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The flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea - in one year
"Zanclean Megaflood? What's that, a glam-rock band?"
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
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Headlines compared: Polish newspapers from 1939 and news websites from 2022
These two quotes, repeated on various occasions, celebrations and remembrance days are supposed to remind us to learn from the past and avoid the mistakes our ancestors made.
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Lanai, the mystery CPU architecture in LLVM
Disclaimer: I have had access to some confidential information about some of the matter discussed in this page. However, everything written here is derived form publicly available sources, and references to these sources are also provided.
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The Apple-1's unusual MOS clock driver chip
Apple's first product was the Apple-1 computer, introduced in 1976. This early microcomputer used an unusual type of storage for its disp...
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When Apple Built a Mac OS Running on Top of Solaris and HP-UX
Macintosh Application Environment for Unix -- from back in 1994.
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Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
Aristocratic tutoring I: Explaining the decline of genius
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Technical Time Travel: On Vintage Programming Books
A look at three relics of a not-quite-bygone era. In picture-listicle form.
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Reverse-engineering the waveform generator in a 1969 breadboard
How hard could it be to fix a vintage solderless breadboard that doesn't quite work? The "elite 2 circuit design test system" below combin...
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The long strange trip to Java (1996)
I've debated with myself for several years about whether or not to write this down. After so much time has passed, the facts are confused, 20/20 hindsight creeps in, and selective memory plays a role in how fairly I can portray the events. Many reporters have asked me my version of these past few years, several have…
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I can no longer compile my first Flash game
A tale about game development and techonlogy obsolescence
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How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history
"A Machiavellian plot" to kill a Bay Area dream
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How the weak can win – A primer on protracted war
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022316 points285 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
Thanks to our volunteer narrator, this post is now available in audio format. This week, in an effort to fill in some of the theoretical basis for thinking about how weaker powers think about fight…
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My New Old Macintosh SE/30 Computer
Acquiring and tricking out a 1989 Apple Macintosh SE/30, the greatest Mac of all time
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P. J. O'Rourke, 1947-2022
Brilliant writer, beautiful soul
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Documenting equipment losses during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
By Jakub Janovsky , Naalsio , Aloha , Dan , Kemal , and Alexander Black This list only in...
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The internet was designed with a narrow waist
When you hear the term, you should picture an hourglass with M things on one side, N on the other, and an important concept in the middle.
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On the Origin of the iPhone
As a product, the original iPhone exemplified Apple’s holistic approach to hardware and software that are designed for each other, yet, at the engineering level, the iPhone hardware and software teams were almost completely siloed, with only Jobs and a mere handful of his most trusted (and talented) senior executives…
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Make Linux look like Windows 95
Blasphemy? Probably! But still pretty awesome!
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Understanding the War in Ukraine
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022429 points605 commentscited by 5History & Retro Computing details
This week, I want to break from our usual format and respond to the fairly unusual global events. I expect a lot of my readers are trying to get a grasp on what is happening right now in Ukraine an…
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Live Streaming a Macintosh Plus
Since recording a handful of C Programming on System 6 videos, I've occasionally wanted to live-stream the more casual daily programming being done on my Macintosh Plus. After getting all of the pieces together, I now have a working self-hosted broadcasting setup.
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Bytecode interpreters for tiny computers (2007)
I've previously come to the conclusion that there's little reason for using bytecode in the modern world, except in order to get more compact code, for which it can be very effective. So, what kind of a bytecode engine will give you more compact code?
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The only flag of the world that is shredded by design
If you have played Kobadoo Flags you might have seen some extravagant flags with colourful designs, but you might not have seen before a fl...
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I collect and read old computer manuals
It’s my ritual: every time I enter a secondhand bookshop, I go straight to the Sciences section and search for old computer …
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A Small Ode to the CRT
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes . As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at 50Hz, or made a loud whistle at 15.625KHz (back when I could still hear it). CRTs just seemed crude, “electro-brutalist” contraptions from the valve era. They were heavy, and delicate, and distorted, and blurry, and whistled, and gave…
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The Life of MS-DOS
First released on August 12, 1981, MS-DOS became the foundation for business computing for almost two decades. This article details different versions and releases that all stemmed from Gary Kildall's QDOS.
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