1591
Julia and the Reincarnation of Lisp (2020)
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1592
Interpreting 9/11 commemorative Afghan carpets (2011)
The most controversial and confronting of the many categories of Afghan “war carpets” made since the Soviet invasion in 1979 were those which first appeared in early 2002 and which memorialized the…
1593
The Death of the Festival
<p>(Part 1 of a multi-part series)</p> <p><em>We live a double life, civilized in scientific and technical matters,</em> <em>wild and primitive in the things of the soul. That we are no longer conscious of being primitive, makes our tamed kind of wildness all the more dangerous.</em> – Hans Von Hentig</p> <p>The…
1594
Nicole gets a real computer – the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard (2020)
So there I was, very happy with my Apple ][plus. But then I saw someone on the internet post, and it seems that my Apple is an overpriced box with a toy micr...
1595
Inside a 20-Watt Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier from Apollo
How did the Apollo astronauts communicate on their trip to the Moon, 240,000 miles back to Earth? They used a 32-pound amplifier, built ar...
1596
The historical significance of DEC and the PDP-7, -8, -11 and VAX
Earlier today, I saw a link on the ClassicCmp.org mailing list to a project to re-implement the DEC VAX CPU on an FPGA. Its entitled First new vax in ...30 years? Someone posted it on Hackernews . One of the comments said, roughly, that they didnt see the significance and…
1597
The Secret Life of Machines
SERIES 1 The Vacuum Cleaner The Washing Machine The Sewing Machine The Refrigerator The Central Heating System The Television
1598
Bringing Emulation into the 21st Century
Implementing an 8080 emulator in a microservice architecture on top of kubernetes
1599
Freespin: C64 demo running on 1541 floppy drive
Freespin is a Commodore 1541 demo, released in 2021. It runs on the Commodore floppy drive. It is is the first demo on this device.
1600
A forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast (2015)
Although the name 'New England' is now firmly associated with the east coast of America, this is not the first place to be called that. In t...
1601
The Untold Story of SQLite
On today's show, I'm talking to Richard Hipp about surviving becoming core infrastructure for the world. SQLite is everywhere. It's in your web browser, it's in your phone, it's probably in your car, and it's definitely in commercial planes. It's where your iMessages and WhatsApp messages are stored, and if you do a…
1602
“Space age electronics”: Inside a GE thin-film paperweight from the 1960s
In the early 1960s, General Electric developed a technology called thin-film electronics. 1 These circuits were built from thin films of ...
1603
When Orcs Were Real
The Ancient Struggle for Homo Sapiens to Rule the Earth
1604
Installing Linux into a 286 laptop from the year 1989
Ever wondered what useful things you could do with a 32 year old laptop? Well, this is one option: In this project I added a Raspberry PI Zero to the insides of the laptop. Both are connected via a…
1605
1970s mainframe RPGs we can no longer play
A blog in which a dedicated addict plays through all PC computer role-playing games (CRPGs), in chronological order.
1606
Black Hat Exploits of the Stupid-Easy 80s
I'm not saying there was no computer security in the 1980's but, wait... Yes. Yes I am.
1607
The Connection Machines CM-1 and CM-2 (2015)
Thirty years after its launch in 1987, a CM-2 was acquired by MoMA NY. It is only on display in selected shows - its inaugural exhibit was in " Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-1989"
1608
Why we don’t understand heavier-than-air flight
If you've been reading popular science websites or magazines lately, then you may have heard the news: we don't understand how airplanes work. For example:…
1609
The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans, Part II: Citizens and Allies
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021140 points54 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This is the second part (I, II, III, IV, V) of a series asking the question ‘Who were the Romans?’ How did they understand themselves as a people and the idea of ‘Roman’ as …
1610
1931: Kurt Gödel shows limits of math, logic, computing, AI
His famous 1931 paper identified the fundamental limits of math, logics, theorem proving, computing, AI.
1611
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities (1993)
A timeline of CIA atrocities.
1612
You can legally get and run WordPerfect for free
In fact, there are two free versions: one for Classic MacOS, made freeware when WordPerfect discontinued Mac support, and a native Linux version, for which Corel offered a free, fully-working, demo version. But there is a catch of course: theyre both very old and hard to run on a…
1613
The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)
The home computer presents itself through several interfaces, some in software, some in hardware. While it is mostly assumed that these interfaces’ goals are to expose the computing capabilities of the system to its user, obviously interfaces are at the same time responsible for transporting the image of the machine.
1614
1615
My first Z80 assembly language program
I was 9 years old. A revision of the notebook containing my first Z80 assembly language program
1616
The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginnings and Legends
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021125 points79 commentscited by 4History & Retro Computing details
Who were the Romans? How did they understand themselves as a people and ‘Roman’ as an identity? And what were the implications of that understanding – and perhaps more importantly…
1617
Seven Years of Factorio Friday Facts (2020)
This entry focuses on Wube Software's long-running Factorio Friday Facts; a seven-year labor of love documenting the creation of the titular video game.
1618
The Mother of All ‘Abandoned’ Airports (2015)
West Berlin's lifeline during the Soviet Blockade, Tempelhof Airport has since become the city’s biggest park. Berliners will fight to keep it that way.
1619
1620
Found at Goodwill: WebPad 1001 Prototype
I found this strange looking device at Goodwill yesterday. Originally, owing perhaps to the bright blue color, I thought it was some sort of educational or kids device. It had no branding on it, so…