Thanks to our esteemed, nominated judge Micheal H. McCabe we have a list of results.

Without further ado:

• First Place — gcoville, for an amazing repair job on the Kim-1 that required exceptional hardware hacking as well as raw bit-twiddling code.
• Second Place — brouhaha, for porting the Apple I monitor to the Motorola 6800. Sheer virtuosity!
• Third Place — Aliennerd, for various hacks with the PX-8 & PX-16, setting up a BBS with an exotic euro-style phone number, and tweeting with the PX-8.

Special Judge's Recognition — No Real Prizes, Just Gratitude:

• wgoodf — for functioning as twitter monkey, distributor of prizes, and service to the retrocomputing community as editor of 300 Baud Magazine.
• Luddite — for past services to the retrochallenge community as holder of the domain and publisher of 300 Baud Magazine.
• Urbancamo — for hosting the retrochallenge website, for encouragement, and for service as an inspiration to others.

Winners - please contact me with a postal address. I will forward this on to wgoodf for your prizes to be dispatched.

I'd like to add a personal note, (as urbancamo) which is to say thanks to Mr. McCabe for his entry and prize sacrifice (he obviously couldn't thank or vote for himself this time round) and to everyone who entered. This crazy competition is more to do with achieving personal goals in a friendly collective than scooping a prize. Competition is great, but for me the personal achievements are what make this a special time of the year.

Roll on the next one...

The Last Week is Upon Us!

Blimey! Where has the time gone! Apologies for not providing more in the way of updates to the website, thankfully your faithful twitter monkey has been giving us his usual humourous take on proceedings.

As usual we have had a number of casualties to the tyrany of real-life, myself included.

However, on a more positive note thhere have been a number of highlights so far including the proliferation of posts by brouhaha and aliennerd, Pukka and Toni's retro-coding (always great in my book) and LC_575's Macintosh Encyclopedia.

Those that have lost their way after a promising start include Paleoferrosaurus, Printstar and Earl. In limbo gcolville is waiting for parts and granz is clearly admiring his RAM upgrade.

The rest of us are either clinging on to the hope someone invents a time-machine (which of course would be powered by a 100 Ghz Motorola MC68070 processor) or have thrown in the towel (agg23 and luddite).

The last week typically pulls a few surprises which I'm looking forward to. By the time we get to the end I'll be in France on a campsite but that shouldn't stop me participating (well, as much as I have been so far at least). I intend to pull my finger out and get some kind of hangman working.

Good luck!

(Oh, and the comment on the ZX81 Museum website still tickles me: 'Finally you can afford to satisfy your lust for power').

perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

For those of us who live in climates where July means Summer, this retrochallenge causes somewhat of a dilema. In the UK, that dilema presents itself as soon as the sun comes out, because in the UK, and especially in the Lake District where I live, the sun shows itself all too infrequently.

Fortunately today has been the exception and we've spent an exceptionally pleasant afternoon boating on Lake Windermere. Honestly, when the sun shines in the Lakes it is a truly spectacular place.

Back to retrochallege, by Tuesday, as we'll be back to the wind and rain!

I wish all those who entered the competition this time round the time and the inclination to produce some retro-goodness.

Your twitter monkey has graciously decided to look after the money this time round in the hope that he'll be better at getting prizes out in a more timely manner than I have (hangs head in shame as I still haven't got there yet).

We're also featuring a guest judge this time round, just to mix things up a bit, and give myself and wgoodf a chance at the prize.

Finally, just a reminder that it's never too late to enter, just contact me with a blog url, nickname and brief description

Wohoo - to look outside, you'd never know, but Summer apparently is here, and with it another Retrochallenge!

Entrants - please contact me with brief details of your entry, with your blog URL for inclusion in the official entrants list. If possible please also send me a photo/link to a photo, I'm planning on jacking up the website and think it would be good to make the competition a little more personal. Probably 200x200 would be a reasonable size.

If you are new to Retrochallenge, check out the Winter Warmup website for a good indication of what you can expect.

1. RetroChallenge commences July 1st, 2011 and runs until July 31st, 2011
2. In order to qualify, computer systems must use a pre-pentium processor... in general, this means 486 or below, 680x0 and pretty much everything with an 8-bit processor, but we'll also let you in if you have an old Cray kicking about.
3. Gaming consoles and PDAs qualify if they were made in the previous century.
4. Where appropriate, replica hardware and emulators may be used.
5. Entrants are responsible for adequately documenting their projects and submitting occasional updates during the contest.
6. Projects may encompass any aspect of retrocomputing that tickles the fancy of the individual entrant.
7. Winners will be arbitrarily chosen and crap prizes doled out hopefully before the next challenge commences.
8. Have fun!