31
KDE at 30
KDE is an open community of friendly people who want to create a world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 82 posts.
32
The "Windows XP Box" (2003)
I needed a small Windows XP machine and a Mini-ITX board was the obvious choice. So I decided to build my "Windows XP Box" in a Windows XP box. The external dimensions of the box are a tiny 243mm x 200mm x 48mm.
33
Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)
Tove Jansson illustrated books of other appreciated authors during her career. One of them was J. R. R. Tolkien's classic The Hobbit.
34
New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome
Old fashioned sleuthing and the help of modern technology leads to discovery of manuscript with poem composed by a farm labourer 1,300 years ago.
35
Computer Hobby Movement in Canada
The York University Computer Museum (YUCoM) is a historical collection and a research center for the history of computing in Canada. Computer museum Canada
36
How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?
Asking nicely, and asking a lot of people.
37
Computer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – January 21, 2026 – The Computer History Museum (CHM), a leader in decoding technology—its computing past, digital present, and future impact on humanity—announced the launch of OpenCHM, a new digital portal providing global access to its unparalleled collection. “OpenCHM is designed to inspire…
38
Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU
Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). Why would a National Laboratory need the capacity to do this? To provide components that were not…
39
Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks
This guide is written for practitioners wanting to create disk images of floppy disks with the intention of preserving them for the long-term. This guide will focus on 8-inch, 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch and 3-inch floppy disks and will only focus on getting material from these disks and will not cover writing disks. Other…
40
The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal
Somewhere at the bottom of the Forth and Clyde Canal, buried in the silt, there is a box of custom silicon that was right about almost everything. Back in 1988 a Scottish hi-fi company shipped a processor that checked the type and bounds of every memory access in hardware, garbage-collected its own heap in silicon, […]
41
A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
Right-clicking and shift-clicking.
42
Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)
The vinyl record is an analog medium. How can it be affected by the loudness war? So what’s the impact?
43
44
45
The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s
The dreams of a forgotten movement from the 1930s live on
46
Fun With Pinball
Fun With Pinball small board assembly instructions explanations flipper solenoid stepper video
47
Windows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older one
A very primitive version of recovery.
48
5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested.
49
Twenty Years of RISC OS Open
On 20 June 2006 we incorporated RISC OS Open Ltd with one slightly mad ambition: to take a proprietary operating system and open it up to anyone who fancied helping. Twenty years on, that has largely happened, and the RISC OS of today is in far better health than the one we inherited.
50
51
Vintage Artificial Intelligence: Before It Got Awkward
Long before the current kerfuffle about LLMs, Generative AI Artwork, and asking your tax preparation chatbot for a cookie recipe, the concept of artificial intelligence and synthetic life was a pervasive theme in creative and engineering works. We have the ground-breaking appearance of Rossum's Universal Robots (or…
52
200 Journalists Applaud the Internet Archive's Role in Preserving Public Record
Journalists are thanking the Internet Archive for their respectful preservation of news and history and for being an important resource for journalists. This letter is coming at a time where many major media outlets are questioning whether to allow the Wayback Machine to continue to preserve journalism.
53
2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Deisseroth, Hegemann, Nagel
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"
54
Lego building instructions through time
Building instructions. The silent helper that without a single word guides you, step by step, to transform your pile of bricks to fantastic creations. The tool that shows you building techniques and gives you a solid foundation for further exploring the wonders of the LEGO ® brick. Let’s take a look at some of the…
55
The back cover of C++: The Language raises questions not answered by front cover
Not doing the reading.
56
Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch rehearsal
Wait, that's not him.
57
When transit passes were designed by hand (2022)
In the 1930s–60s, Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company offered trolley and bus riders a weekly burst of color and hand lettering. About 300 of these tickets are now in our collection.
58
Jean-Pierre Serre turns 100
Jean-Pierre Serre is a French mathematician who has made important contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, and algebraic number theory. He was a member of Bourbaki.
59
60
Everything I Know (1975)
Everything I Know During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire life’s work. Jump to Sections Introduction These …