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Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the Space Shuttle's cargo bay, providing lab space for astronauts and experiment...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
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Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?
A statistical test of whether the Sumerian King List's antediluvian reigns line up with paleoclimate events better than chance.
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Dad’s Custom Atari Peripherals
This guest post is from Jim Trageser , a long-time Goto 10 reader.
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Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
The original Snowboard Kids has been fully decompiled in only 84 days! In this post I delve into what changed and what lessons might apply to future projects.
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11,000-year-old sculpture of man riding a leopard found in Turkey
A unique statue depicting a human sitting on the back of a leopard has been unearthed from the Neolithic site of Karahan Tepe near Şanlıurfa, southern Turkey. The figure is 70 cm (27.6 inches) high and was discovered in what archaeologists believe was its original location: on a stone platform along the wall of a…
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Windows 95 released August 24, 1995
People lined up around stores at midnight like they do for a new Apple product.
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What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s
It was a summer holiday, sometime in the late 1990s. I was a young kid, around 8 or so. My dad had taught me the rules of chess before and we played from time to time. But this time was different: As we were about to start he stood up and walked away from the board, sitting down in a chair across the room and facing…
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The End of an Athlon
When I was researching the mess related to strange and poorly documented CPUID bits in the Athlon MP and XP processors , I had to swap a lot of CPUs. This was uneventful in most cases… but only most.
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Finger: the 1971 social network that never died
It will surprise more than a few of you to hear that the first social network dates back to 1971. No accounts, no algorithm, no central server. Your…
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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…
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A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator
About a eight weeks ago I had virtually no interest in calculators. Blank, dull, tedious-looking objects that remind me of long, arduous rainy afternoons in 1980’s/1990’s school maths classes.
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Guiding Ships with Moire Patterns (2018)
I was inspired by Tom Scott’s excellent video and links here where he talks about a particular type of “Inogon” light used to guide ships through channels or harbours. The patent …
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Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT
A celebration into the IBM PC, the Model F/XT keyboard, where it came from and what it became
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Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful
Notes on Chapter 1 of Principia Mathematica
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The Road to MS-DOS 2.0
One little step toward UNIX
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Turbo Pascal on CP/M, MSX-DOS and MS-DOS
The Pascal language was named after Blaise Pascal (see picture), a French mathematician who was a pioneer in computer development history. In 1641, at the age of eighteen, Pascal constructed the first arithmetical machine, arguably the first computer. He would improve upon the instrument eight years later. In 1650…
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How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story
A Newspaper Classifieds Story
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Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
What started as endearingly bootstrapped marketing descended into soulless corporate sales.
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Publishing Schematics Before “Open Source” Was a Word
The Akihabara institution that every Japanese maker knows — run on cash, instinct, and one founder’s restless curiosity
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Let's all meet up in the Y2K
Back in 2024 I posted a few of these on Twitter (thread reader) after digging out old photos from the dot-com boom. I was working in London at a digital agen...
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The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life
Learning from the automation dreams of the first Machine Age
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Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
This is exciting news, there is a fork of Qemu that has workable Itanium Merced emulation, and it’s good enough to run Windows XP/2003! Enter Malte Kuhlmann ‘s Qemu fork of syunnPC ‘s AI Itanium infused Qemu fork .
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The Potomac River Midair Collision
How America’s golden age of aviation safety came to an end
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The myth of Snow Leopard
It was a hot mess, but the myth is useful today.
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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...
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Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)
How tracing words can illuminate history
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Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer
History of the development of my windowed operating system for 32-bit Am29000 processors when I was age 18.