Veteran journalist Ernie Smith has written the newsletter Tedium since 2015, covering “the history of things that usually don’t have histories written about them.” Smith recently published an article on ACCESS.bus, which he described as a “forgotten attempt” to create a universal serial bus standard for computer peripherals before, well, the Universal Serial Bus standard. Apparently, ACCESS.bus was so forgotten that the only video evidence Smith could find of its existence came from a 1994 Computer Chronicles episode.

Founded by Frank Cifaldi in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to “preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games.” On January 30, VGHF library director Phil Salvador announced the “early access” launch of the organization’s new digital library. According to Salvador, the searchable online platform features a “curated selection” of materials from VGHF’s physical archive, including over 1,500 out-of-print video game magazines, directories and maps from the first 12 years of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the personal papers of retired video game producer Mark Flitman.

Since 2013, Randy Kindig, Kay Savetz, and Brad Arnold have co-hosted ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast, which focuses on the Atari 8-bit line of personal computers produced between 1979 and 1992. In addition to their regular monthly podcast, the ANTIC catalog includes more than 450 interviews with individuals who worked at Atari and other companies involved in the 8-bit computer industry of the time.

I wanted to point out two recent interviews conducted by Kay Savetz with Frank Foster and Robert Moore, which he published earlier this month. Foster and Moore were two of the principals behind Hybrid Arts, one of the first companies to develop MIDI music applications for both the Atari 8-bit line and the 16-bit Atari 520ST. Moore appeared in a September 1986 Computer Chronicles episode to demonstrate Hybrid Arts’ EZ-Track, a consumer product that enabled ST users to send commands from an ST directly to a Casio keyboard; and ADAP, a high-end digital audio workstation that provided what Moore described as a “tapeless recording studio.”

Clint Basinger has covered retro technology and PC gaming since 2009 on his YouTube channel LGR. Basinger recently published a video covering the first Computer Chronicles holiday buyer’s guide episode from December 1985, where he was kind enough to reference my blog on that same program. Specifically, Basinger was intrigued by the discussion of Lotus Signal, which I only covered more in-depth in a separate blog post as well as an episode of the podcast.

October 1983 marked the 40th anniversary of the debut of Computer Chronicles as a nationally televised program on PBS stations in the United States. To celebrate, I spoke for more than three hours with Karl Kuras, creator and principal host of the Video Game Newsoom Time Machine, where we discussed the origins of Chronicles and the show’s early history. Since 2018, Kuras’ podcast has gone month-by-month through the key news headlines in the arcade, home video game, and computer game industries from 30 and 40 years ago (and often beyond.) He also publishes interviews with industry figures and other individuals, such as myself, who conduct research into the history of technology.

Kate Willaert is a video game historian and essayist. She recently released part one in a series of video essays on the origins of Nintendo’s famed mascot Mario. This first video looks at how Mario’s video game debut in the 1981 arcade hit Donkey Kong started out as licensed game based on the syndicated comic strip character “Popeye.”

Kevin Bunch is perhaps the world’s foremost historian of the Atari VCS–also known as the Atari 2600–and other 1970s home video game consoles. Since 2017, Bunch has produced Atari Archive, a series of videos available on YouTube that document the history of every VCS game in release order. More recently, Bunch authored the first in a series of books based on his video series, Atari Archive Vol. 1: 1977-1978 (Press Run, $34.99), which chronicles the first 20 games released for the system and provides additional information on Atari’s competitors during this time period, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Magnavox, and RCA.

Ethan Johnson, a Chicago-based computer and video game historian, recently released the sixth episode in his Play History series, which chronicles the origins of video gaming all the way back to the 1940s. In this most recent episode, Johnson looks at the development of the first dedicated computer monitors in the 1970s and the pioneering work done at two organizations, Xerox PARC and the Stanford Research Institute, which should be familiar to any viewer of early Computer Chronicles episodes.