2371
VME Broken on AMD Ryzen
That’s VME as in Virtual-8086 Mode Enhancements, introduced in the Intel Pentium Processor, and initially documented in the infamous NDA-only Appendix H.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
2372
The evolution of Unix architecture in two diagrams
Today I put online two diagrams depicting the architecture of the Unix operating system , one for the 1972 First Research Edition and one for FreeBSD, one of its direct descendants. Here are the details on how I created these diagrams.
2373
Lost Generation: The Relay Computers
Our previous installment described the rise of automatic telephone switches, and of the complex relay circuits to control them. Now we shall see how scientists and engineers developed such relay c…
2374
The Etiquette of the Victorian Ballroom: Twenty Tips for Single Gentlemen
Twenty tips addressing the basics of ballroom etiquette for single Victorian gentlemen.
2375
When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
In my last post, I reminisced about my bbs software that I wrote and sold in 1993. In 1995, I was a senior in high school, and my school had just purchased a 76 computer Novell network for the 900 ...
2376
Why Are There So Many 17th Century Paintings of Monkeys Getting Drunk?
One cold Friday in 1660, Samuel Pepys encountered two unpleasant surprises. "At home found all well," he wrote in his diary, "but the m...
2377
The fifty shades of Latin
In the bird’s-eye view, one might have the comforting illusion that country borders are also language borders. Especially where the bor...
2378
Y Combinator When No One Cared
Recently I came across one of the first pitch letters I sent to journalists about Y Combinator. It was from the first few months of YC’s existence and it’s a snapshot of what our thinking was way...
2379
Reverse engineering the 76477 “Space Invaders” sound effect chip from die photos
Remember the old video game Space Invaders? Some of its sound effects were provided by a chip called the 76477 Complex Sound Generation ch...
2380
2381
2382
2383
A look at my BBS Software from '93
The buzz around Mastodon’s federated social network has made me nostalgic about bulletin board systems in the early nineties. It was an era that is unknown to most people. It was social networking ...
2384
Why 1866 Set the Stage for Two World Wars
When some search for the roots of the First World War, there is a tendency to look towards the Balkans. After all, it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian E…
2385
The origins of XXX as FIXME
In which I go digging into source archives from 40-50 years ago, to figure out why we use XXX to mark dodgy code.
2386
The 640 K Barrier
There was a demon in memory. They said whoever challenged him would lose. Their programs would lock up, their machines would crash, and all their data would disintegrate.
2387
Umberto Eco's Anti-Library (2015)
How to become an “antischolar” in a culture that treats knowledge as “an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order.”
2388
Photos from Inside North Korea (2014)
I visited North Korea for 16 days in 2014. Here are 100 photos I took inside all corners of this secretive socialist nation.
2389
OS/2 2.0, Summer ’91 Edition
In a fascinating example of poor timing, disk images of OS/2 2.0 pre-release level 6.605 from July/September 1991 were missing for over 25 years, only to show up literally one day after after the 25th anniversary of the OS/2 2.0 release (big thanks to a very helpful reader!).
2390
On the Women’s Petition Against Coffee of 1674
“That Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE.” Imagine a space where you can bet on bear fights, warm your legs by th...
2391
Ultima VI
After Richard Garriott and his colleagues at Origin Systems finished each Ultima game — after the manic final crunch of polishing and testing, after the release party, after the triumphant show appearances and interviews in full Lord British regalia — there must always arise the daunting question of what to do next…
2392
Quote Origin: Computer Memory: 640K Ought to be Enough for Anyone
Bill Gates? James E. Fawcette? Nancy Andrews? Jerry Pournelle? InfoWorld? Apocryphal?
2393
Lego Macintosh Classic with e‑paper display
*tl;dr: I built a Wi-Fi enabled LEGO Macintosh Classic running Docker on a Raspberry Pi Zero with an e‑paper display. Docker deployments via resin.io. photos
2394
A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world
The following brief post is once again offered largely for the sake of interest, being concerned with the furthest limits of the distributio...
2395
Recompiling the Lost Vikings
In my previous blog post I talked about reverse engineering the virtual machine used to implement objects in the Lost Vikings. The Lost Vikings was released in 1993 by Silicon and Synapse, now bett…
2396
“Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results”
Albert Einstein? Al-Anon? Narcotics Anonymous? Max Nordau? George Bernard Shaw? Samuel Beckett? George A. Kelly? Rita Mae Brown? John Larroquette? Jessie Potter? Werner Erhard?
2397
Chasing the First Arcade Easter Egg
It all started with a project I was working on called “Fixing Gran Trak 10” about the first car racing arcade video game from 1974. I had completed the electrical repairs and was trying to intervie…
2398
Secret colours of the Commodore 64
In 1991 I was fourteen years old. It would be fair to say I was obsessed with computers. I proudly owned a brown ‘breadbox’ Commodore 64 with an exotic upgrade - an Oceanic 5.25” disk drive:
2399
2400
They Used To Last 50 Years
Now refrigerators last 8–10 years, if you are fortunate. How in the world have our appliances regressed so much in the past few decades? I’ve bought and sold refrigerators and freezers from the 1950’s that still work perfectly fine. I’ve come across washers and dryers from the 1960’s and 1970’s that were still working…