Announcing RetroChallenge 2021/10!

We are excited to announce the return of the RetroChallenge for the month of October 2021! Brought to you by veteran host Mark Wickens and rookie Eric Poch.

About RetroChallenge

In a nutshell, the RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month.

The event is very much open to interpretation… individuals set their own challenges, which can range from programming to multimedia work, hardware restoration to exploring legacy networking, or just plain fooling around. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just so long as you do it.

Take a look at the revised "rules" for the RetroChallenge for basic guidelines.

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Theme Categories

We are introducing two theme categories for this event: The Millennials and Publish It! These categories will be judged and awarded separately from the standard entries. If your project qualifies, enter it into one of the theme categories! Otherwise, enter in the General category and just do your own retro thing. Check out this year's List of Entries for some examples.

The Millennials:

Systems Released Circa 1998-2002

Finally some love for those millennials! Believe it or not, Mac OS X 10.0 and Windows 2000/XP are just over 20 years old and qualify for the RetroChallenge. Rather than turning up our noses at these systems' garish GUIs and baroque data bus widths, we are showcasing them! So, pull that 1st Gen iPod out of your desk drawer, fire up your trusty Zaurus SL-5500, drag that iMac G3 out of mothballs, or go find your old ThinkPad 570, and get computing like it's 1999!

Publish It!:

Publish Your Old RetroComputing Project

Many of us have had some time during quarantine to play on our vintage computers, but there is never enough time to properly document or share our work. This is your opportunity! Start documenting a retro project that you have been working on since the start of the pandemic, set-up and share a git repository with the code for your old Apple IIe game, publish a schematic of the s-100 bus card you designed, or even scan and share that pile of rare vintage computer magazines and manuals you've been collecting. As long your project was retro-computer related and your focus is on sharing code or documentation for it for the first time, you are in, even if you completed the project long before October 1st!

Prizes

We have some useful tech tools that we will be awarding as prizes (USB Logic Analyzer, Arduino UNO, TL866II+ IC programmer) and will hopefully have some RC 2021/10 mousepads and some more donated items for the "winners".

How to Enter

We are trying out a New Entry Form for Contestants. Fill it out and save the link at the end in case you want to update or change your information. Let us know in the comments if you have any issues signing up.