1
The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
Everyone should pull one great practical joke in their lifetimes. This one was mine, and I think it's past the statute of limitations. The s...
Old Vintage Computing Research
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Visit oldvcr.blogspot.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Mar 2021 – Oct 2026
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2
What went wrong with wireless USB
(Hat tip to the late Bill Strauss and The Capitol Steps' Lirty Dies.) A few moons ago I was thinking of ways to take my Palm OS Fossil Wr...
3
When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
I try not to write anything even vaguely political on this blog because we have a variety of views on a variety of subjects and no one is ...
4
So thieves broke into your storage unit again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story. All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by ...
5
New two-factor authenticator: Commodore 64
Multi-factor authentication is ripe for disruption. SMS 2FA is inherently defective. Phone authenticators get stolen. Security tokens get lo...
6
Apple's interactive television box: Hacking the set top box System 7.1 in ROM
This article has been revised with recollections and corrections from former Apple employee Al Kossow, some good folks on Hacker News and t...
7
So long, home T1 line; hello, hacking the T1 router
Floodgap has had a T1 line since I moved into this house in 2011. I'm one of those weirdos who runs my own hardware and prefers to avoid ...
8
Dusting off Dreamcast Linux
Yes, here at Old VCR we live in the past, when RISC Unix workstations still ruled the earth like large boxy tentaculous Cthulhus. Oh, sure, ...
9
Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've intermittently worked on for literally two d...
10
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago...
11
The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of
Pop quiz: what classic brand of laptop is this? I'll give you another hint. Bright-red TrackPoint and mouse button trim, classic keybo...
12
Going where BeOS NetPositive hasn't gone before: NetPositive+
BeOS browser : TLS apocalypse Won't keep it off line. (How do you pronounce BeOS ?) This is a real 133MHz BeBox running otherwise s...
13
Refurb Weekend: Silicon Graphics Indigo² Impact 10000
It's one of my periodic downsizing cycles, which means checking the hardware inventory (and, intermittently, discovering things that were no...
14
Confirmed the MOS 7600/7601 Pong chip is a true microcontroller
In a previous article I discussed the MOS 7600 and 7601 "Pong in a chip" ICs, manufactured by MOS Technology (of the famous 6502) and act...
15
The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately larger beasts: you've met homer , my 1987...
16
A Real PowerBook: The Macintosh Application Environment on a Pa-RISC Laptop
I like the Power ISA very much, but there's nothing architecturally obvious to say that the next natural step from the Motorola 68000 family...
17
After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor isn't a replacement system I secondarily ...
18
If one GUI's not enough for your SPARC workstation, try four
Who needs a jack-o-lantern when you've got a bright orange gas plasma display? This is a 1990 Solbourne Computer S3000 all-in-one workst...
19
Working around dragons with the Lemote Yeeloong laptop and OpenBSD
Behold: the Guru of GNU ! (Photo by Habib Mhenni, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.) True enlightment only comes from a truly free computi...
20
Refurb Weekend: Canon Cat
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend and it's time for a little deferred maintenance, especially on those machines I intend to work on more...
21
Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)
In the distant nethermists of time, documents once briefly ruled the earth (or at least Mac OS), and to that end I managed to find a verrr...
22
MacOS Extensions Pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0
By now regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with my affection for the 1996 Apple Network Server , Apple's Unix-through-and-thro...
23
An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91
A few months ago I introduced you to one of the more notable Apple pre-production units in my collection, a late prototype Macintosh Porta...
24
The "35-cent" Commodore 64 softmodem
Rockwell famously used 6502-based cores in modems for many years, but that doesn't mean other 6502s couldn't be used. If only there were a w...
25
With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-Pad Slate, Everyone's a WiiN-Er
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone wit...
26
The strange case of BeOS, SRS and the silent Power Mac 6500
Tonight's story time: the Power Macintosh that wouldn't make any sound in BeOS R5, how I figured out the problem, and how I hacked the sound...
27
When you have too much memory for SheepShaver
When I first got my 133MHz BeBox (not new, sadly), it had "only" 32MB of memory and it had four more SIMM slots to fill. While Be only off...
28
Tonight we’re gonna log on like it's 1979
Teletypes may have killed a lot of forests by emitting every line to hard copy instead of a screen, but there's something to be said for t...
29
Refurb Weekend: PowerBook 1400
The PowerBook 1400 is, and remains, my favourite laptop. It was everything the PowerBook 5300 should have been and more. It was my first l...
30
MkLinux and the pimped-out Apple Workgroup Server 9150
As is typical here in the Floodgap lab, it all started so innocently: rebuilding a flaky Apple Workgroup Server 9150, the odd duck of the Wo...