange rate oddly worked against us, and many many people could not find work. Times were hard and buying a micro was a luxury…
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My Tech History CH01: 1977 – The Binatone Master System
Chapter 1 of My Tech History – Its 1977 and a totally new experience hits me, a video game console. It might look super limited today, but back then the Pong home console was a revolution!
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Retronaut – Welcome to the Retroverse
Welcome to @RetronautTech, a new retro Computing and related tech channel. In this episode, I say hello and set things up for an 11 video series, exploring my own tech history, the consoles I played as a child in the 70s, the golden age of 8-bit and 16-bit micros and (literally) the computers that have lead to my career in the arts and technology.
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Welcome to Retronaut!
▶ Subscribe to Retronaut on YouTube
Welcome to Retronaut!
Hello, and a huge welcome to the Retronaut website! Whether you’ve followed us over from YouTube or stumbled in here fresh off a search for something delightfully obsolete, we’re genuinely thrilled you’re here. Grab a drink, pull up a beige box, and settle in — there’s a lot of vintage tech to get through.
Who are we?
Retronaut is a vintage computing and technology YouTube channel that’s been “on air” since December 2023. In that time we’ve produced over 150 videos exploring retro computers, consoles, hardware and software from the 1970s through to the early 2000s. If you haven’t already, come and say hello over on the channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@RetronautTech
Platform agnostic, through and through
We’re a platform agnostic channel — we cover ANY platform that takes our fancy. Amiga, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair, Amstrad, early PC, classic consoles, obscure prototypes nobody’s heard of — if it’s got some age on it and a story to tell, it’s fair game. A few recent examples from the channel:
- Ditch Your Gotek OLED! The Ultimate Touchscreen Upgrade Is Here
- Flawed Genius: The zz9000 Amiga Graphics Upgrade That’s About to Get WAY Better!
- Flawed Genius: The ZZ9000AX Amiga Audio Card Is Good, But It Has Issues!
- Roland Perry Reveals Secret Amstrad CPC Sequel at First UKAG Event!
And that’s really just scratching the surface — head over to the videos tab and have a dig around.
Hardware, software, and everything in between
We love hardware — there’s nothing quite like the click of a real keyboard or the whine of a spinning drive. But without software, what is it worth? A beautifully engineered machine with nothing to run is just a very stylish doorstop. So we cover both sides of that coin, and we love gaming every bit as much as the silicon it runs on.
From the other side of the screen
A bit of background on the person behind the channel: in the 1990s, Chris Thomas — aka Retronaut — was a member of The Bitmap Brothers, the legendary ST/Amiga/PC video game developer famed for pushing the boundaries of game design, graphics and sound. It’s a big part of why this channel exists in the first place, and Chris has shared some of that story on the channel itself:
- My Dream Job: Interview at the Legendary Bitmap Brothers
- Starting My Journey at the Iconic Bitmap Brothers Studio
That hands-on history with 16-bit game development is a huge part of why we care so much about getting the details right — whether that’s the hardware, the software, or the games themselves.
Thanks for stopping by — welcome aboard, Retronaut!