The Holiday Buyers Guide
Retro computing is not a museum. Somebody is still designing, soldering, coding, and shipping new things for machines that are more than forty years old, and this month we put those people on the cover.
Retro Shopper: The 2026 Holiday Buyer’s Guide
Fifteen pages of gifts for every 8-bit fan on your list: cartridges, power supplies, replacement keycaps, modern storage, Wi-Fi modems, joysticks, and the odd thing you didn’t know you needed, each with where to buy it and what it costs. There’s also a section on what to look for when buying used hardware, so the surprise under the tree isn’t a dead PLA.
Taking Syrinx Apart
Last month we handed you a terminal that asked for an activation code and never explained itself. This month Edwin Nagle opens it up: the rotation cipher hiding in the DATA statements, the typing effect that makes it feel alive, the jiffy-clock countdown that stays honest on a C64 and a Commander X16 alike, and the tricks you can lift straight into your own programs.
Runnin’ with the Devils
Jerry Bonner follows last month’s cracking arms race into the basements where it was fought: EagleSoft, ISEPIC, the intros and the music, and the groups that turned copy protection into a competitive sport. It’s the story of the crackers of the C64, told by someone who was close enough to hear the 1541 spin.
Also inside
- Pump Up the Volume: Joe Ochwat on Aleksi Eeben’s Heartbeat Soundtracker and the 31 channels it can drive on a Commodore 64 Ultimate, with a step-by-step tutorial and a tear-out quick-reference card.
- A Galaxy in 64k: Søren Kamper on how Star Wars was squeezed onto the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, and ZX Spectrum, and why the real story is what the programmers threw away.
- Alien Breed: Marcus Albers marks the 35th anniversary of Team17’s Amiga classic and the new Anniversary Collection, from the original to Alien Breed 3D.
- Disk Detective: John Chirillo on why “saved” doesn’t always mean saved, and how to make your 1541 tell you the truth.
- The Underground BBS: Rob Sherman on crackers, pirates, and the feds at the door.
- Gaming on the TRS-80, Part II: Ian Mavric on the Color Computer 1, 2, and 3, from Program Paks to the arcade clones of Spectral Associates and Tom Mix.
- Type-In Time Machine: Bryon Thur goes back to the Gazette’s very first issue, July 1983, and types in Skydiver.
- Columns: COMPUTE!’s Commodore Corner, with Peri Fractic reporting from the Commodore 64 Ultimate production line in Shenzhen • Programming GEOS with Bruce Thomas (Part III: geoProgrammer) • Ask Ray on heat sinks • INSIGHT: Atari, with Jerry White’s MONGRAPH.BAS, John Zielke on FujiNet NOS 1.0, and Tim Hinds on what the Atari knows about your keyboard • MEGA65 Digest: Dan Sanderson on Tall Character Mode • Tandy Land • The Gazette Wire, with H.A.V.O.C., Populous for the C64, OutRun PETSCII, Moonstone, and Shikaku II • Lost & Found with Andrew Fisher • Short Circuits on the Final Cartridge III+ reproduction • reviews of Sixies and more.
Type-ins this month
- MONGRAPH.BAS, Jerry White’s monthly bar graph for the Atari 8-bit.
- KEYCODE.BAS, Jerry White’s keyboard-input demo for the Atari 8-bit.
- Disk Detective 64, a 1541 status investigator for the Commodore 64.
- Back to BASIC Part 7, Making BASIC Feel Fast.
- Micro Missions 33 and 34.
What you get
A 116-page full-color print magazine, professionally printed and mailed, plus the digital edition. The companion disk carries every type-in from this issue, so you can load the programs instead of typing them, though we’d never talk you out of typing them.