1
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day , I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.
Fabien Sanglard
21/08/2026: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality 17/08/2026: Quake shareware, a CD just a little too full 13/07/2026: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail 11/07/2026: A dock that finally wakes up reliably! 10/07/2026: Don't you meant extinct? 28/06/2026: My favorite keyboards 01/06/2026: The art…
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2
Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges
One of the remarkable characteristics of the Super Nintendo was the ability for game cartridges (cart) to pack more than instructions and assets into ROM chips. If we open and look at the PCBs, we can find inside things like the CIC copy protection chip, SRAM, and even "enhancement processors".
3
Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full
In the mid-90s the coolest thing to buy for a PC, besides the incredibly expensive Intel Pentium , was a CD-ROM drive . With their capacity of 640 MiB (three times the storage of PC HDD at the time), CDs allowed enthusiasts to step into a world of multimedia, made of high-resolution 640x480 256 colors palette-indexed…
4
The 3dfx Voodoo1
This article is the second entry in a series about the "3D cards of the late 90s running Quake". The first entry [1] took a look at the end of 1996 with the Rendition Vérité 1000 and its dedicated port called vQuake. Rendition had managed to beat everybody to Quake-market. For a brief period of time they had the one…
5
How the Devteam Conquered the iPhone
The summer of 2007 was an eventful one if you were into cell phones. It all started on June 29 when Apple announced the release of the iPhone. If you have never taken the time to watch the full keynote, I highly recommend it.
6
Discret 11, the French TV encryption of the 80s
I spent my childhood in France, playing a lot of soccer and watching way too much TV. In the 80s, there were three channels available. Two of them, Antenne 2 and FR3, were state funded and boring while TF1 was privatized and offered plenty of Japanese cartoons. My generation grew up with Captain Tsubasa, Saint Seiya…
7
Forty years of programming
I am about to turn forty-six. This means I have been programming for forty years, half of them professionally. During most of that time, I used a "standard" setup with 104 keyboard, a flat mouse, and a sitting desk.
8
The Joy of Computer History Books
When I was a child, growing up in the 80s, I read pretty much anything I could find about computers. There was not a lot translated to French. I even read the MS-DOS Version 5 Reference Guide. The cover was dry and the content was not very tasty either.
9
Don't you mean extinct?
In 1993, Jurassic Park came out and revolutionized the use of CGI in films [1] . To the public the experience was magic. But for some of the people in the movie industry, it was a rude awakening.
10
The Hearts of the Super Nintendo
When I start studying a vintage system, the first thing I like to do is understand how its components work together at the hardware level [1] .
11
10NES
I am a big fan of Street Fighter 2. Certainly not the greatest but likely among the nerdiest since I wrote an entire book about its platform [1] . It won't be a surprise to learn that, back in December 1992, I was eagerly waiting for the Super Nintendo port so I could stop sinking my rare 10 Francs coins into the…
12
The Making of Stunt Island
It is human nature to pick a hero, place it on a pedestal, and forget everybody else. We have limited memory after all so remembering only a few things may not be a choice but a necessity. If you were to ask players for the name of a game made in the 90s, unmistakably Mario, Sonic, and DOOM would come up over and over…