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Decoding the NEC V20 Microcode
reenigne's decoding of the 8088 microcode in 2020 opened the doors for extremely accurate emulation of the 8088 CPU. Although I had added...
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 244 posts.
152
Being a kid making games in the early 2000s
An autobiographical essay by Jay Tholen about being a youngster making games and posting them online!
153
Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs
As Web standards have moved on, a particular 1990s library of GIFs has been hard to effectively archive and was at risk of being lost forever. So I swooped in, wrote some hacky code, and now a few thousand low-res images have been saved for posterity. Hurrah, I guess?
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Dealing with abandonware (2024)
reverse engineering, abandonware
156
Dad’s Custom Atari Peripherals
This guest post is from Jim Trageser , a long-time Goto 10 reader.
157
What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s
It was a summer holiday, sometime in the late 1990s. I was a young kid, around 8 or so. My dad had taught me the rules of chess before and we played from time to time. But this time was different: As we were about to start he stood up and walked away from the board, sitting down in a chair across the room and facing…
158
In 1985 Maxell built a bunch of life-size robots for its bad floppy ad
A rough start to what would later become one of my favorite tech ads from the 80s.
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Coding Tricks Used in the C64 Game Seawolves (2025)
An in-depth overview of some of the unusual and very advanced technical tricks used in the Commodore 64 game, Seawolves.
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Dolosse – a South African invention used over the world
All along the South African coast you find dolosse wherever coastal management is necessary to prevent tides and rough seas from eroding breakwaters, harbour walls, coastal construction. In Port El…
161
Amiga Screens: A Primer
One of the unwritten rules of the Internet seems to be that whenever something Amiga-related is mentioned, at least one Amiga fan (myself included) must show up and try to explain the concept of screens . Amiga screens can have different resolutions, we'll tell you, and one can drag them, we'll say, and other Amiga…
162
Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives
Last week’s adventures with the Exidy Sorcerer led me to write a Z80 version of the LZ4 decompressor I’d previously used on the SNES, the CoCo, and the Genesis. At this point, this has …
163
Celebrating Tony Hoare's mark on computer science
Tony Hoare at the LASER summer school, September 2007 (All photographs in this article are by the author) Had they included just one of Tony Hoare’s major achievements, many scientific careers would be considered prestigious enough. His had a long list, which I am going to try to summarize, not pretending to get…
164
2004 RuneScape fit a multiplayer RPG into 56k dial-up
In 2004 I played too much RuneScape on a 56k modem that died the moment Mum picked up the phone. A 3D world, up to a couple of thousand players on a server, dozens on screen at once - in the browser, on 5 kilobytes per second. It worked. Let’s follow a single step and see how.
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Erich von Däniken has died
It is with great sadness and shock that we must announce that Erich von Däniken passed away on January 10, 2026.
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How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread
How a Hertfordshire research lab quietly transformed an iconic British staple food, and the complexion of the countryside - without anyone actually noticing
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Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?
A statistical test of whether the Sumerian King List's antediluvian reigns line up with paleoclimate events better than chance.
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Examining circuit boards from the Space Shuttle's I/O Processor
The Space Shuttle's five 1 general-purpose computers played a critical role in each flight: controlling the engines, monitoring thousands o...
170
America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report
America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?
171
The myth of Snow Leopard
It was a hot mess, but the myth is useful today.
172
Windows 95 released August 24, 1995
People lined up around stores at midnight like they do for a new Apple product.
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Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork
Published: 05-07-2026 20:33 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the Space Shuttle's cargo bay, providing lab space for astronauts and experiment...
175
What was a Token Ring network?
Token Ring and ARCNET once competed with Ethernet as networking standards
176
dBase: 1979-2026
Litigation, neglect killed dBase. The dBase newsgroup servers went off-line since November 2025. Court-smart dBase vendors and AI accelerated the fall.
177
The last Romans are still around
For some of us, our Roman Empire actually is the Roman Empire. As far as pre-modern states go, the Roman Empire was incredibly powerful, culturally influential, and well documented. Rome’s expansio…
178
Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
This is exciting news, there is a fork of Qemu that has workable Itanium Merced emulation, and it’s good enough to run Windows XP/2003! Enter Malte Kuhlmann ‘s Qemu fork of syunnPC ‘s AI Itanium infused Qemu fork .
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MacOS Extensions Pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0
By now regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with my affection for the 1996 Apple Network Server , Apple's Unix-through-and-thro...
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Charles Tandy, the mastermind behind Radio Shack
He was also involved in taking the Pier 1 chain nationwide