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Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation
On the last day of 1945, with World War II finally behind it, Finland's government announced a new and very strange policy. All Finns were r...
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 304 posts.
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The Later Years of Douglas Adams
If God exists, he must have a sense of humor, for why else would he have strewn so many practical jokes around his creation? Among them is the uncanny phenomenon of the talented writer who absolutely hates to write.
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Was the Internet created to survive a nuclear strike? (2022)
Was the Internet Created for Nuclear War?
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My MEGA65 is finally here
Taking a good look around (both inside and out) of my brand new MEGA65 computer system from Trenz Electronic GmbH.
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Iconography of the X Window System: The Boot Stipple
If you are of a certain vintage, this image is burned indelibly somewhere in your posterior parietal complex: Oh, my old friend. How it’s been a long time. Cultural Significance For the uninitiated, what are we looking at? Could it be the Moiré Error from Doom? Well, no. You are looking at (part of) the boot up screen…
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How we crowdfunded $750k for a giant book about keyboard history
At first sight, the idea of 1,216-page two-volume work on keyboards for $150 might seem like a heavy lift. But it was years in the making.
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Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app
The latest version of this app is now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.More info on my apps website at: gingerbeardman.com/apps/stapler/
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The Hearts of the Super Nintendo
When I start studying a vintage system, the first thing I like to do is understand how its components work together at the hardware level [1] .
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Getting back into C programming for CP/M
This article is about how programming for CP/M, usng a 40-year-old C compiler, differs from modern C development, even for console applications.
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Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orienta...
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My favorite 1980's Canadian TV show: Bits and Bytes
Reflections on whatever I'm thinking about that week (the web, culture, computer graphics, math etc)
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Some memories of Niklaus Wirth
January 2024
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Tweaking Stunt Island's 30-year-old 3D engine
Note: the patch is available at the end of the article ( HERE ). This post is about its making-of.
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The Apple IIGS Megahertz Myth
I love the Apple IIGS. It’s a great computer, but could it have been greater? The legend goes that Apple purposefully underclocked its CPU during development to avoid competing with the Macintosh. But is this actually true? Join me for a deep dive into the IIGS architecture, the life the 65816 CPU,
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The Berkeley Software Distribution
UNIX is always litigious
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Lewis Carroll – computing the day of the week for any given date (1887)
A letter from Lewis Carroll to Nature, March 31, 1887: Having hit upon the following method of mentally computing the day of the week for any given date, I send it you in the hope that it may interest some of your readers. I am not a rapid computer myself, and as I find my average time for doing any such question is…
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All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second
I just want to see it. Just once. I want to watch that earthquake ripple through all of global electronic timekeeping. I want to see which organisations make it to January morning with nothing on fire. You know what a leap second is. The short version is that planet Earth ...
111
An Ode to Deluxe Paint (2023)
When first seeing an Amiga 500 computer, it wasn't the games but a copy of the painting program Deluxe Paint II that really got me hooked. Since then, computers and visual art have forever been linked in my mind. Apart from dreaming of an Amiga of my own, my boyhood interest in technical marvels was never about…
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Reversing Choplifter
The Apple II line of computers had an amazing run, from 1977 to 1993. In that time, hundreds of thousands of pieces of software were written for it, including many tens of thousands of games. Like any platform, however, the number of truly great games within that range is much smaller. If you ask any former (or…
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I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals
As should be expected, a number of individuals have come forward with responses to the initial blog post. While I do not expect everyone to take even a passing interest in the rabbit-hole of the si…
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MIT Aluminum Bicycle Project 1974 (2016)
1974 MIT Aluminum Bicycle Project, we describe some of Marc’s design, the frames he and Harriet built in Shawn Buckleys IAP course, and how these played a role in the Klein vs. Cannondale patent litigation in the mid-1980s.
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We were wizards – a foreword to Learning Perl (1993)
In the 1990s, computers were magic and we were wizards. Want proof? I offer below, Larry Wall’s foreword to Learning Perl from 1993. It greatly inspired a very young me who wandered into a book shop, picked up an odd book with llama on the cover and a seemingly misspelled title. The first few pages had me hooked and…
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The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight (2023)
The Soviet space program used completely different controls and instruments from American spacecraft. One of the most interesting navigati...
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Superfest – The almost unbreakable East German Glass (2021)
Originally named ceverit, Superfest was an extremely durable glass patented and developed in 1979 in East Germany to combat excessive glass waste.
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A History of the TTY
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
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STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
It was about a quarter past midnight on July 23, 1999 when the Ralph Roe, the Shuttle Launch Director, told Eileen’s crew that they were go for launch and wished them good luck. The launch, which h…