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The most expensive typefaces (2019)
The most expensive typeface I encountered is JHA Bodoni Ritalic, at €4,401.99 (almost $5,000) for a single font.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 242 posts.
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Boswell’s Life of Johnson
James Boswell and the Nature of Genius
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PC-XT Emulator on a ESP8266 (2018)
Can you run a 8086 PC-XT emulation with 640K RAM, 80×25 CGA composite video and a 1.44MB MS-DOS disk on a ESP12E without additional components? Yes, you can and I did. The CPU emulator is a po…
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Bread, How Did They Make It? Part IV: Markets, Merchants and the Tax Man
Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! As the fourth and final part (I, II, III) of our look at the basic structure of food product…
215
The President and the Bomb, Part IV
Why the problem of "the President and the bomb" isn't about the "crazy President," but something far more pernicious and possible.
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Bread, How Did They Make It? Addendum: Rice
Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! As an addendum on to our four-part look at the general structures of the farming of cereal g…
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Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?
The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and I retain a lot of fondness for these tiny, cheap, severely-compromised machines. I just backed the ZX Spectrum Next kickstarter, for instance. But after I left university and got a job, I bought myself my first proper computer:…
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AppleCrate II: A New Apple II-Based Parallel Computer (2015)
In 2004 I built the first AppleCrate , an 8-board system, as an inexpensive, easy to program vehicle for experiments in parallel programming�a kind of "blade server" for the Apple II, if you will! AppleCrate I (at the time I didn't realize that it was number "I" ;-) was great fun, and it enabled some very interesting…
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Wiring and Cabling: How to Lace Cable Harnesses (1962)
From OP 2230, "Workmanship and Design Practices for Electronic Equipment" , published by the direction of the chief of the Bureau of Naval Weapons , 1 December, 1962. pp. 7-9 --- 7-14.
220
Bits of History, Words of Advice
"Why do you jackasses use these inferior linguistic vehicles when we have something here that’s so precious, so elegant, which gives me so ...
221
Really Atari ST?
This blog has previously examined a very very strange code fragment in the BIOS module of DOS. To recap, when deciding whether a boot sector might have a valid BPB, DOS checks whether the first byte is a relative jump (opcode E9h) or a short jump (opcode EBh), both used by different DOS versions. But it also checks…
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Making Playstation 1 Modchips (2018)
When I was young I owned a PlayStation 1 (PS1). It was one of the first, if not the first, game consoles I owned and it had a profound effect on my future. I can trace the history of how I got involved in computers back to playing and modding
224
Feynman Lectures on the Strong Interactions
Available at the arXiv this evening is something quite fascinating. Jim Cline has posted course notes from Feynman’s last course, given in 1987-88 on QCD. There are also some audio files of a…
225
Thoughts about the difference between European and American H/W and S/W design
I have just recently discovered that my previous post about Commodore BASIC went modestly viral, not only featuring on Hacknernews but getting its own story on Hackaday . Gosh. This in itself has provoked some discussion. Its also resulted in a lot of people telling me that NO COMMODORE WAS…
226
Visions of Alt-Berlin in “Man in the High Castle” (2017)
An MIT urban planner looks at the alternative vision for a Berlin that was designed to last a thousand years, but never built.
227
First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines
HS2 has released the first picture of one the two TBMs that will spend around three years digging the longest and deepest HS2 tunnels – from just inside the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire.
228
Connecting a Macintosh SE to the Internet with a Raspberry Pi
How to connect a 68k Mac to the internet without an ethernet card!
229
Iron, How Did They Make It, Part IVb: Work Hardening, or Hardly Working?
This week, we close out our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb, addendum) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, although I ought to note that there will be at least one addendum di…
230
NeXTSTEP on the HP 712 Part 2: Getting Software
In the last post of this series , I set up NeXTstep on an HP PA-RISC workstation . Today, I’m going to get down to business: configure networking, install system patches, outfit it with developer tools, and install some useful software!
231
Reverse engineering a Hit Clip (2013)
It’s hard to see a child outside today without some kind of iDevice pumping high fidelity 192kbps stereo lossless audio into their shiny white headphones, but BACK IN MY DAY, the iPod hadn’t been invented yet. Pickings were slim. Walkmen were outdated, CD players were pricey and would skip if bumped around despite…
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The Astonishing Prescience of Nam June Paik
I hadn’t heard of Nam June Paik until I went to his exhibition at Tate Modern a few weeks ago.
235
IBM Stretch, the NSA, and MLK
The narrative can change, but we must overcome the disinformation and fear that has overtaken the United States.
236
Reverse-engineering the 8086's Arithmetic/Logic Unit from die photos
The Intel 8086 processor was introduced in 1978, setting the course of modern computing. While the x86 processor family has supported 64-b...
237
British Rail’s short experiment with travelling pubs
It's May 1949 and British Rail was showing off its latest idea to please the public - a travelling pub.
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How early American inventors funded their ventures
From Colt's traveling show to the Wrights' bicycle shop
239
Examining Windows 1.0 Hello.c
For those who’ve been long-time readers of SoylentNews, it’s not exactly a secret that I have a personal interest in retro computing and documenting the history and evolution of the Personal Computer. About three years ago, I ran a series of articles about restoring Xenix 2.2.3c, and I’m far overdue on writing a new…
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Reverse-engineering the audio chip in the Nintendo Game Boy Color
The Nintendo Game Boy Color is a handheld game console that was released in 1998. It uses an audio amplifier chip to drive the internal s...