Visit dmitrybrant.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Apr 2022 – Feb 2026
History & Retro Computing 2Hardware & Electronics 2Systems & Performance 1Security & Privacy 1Software Engineering 1AI & Machine Learning 1
As a bit of background, one of my hobbies is helping people recover data from old tape cartridges, such as QIC-80 tapes, which were a rather popular backup medium in the 1990s among individuals, small businesses, BBS operators, and the like. I have a soft spot for tape media; there’s something about the tactile…
That’s right — this little device is what stood between me and the ability to run an even older piece of software that I recently unearthed during an expedition of software archaeology.
I am now a staunch advocate for ECC RAM, after the events of last week. You see, over the last several weeks my main desktop workstation has been misbehaving, with occasional freezing and crashing. After some diagnostics I began to suspect a faulty RAM module, and sure enough, upon performing a quick run of memtest86…
A while ago a came across an old Compaq LTE 286 laptop. When they were first released around 1989, these PCs were somewhat groundbreaking because they were the first to be compact enough to resemble the “notebook” form factor that we take for granted today. Unfortunately this particular unit was pretty much beyond…