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Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
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Of Psion and Symbian
Mobile before iOS and Android
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The Web is the Next Platform (1995)
I started working full-time on what became Internet Explorer 1.0 in early October, 1994, grew the engineering team to 67 individuals by the time we shipped IE 3.0 in August, 1996, and got very litt…
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NeXTSpirit: high-res NeXTSTEP Icons for macOS
I’ve always liked icons, make some occasionally for my personal use. I like especially old systems ones, from Mac OS Classic of course, but others too, Like BeOS, NeXTSTEP. Always found NeXTSTEP to have the most elegant interface of all, with that very sober windows and buttons style, yet beautifully detailed icons…
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An Apple II Tale
I’ve been an active IRC users for nearly 25 years now, and for many of those years I was a denizen of the #a2c.chat channel on the irc.a2central.com IRC server. (IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, a channel-based internet text … Continue reading →
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Reverse-engineering the multiplication algorithm in the Intel 8086 processor
While programmers today take multiplication for granted, most microprocessors in the 1970s could only add and subtract — multiplication r...
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Reverse Engineering the PLA Chip in the Commodore 128
As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been working on reverse engineering the PLA chip in the C128. I’m now mostly done with this process so I think it’s time to share some of the findings.
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Guido van Rossum: Before Python
This morning I had a chat with the students at Google's CAPE program. Since I wrote up what I wanted to say I figured I might as well blog ...
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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 the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters
Adventures in vintage computers and retrogaming. Includes articles on classic games and obsolete computers.
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Two perspectives on a designer who Steve Jobs could not hire
Richard Sapper may not be a household name, but he's on the same level of greats like Dieter Rams and Jonathan Ive.
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The Home Computer Generation
A seemingly frightening realization regularly dawns on various pundits these days: Being a digital native doesn't automatically mean you're computer savvy. Due to a gradual transformation from general purpose tools to digital appliances, computers are now more than ever perceived as magical boxes by their users. Many…
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Translating Latin demonology manuals with GPT-4 and Claude
At long last, a real-world use case for AI!
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I Used Netscape Composer in 2024
The story of a geeky twist on "Party like it's 1999".
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Simula – The forgotten programming language
What can it teach us?
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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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Windows NT 3.1 on Dec Alpha AXP
As I was preparing the Windows NT RISC exhibit for VCF west , I realized that I’m missing a rather important piece of the history. While I was showing the potentially last DEC Alpha Windows build ever – AXP64 2210 , I don’t have anything earlier than NT 3.51. It would be nice to showcase the very first RTM version …
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Happy 23rd Birthday, DOOM
It's that time of year again, where we say Happy Birthday to one of my most favorite games, DOOM! Every year I try to reveal something about the game's development that hasn't been documented to death. Believe me, DOOM has been documented more than most games. But never fear, I have so much stuff th
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Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)
A long time ago, there was no Internet. Ok, there was an internet, but I lived outside of it. It was 1992 or 1993, and I only saw my first webpage and send my first email in 1995. And I was perhaps…
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The Odd Story of Factory-Downgraded 486s (2020)
Counterfeits CPU were very common in the mid-90s. The worst period was between 1993 (just after the launch of the Intel 486 DX2) and 1998 (when the Pentium II started to be multiplier-locked). It was extremely easy for tricksters to remove the original marking and reprint another one with a higher f
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Usenet, authentication, and engineering: early design decisions for Usenet
A Twitter thread on trolls brought up mention of trolls on Usenet . The reason they were so hard to deal with, even then, has some lessons for today; besides, the history is interesting. (Aside: this is, I think, the first longish thing I’ve ever written about any of the early design decisions for Usenet. I should…
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What Is Textmode?
An illustrated description of what Textmode Art is and how to get started.
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First actual computer bug was found today, 66 years ago
On the 9th September, 1947, operators of the Mark II Aiken Relay Computer being tested at Harvard University, found a bug. And, in so doing, made history.
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The album art of Phil Hartmann (2022)
You might remember him from such roles as Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz, but in the years before legendary comic Phil Hartman shaved the second ‘n’ from his name, he was designing album art for some West Coast rock bands.
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First Is the Worst: Nintendo's Color TV Game 6 and 15
If you told Yamauchi Fusajiro that the little playing card business he had just started would one day sell video game consoles, he would have no idea what yo...