#retrofuturist computing

Remember that iNTEL64 nonsense I came up with? The Cartridge Computing System, from an alternate-history where cartridges never stopped being a thing? And of course I built one, partly because I like physical artefacts from alternate universes, but mostly to solve an actual problem.

Anyway, the primary 'cartridge port' has been a separate external unit (because it's really just an eSATA external drive harness), and that meant a separate power switch and separate power cable and separate data cable and all that.

So I decided external cartridge ports were stupid and made an internal unit. Fits in any 5.25" drive bay. It also takes both modern (2.5" SSD) and older, larger cartridges (3.5" hard drives.) Anything SATA, really.

Okay, just to catch everybody up...

Introducing two cartridges for the intel64 Cartridge Computing System. These are actually real and actually work. I had a problem to solve with a multiboot system and after a lot of other things did not work, I realised just using multiple physical SSD drives and an external eSata docking station that doesn't cost me any drive speed in actual use would solve it, in possibly the dumbest way possible.

And that's when I realised I had basically reinvented cartridges. Just, you know, dramatically better ones.

The rest, well... it kind of just happened. Because it had to.

Branding is a mix of Commodore 8-bit era fonts (because they had cartridges), Atari 8-bit fonts (particularly 2600 and 5200, also cartridges), Sega Genesis graphics layout (they did that L-of-colour thing), and an old lower-case i for iNTEL. It's 64 because this is x64 code, obviously, and the big rainbow logo comes from both Apple and Commodore of the cartridge era, with the middle bar in the old Atari logo changed into an i, for, of course, iNTEL.

(I have no idea why the orange came out red in that one photo. Same lighting, same series of shots, same everything. Phone camera is just off on its own, I guess.)

It is so stupid, and yet, it actually solves an actual work problem, and I am so pleased with myself about it. （⌒▽⌒）

through the magic of sata ssd drives, eSata, and external hard drive docks, i have turned my (non-mac) compy into a cartridge-based kit of complete nonsense and now i need to make manufacturer labels for all my 'cartridges' and that means doing the graphic design work for the AU where this actually happened and computers kept using cartridges because that's just what i do.

i made a cartridge label for ubuntu+ardour on the intel64 cartridge computing system because... that's... what I do. first draft.

i got another cartridge for my intel64 Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ