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History & Retro Computing
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Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020352 points302 commentscited by 5History & Retro Computing details
We’re going to be a bit silly this week (in part because the ending of this compressed semester has left me with little time) and talk about the recently released historical action-RPG comput…
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Reverse engineering a forgotten 1970s Intel dual core beast: 8271, a new ISA
" As I recall, those two chips were fairly large. And fairly late -- to the marketplace. We had lots of issues with them. [...] Sometimes th...
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The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
Recently listed as the number one worse place on the planet to take a short vacation, Stolipinovo is a shocking parallel world that defies belief.
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Why Military History?
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020136 points63 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, I want to talk about the discipline of military history: what it is, why it is important and how I see my own place within it. This is going to be a bit of an unusual collections post as…
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Origins of the youtube-dl project
As you may know, as of the time this text is being written youtube-dl’s repository at GitHub is blocked due to a DMCA takedown letter received by GitHub on behalf of the RIAA. While I cannot comment on the current maintainers' plans or ongoing discussions, in light of the claims made in that letter I thought it would…
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AppleCrate II: A New Apple II-Based Parallel Computer (2015)
In 2004 I built the first AppleCrate , an 8-board system, as an inexpensive, easy to program vehicle for experiments in parallel programming�a kind of "blade server" for the Apple II, if you will! AppleCrate I (at the time I didn't realize that it was number "I" ;-) was great fun, and it enabled some very interesting…
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The election of the doge
The ruler of Medieval Venice was chosen by an exceptionally complex ten-step process of alternating random lots and elections.
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Restoring a 37 Year-Old IBM F Mechanical Keyboard
I wanted to share my journey from start to finish to restore a 1983 IBM Model F XT mechanical keyboard to it's former glory. It includes...
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What “Roguelike” Meant
Several recently released games have rekindled the old discussions on the meaning of the word “roguelike”. This post is an attempt to…
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Iron, How Did They Make It, Addendum: Crucible Steel and Cast Iron
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020281 points25 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, as an addendum to our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, we’re going to look at two alternative regional processes, where th…
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Photos from inside a Typhoon class submarine
Тяжелый РПКСН проекта 941 по отечественной класификации: АКУЛА,по НАТовской Typhoon/ Это РПКСН III поколения. У корабля 2 прочных корпуса расположенных параллельно и несколько прочных модулей связанных единым наружным корпусом.Он несет 20 твердотопливных БР расположенных между прочными корпусами. В…
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Television: It’s Called a Medium Because It’s Never Well Done
Groucho Marx? Fred Waring? Ed Gardner? Goodman Ace? Jane Ace? Fred Allen? Ernie Kovacs? Deane Binder? Anonymous?
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Looking Back on 35 Years as an Amiga User
Thirty five years ago I became an Amiga user. One of the first, actually. This is a meandering and reminiscent post of sorts, written to mark the Amiga’s 35th birthday and the 35 years I have known and loved the … Continue reading →
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Per Brinch Hansen's books on compilers
Brinch Hansen was one of the pioneers of concurrent programming and operating systems (kernels). In the 1960s, Brinch Hansen worked at the Danish computer company Regnecentralen, first in the compiler group headed by Peter Naur and Jørn Jensen, and, later, as the chief architect of the RC 4000 minicomputer and its…
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Boswell’s Life of Johnson
James Boswell and the Nature of Genius
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LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)
AndreGarzia.com website
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Master of Magic
Steve Barcia started thinking about his second grand-strategy game well before he had finished creating his first one. While he was waiting for his latest iteration of Master of Orion to compile each day in the cramped Austin, Texas, offices of his company SimTex, he sketched in the mental details of a follow-up that…
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War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020130 points49 commentscited by 3History & Retro Computing details
Today, in Part II of our three part series on War Elephants, we’re going to look at the drawbacks of war elephants. Last time (here), we discussed the factors that made war elephants so power…
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I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
Microsoft Encarta came out in 1993 and was one of the first CD-ROMs I had. It ...
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Iron, How Did They Make It, Part IVb: Work Hardening, or Hardly Working?
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020107 points23 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, we close out our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb, addendum) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, although I ought to note that there will be at least one addendum di…
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Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?
The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and I retain a lot of fondness for these tiny, cheap, severely-compromised machines. I just backed the ZX Spectrum Next kickstarter, for instance. But after I left university and got a job, I bought myself my first proper computer:…
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Iron, How Did They Make It, Part IVa: Steel Yourself
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020218 points30 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, we continue our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb, addendum) look at pre-modern iron and steel production. Last week, we looked at how a blacksmith reshapes our iron from a spo…
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Using a Piece of Paper as a Display Terminal – Ed vs. Vim
This article will focus on discussing why the ancient text editor 'ed' works the way it does.
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Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)
I recently learned that cells are extremely crowded and busy places. I knew there's a lot of activity in cells, but I didn't realize just h...
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The Whitworth Three Plates Method (2017)
A visual step-by-step guide to Joseph Whitworth’s three-plate method for creating very flat reference surfaces.