Retro

According to this story in the Los Angeles Times, the semi-classic car featured in Back to the Future may be primed for a limited-run comeback.

DeLorean Motor Co. Vice President James Espey has 200 of the original V-6 engines in stock. While DeLorean Motor Co. still stays in business refurbishing and servicing early-1980s DeLoreans, Espey says they may start building new ones from the stock parts in the next few years.

Don't expect to see new DeLoreans all over the place. If it happens, Espey is quoted as saying new car production will be limited to about 20 per … Read more

Apparently a Chuck E. Cheese/Showbiz Pizza Place animatronic band has found new life singing modern hits like "Lithium" from Evanescence, "London Bridge" from Fergie, "Dani California" from RHCP, and my favorite, "Ms. New Booty" by Bubba Sparxxx (shown after the break).

If you've never experienced the delicious trauma of seeing the Chuck E. Cheese furry robot band as a kid, then these videos will probably be more funny than creepy. For the rest of us who remember crying under the table while holding back pizza vomit, these videos tap into an especially dark place populated by H.R. Pufnstuf episodes and David Bowie's musical interludes in Labyrinth.… Read more

Sick of dusting off that Kid Icarus cartridge and blowing on it 80 times before you can play it? Maybe it's time to make the ultimate sacrifice and turn that cartridge into a speaker system.

Morte Moya, he of the NES MP3 controller mod, has created the perfect complementary speaker system.

Modding an old-school Rush 'N' Attack cart, he made a nice NES-themed speaker set to go along with his controller-turned-player.

Cool as this MP3 player/speaker combo is, I've still got a soft spot for Donald Bell's Little Professor MP3 player. All it needs is a … Read more

South Korea will soon be seeing BTO's latest audio-ripping powerhouse, the Plusdeck EX. The bread-loaf-size box allows users to encode virtually any audio source (cassette, turntable, radio, even your mobile phone) into an MP3 or uncompressed WAV file. This is the same company that created the Plusdeck 2c, a dedicated cassette player that fits into a 5.25-inch computer drive bay. The 2c, however looks like a case study in '90s tech design, while the EX looks pretty stylish despite its girth.

The Plusdeck EX also comes with a remote, radio antennas, power supply and a USB cable. It … Read more

Does the curse of the mummy begin with bunions?

Jacky Finch, a researcher at the University of Manchester's KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, is testing to see whether two large wooden toes from the era of the Pharaohs were ornamental or actual medical devices.

If the wooden toes turn out to be prosthetics, this will mean that the art of making fake body parts for practical is centuries older than believed. The oldest prosthesis yet discovered is an artificial leg dating from 300 B.C. The toes are from between 1,000 B.C. and 600 B.C.

One … Read more

Junior's artwork looks great on the fridge, but it would look even better next to a full-on light show.

If you've ever wanted to turn your fridge into a big ol' Lite Brite, you're in luck. Thanks to this tutorial on the excellent and addictive Instructables site, it's easier than ever.

Using some surface-mount resistors, conductive nickel paint, LEDs, a 4.5 volt power supply, and some other parts, you can recreate the Aqua Teen Hunger Force LED hoax or whatever else you want. In marquee style. On your fridge.

The entire tutorial is available on … Read more

Creating a retro music system is tricky business. So often companies either go too far or simply reproduce the same ugly designs sported by the originals.

But Kaito--not to be confused with the band--seems to have struck a rare balance with its radio MP3 recorder. When the removable MP3 player is docked snugly in place, the system looks like a 1960s-style transistor radio. It does far more than relay airwave signals, however, with the ability to record AM-FM or shortwave broadcasts in digital formats not unlike the Swedish-made "Popcatcher" digital radio and recorder we saw earlier this … Read more

We've got to hand it to Bush. (No, not that Bush, the one that makes consumer electronics.) There are tons of companies out there that are trying to recapture mid-century chic, but the U.K. company has done the job exceptionally well, which is a good thing because the radio is such an important icon for that generation.

Its latest creation may be the ultimate combination of old and new in the genre. The unfortunately named TR04DABBLK may look like something from Happy Days at first glance with its piano-black finish, according to GeekAlerts, but closer inspection will find … Read more

Maybe Ted Stevens was onto something--tubes are alive and well, Internet or not. How else can we explain the popularity of tubed gadgets such as the "Nano Head"? And they're not restricted to Lilliputian dimensions either.

The latest comes from China-based Shanling in the form of the "MC-30 Music Center," which Audio Junkies describes as "hi-fi CD player, tuner, iPod dock and tube power amplifier all in one." The price is $995, but that's a bargain compared with Shanling's $3,000 CD player. Both are available at various sites on the … Read more