[Dana Sibera], known as [@NanoRaptor] on Twitter, makes us wonder about devices that could have been, and wince about devices that must never see the light of day – summoned into existence by her respectable photo editing and 3D modeling skills. Ever wanted to see a Model M with a small green-tinted CRT built into its side? Now you have. Perhaps, a “self-tapping” DE-9 plug with wood screws for pins? Tough luck, here it is anyway, but you can have a palate cleanser if it was too much to bear. Having started over a year ago with the classic “spicy pillows, but actually pillows” design, she keeps gracing us with portrayals of tech and tech-adjacent objects straight from the depths of her imagination.
None of the things she shows exist in real life, some regretfully and some thankfully so, but that’s not the first thing on your mind when you stumble upon a cube-shaped iPod with a built-in equalizer in your Twitter feed. Pictures like this “cassette ROM” or the deluxe woodgrain 386DX are quite apparent in what they are. On the other hand, devices like this “Mini VGA” dongle or the amber CRT-adorned TI92 Plus might have you reach for your wallet before you realize what’s up, and the photographic-proof-accompanied assertion about early floppy drives being punchcard-based might have you believe you are just not up to date on your retrocomputing trivia.
Older hardware is known to be more expressive and experimental, and [Dana]’s designs take full advantage of that – from an SGI Indy with its diagonal cut through the case now paired with a matching monitor, to an L-display Powerbook. New hardware doesn’t get a pass either – here’s the latest iPod Nano with a clickwheel, a logical conclusion that Apple never reached, and a motherboard with a dozen USB-C inputs in place of an ATX power connector.
Some designs will be nostalgia-inducing, some will be intimidating, and [Dana] keeps bringing new surprises into our feed on the regular. Prolific artists are a joy to observe – last time, we covered Pepper’s Ghost experiments of [Joshua Ellingson], and he keeps experimenting to this day.
25-pin MagSafe SCSI pic.twitter.com/iUHBLyPPru
— Dana Sibera (@NanoRaptor) February 8, 2022
Mag safe SCSI with bits of steel wool and shraf. Scuzzy looking. That’s a laugh! Power to burn things up.
nice, but im not signing up with twitter just to see it. rocket man in charge or no.
Check out some of her older stuff on Applefritter!
Oops forgot the link https://www.applefritter.com/taxonomy/term/83
you don’t need to, just click on each link in time.
Try nitter: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/NanoRaptor
What kind of honeypot is this?
https://nitter.net/nanoraptor/
this is the correct link
That is not a honeypot! It’s just a different nitter instance. Nitter is a distributed service that you can self-host, and you can substitute any instance domainname for the twitter.com part – here’s the list of instances!
Call me cynical, but I have a suspicion that only reason he owns it is to institute an autodelete policy so he can mouth off without said mouthing being later brought up in court by the SEC.
as @jaseg mentioned, nitter is a great way to view the content without directly interacting with the platform. There is a handy extension, although it uses nitter.net which sometimes gets overloaded
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mohaicophfnifehkkkdbcejkflmgfkof
Install Behind the Overlay add-on for Firefox, and see the stuff without registration :)
I asked AI to draw Retro Computers https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqJQ2TKFZTJXn0E3nlF-kaZPlTcq?e=Jrp137
That type of composite looks strangely wet. Weirdly organic in a way they have no right to be.
They made me think of Soviet built computers.
On the gameboy VIM cart, there is actually an unreleased add-on for the gameboy called the “workboy”, which is a keyboard attached to the gameboy link port. The protocol has been reverse engineered (from the ROM, actual hardware is rare, only 1 known in existence) so VIM for the gameboy could be made in theory…
Unfortunately the workboy doesn’t have a colon key….
I’m sure if your making your own ROM, you can make special commands to get around that, like using the caps or num lock.
nnoremap :
looks like it stripped a part of my comment.
nnoremap bracket F1 bracket :
nice article!
IBM may not have made a wide little laptop like that, but I remember seeing an NEC branded one (running WinCE) in the early 00’s. It was the cutest little thing. This was before touchpads really became an expected part of the landscape (IBM was still pushing they little J-stick), so it was resonable to have a wide keyboard aspect ratio screen.
I would TOTALLY buy a Thinkpad in that “roughly video cassette size” form factor.
I don’t know for NEC, but for a long time I was the proud owner of a Toshiba Libretto 110ct (https://the-digital-reader.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/libretto.jpg). It was the cutest computer I have ever had, and made my commuting so much productive.
I still have my 50CT. Love the VHS sized computer!
NEC MobilePro 750C perhaps?
https://phonedb.net/index.php?m=device&id=244&c=nec_mobilepro_750c
That could be it. I seem to remember it being a bit wider, but this was a long time ago and I only got a quick glance at it. Thanks for the spot.
Hp made the Jornada, I still have one. It looks just like the little laptop from the pic
similar sony vaio pocket
I’m severely disappointed that there is not a single reply like “I WANT THAT LAPTOP”.
Because I do.
Reminds me of early palmtops.
How do you think I first learned about her art? xD There’s a reason this laptop is the article’s main image!
Any laptop with decent keycaps (instead of chiclet) invokes that response in me. Heck, it’s not even switched on.
There’s a 7 inch version of the MNT Reform coming out which looks promising.
Look up.
I’m already thinking of how to build a cyberdeck style machine using one of those weird WAVESHARE 7.9inch screens plus some compact thinkpad keyboard to look like that
The Penkesu is pretty nice piece, maybe you can work from that?
The VGA dongle is probably buildable, and might even be useful!
My thought too! Can’t wait to see it in a hackaday.io project!
My father in law has an old toshiba libreto that I should dig out of his junk pile and put a pi into.
I bet LGR would kill for that woodgrain 386!
I like it. It’s in the same whimsical vein as the BYTE magazine covers of Robert Tinney.
Whimsical photo real fusions of technology with delightful contexts from the fantastic to mundane.
Funny that Tinney was drawing high technology at the time but this artist is drawing retro technology and arriving at a similar vibe.
Very much like a HP Palmtop running Windows CE
It’s a shame twitter sucks so much. If [Dana] had a website, I would go there.