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Seeing Through the Spartan Mirage
Why does this ancient society capture the modern imagination?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
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Sony FX-300 Jackal: A technological marvel of the late 70s (2021)
I’m a child of the 1970s and I’m glad I never knew about the Sony FX-300 “Jackal 300.” It would have been the ultimate unobtainable machine of my dreams…this, even des…
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Did the Windows 95 setup team forget that MS-DOS can do graphics?
Oh look what you just made there.
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The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at an architecture that’s completely new to me, and I haven’t done any since creating my new scheme for dedicated platform guides. I’…
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The Joy of Nand2Tetris
For the last month, I have been working through Nand2Tetris: The Elements of Computing Systems; Building a Modern Computer from First Principles . I recently completed part 1. This first half of the text illuminates the process of building a computer purely from elementary logic gates. Each chapter is comprised of an…
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The History of S.u.S.E
The other enterprise Linux company
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How Copyover MUD Servers Worked
When I was younger, I played a lot of MUDs (“ Multi-User Dungeons ” — the text-only predecessors of modern MMORPGs, often played over Telnet ). They were great fun, particularly during high school: a lightweight multiplayer game with no client state meant you could log in from any machine in any lab, even Windows…
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Work at the Mill: The story of Digital Equipment Corporation
Or, the Story of Digital Equipment Corporation
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Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Residential Networking over Telephone
Recently, I covered some of the history of Ethernet's tenuous relationship with installed telephone cabling . That article focused on the earlier and more business-oriented products, but many of you probably know that there have been a number of efforts to install IP networking over installed telephone wiring in a…
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A brief history of code signing at Mozilla
Shipping large software to end-user devices is a complicated process. Shipping large software securely to end-user devices is even more complicated. Signing the things that ship to end-user devices is
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Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family
Findings resolve “steppe hypothesis” enigma
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Frank Lloyd Wright's mile high skyscraper proposal (2021)
Frank Lloyd Wright was an outspoken advocate for low-density cities without skyscrapers. With this in mind, it’s hard to believe the tower design pictured above came from Wright. It’s called The Illinois , and it was planned to be a mile (1,609 meters, or 5,280 feet) in height. That’s more than fou
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I believe 6502 instruction set is a good first assembly language
Why I believe 6502 instruction set is a good first assembly language
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What does it mean that MP3 is free?
The MP3 format, once the gold standard for digital audio files, is now free. The licensing and patents on MP3 encoders have expired, meaning you can now include them in your applications without payin
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Nine – seemingly impossible C64 demo
Nine is a small, seemingly impossible C64 demo that I released at Fjälldata 2025.
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The PS2’s backwards compatibility from the engineer who built it (2020)
As the PS2 turns 20 in Japan, a look back on its PS1 backwards compatibility from the eyes of the former Sony engineer responsible for it.
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The Video Game History Foundation library opens in early access
For free. For everyone. Wherever you are.
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The Language Construction Kit (1996, 2012)
Caja de herramientas para construir idiomas (en español; traducido por Renato Montes) O Kit de Construção de Línguas (em português; traduzido por Gustavo Pereira) Il Kit di Costruzione di Linguaggi (in italiano; tradotto per Daniele "MadMage" Calisi) Der Sprachbaukasten (auf Deutsch; übersetzt von Carsten Becker)
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The origin and unexpected evolution of the word "mainframe"
What is the origin of the word "mainframe", referring to a large, complex computer? Most sources agree that the term is related to the frame...
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Xerox Alto Source Code (2014)
Depending on your age, your first computer might have been an Apple II, a Radio Shack TRS-80, an IBM PC, an Apple Macintosh, or another of the early personal computers. If you missed these early machines the first time around, perhaps you have seen them in the Personal Computer section of the Revolution exhibit at the…
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A story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000
This is a story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000, the first model of the Amiga series. Many of you might be familiar with the popular Amiga 500 or later models, but the Commodore Amiga 1000 was actually the first model of the Amiga series produced. I consider the A1000 a significant piece of home…
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Google open-sources the Pebble OS
The source code for the Pebble operating system in now open, to support the volunteer community maintaining Pebble watches.
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Operation Leg – a pilot unlike any other (2020)
Douglas Bader was a Battle of Britain pilot unlike any other. Medically discharged against his will in 1932, the outbreak of the war was an opportunity for Bader to re-join the RAF and take back to the skies.
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Oliver Heaviside and the theory of transmission lines (2021)
(This is an adapted version of an article I wrote for the Dutch amateur radio magazine Electron , November 2021.)
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The story of my home made pipe organ (2000)
As the course progressed, I discovered that some of this stuff was actually logical, and also kind of fun. I found myself using the piano room just to play around. I never cared much for attempting to play sheet music, but the idea of hitting keys and getting a sound that was sometimes harmonious was strangely…
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Reviving a Dead Audio Format: The Return of ZZM
Long-time readers will know that my first video game love was the text-mode video game slash creation studio ZZT. One feature of this game is the ability to ...