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Columbo: an origin story (2018)
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Prescription: Miurder, here’s a little bit about the origins of the Columbo character – and the actors who played him before …
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 263 posts.
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Why use old computers and operating systems?
On this blog, I write about the various computers I use and about the operating systems I use on them. Apart from Windows 7, which is relatively modern, these include Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, which at this point is quite old, and Mac OS 9, which is practically ancient. I’d like to talk a bit about why I use such old…
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The biggest churches in the world: Anglo-Norman eleventh-century cathedrals
Usually the idea of what a cathedral ought to be, that is, a colossal church building with a vast hall-like interior verging on the sublime, is said to originate in France in the twelfth century. A…
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So what is the deal with A/UX anyways?
The year is 1983, and several Apple employees visit Brown University, and get some idea of what Universities want in a computer for the coming future. The big buzz of the era was the so called 3M machine:
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How many people have Q Clearance?
Ever wonder how many people currently have the enigmatic Q Clearance, the required security clearance for access to nuclear secrets? Well, I found out.
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What can be learned from studying long gone development practices?
Current ideas about the best way of building a software system are heavily influenced by the ideas that captured the attention of previous generations of developers. Can anything of practical use be learned from studying long gone techniques for building software systems?
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Turning an iPad Pro into a classic Macintosh
I’ve started work on the next in my 1-bit Woodblocks series: “Tekagami” (Ito Shinsui’s “Hand Mirror”). So it’s a good time to talk about how I turned an iPad...
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Mac SE/30 Odyssey
I’ve always wanted an Apple Macintosh SE/30 . Released in 1989, they look quite a lot like the other members of the original “compact Mac” series, but pack in a ton of interesting features that the other compact Macs don’t have.
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The sea people: Alexander the Great trod in the footsteps of forgotten Greeks
Alexander the Great tread in the footsteps of forgotten Greeks
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Opensource your abandonware (2010)
As you may know, back in 2007 I ressurected the development of GrafX2 . this old pixelart program, made only for DOS, was left out 6 years earlier by the authors, that had moved on to more modern computers. Today, graFX2 is amongst the best tool for pixelling, particularly on Linux or other alternative operating…
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The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)
The home computer presents itself through several interfaces, some in software, some in hardware. While it is mostly assumed that these interfaces’ goals are to expose the computing capabilities of the system to its user, obviously interfaces are at the same time responsible for transporting the image of the machine.
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286 vs. 386SX
The 386sx wasn't much of an upgrade from the 286, but was popular for a time. Let's take a look at the 286 vs 386sx, and what the SX offered.
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We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages (2020)
“If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?”
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XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought
A couple months back I switched my terminal from xfce4-terminal to the venerable xterm. For some reason I always put xterm in the same bucket as xclock, xmessage, or any other prehistoric command starting with X that comes pre-installed on any graphical Linux distribution.
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Pentium on a 386 Motherboard
I was wondering what would be the ultimate upgrade for my 386 motherboard. It has a soldered-in 386 CPU, an unpopulated 386 PGA socket, and a socket for either a 387 FPU or a 486 PGA. It might even be compatible with a Weitek processor, though I’m not entirely certain. There’s also a possibility that it has a…
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The Lost Apps of the 80s
In an email conversation, Ray Ozzie and I talked about all the writing tools of the 80s that didn't transiiton to the web.
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50 Years of Text Games – A 2021 Journey from Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon
A 2021 Journey from Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon
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“Space age electronics”: Inside a GE thin-film paperweight from the 1960s
In the early 1960s, General Electric developed a technology called thin-film electronics. 1 These circuits were built from thin films of ...
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Turbo Pascal: A Great Choice for Programming Under CP/M (2013)
CP/M was blessed with many programming languages, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I think that Turbo Pascal stands out from these and I'm not alon
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The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) in 2021
Published: 28-01-2021 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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The Many Faces of Berlin U-Bahn Line U7
When the U7 was completed in 1984, it was West Berlin’s longest underground line and the one with the greatest number of stations. Many of those stations, constructed at a time when the western hal…
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Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria
The Rosatom historical website has an entire section devoted to "Atomic Fun" — jokes and stories from the Soviet nuclear program. It's... something.
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The History of the Dot Com Era
I graduated from college in 1997. While at college, the Netscape IPO, Yahoo IPO, eBay IPO, and Amazon IPO all happened. When I graduated, I…
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Interview with Anders Hejlsberg on Delphi (1995)
Xoilac TV - Kênh xem trực tiếp bóng đá XoilacTV Full HD, không bị chặn, bình luận Tiếng Việt. XoiacTV cập nhật liên tục lịch thi đấu, BXH, kết quả bóng đá... nhanh và chính xác nhất.
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Expert help needed to decode rare piece of space history: Lunokhod data tapes
Blog di Paolo Attivissimo su Internet, social network, informatica e bufale
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