2401
Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually...
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
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Sun's NeWS was a mistake, as are all toolkit-in-server windowing systems (2013)
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
2405
That Dothraki Horde, Part I: Barbarian Couture
This series is now available in audio format. You can find the playlist here. This is the first part of a three four part (I, II, III, IV) look at the Dothraki, the fictional horse-borne nomads of …
2406
On medieval cats
The other night I was mindlessly scrolling about on my phone through Instagram, as one does when they really ought to go to bed but are stuck being entertained instead of resting, when I came upon …
2407
Inside OS/2 (1987)
A 1987 technical introduction to OS/2, covering its architecture, multitasking capabilities, API, and kernel system services.
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Using a Piece of Paper as a Display Terminal – Ed vs. Vim
This article will focus on discussing why the ancient text editor 'ed' works the way it does.
2410
Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than (2011)
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
2411
Scratches in 2001: A Space Osyssey (2018)
A set of scratches in Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey' is visible at the same moments and locations within the frame in most copies of the movie.
2412
Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT
A celebration into the IBM PC, the Model F/XT keyboard, where it came from and what it became
2413
Rome: Decline and Fall Pt 1: Words
This week we’re going to start tackling a complex and much debated question: ‘how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?’ This was the topic that won the vote among the patrons o…
2414
Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II
A vintage keyboard, a mysterious battery, and some questionable 1990s engineering choices...
2415
Cloning a 6502 Apple-1 in just 930 logic gates
Blog about vintage computers and homebrewing computers.
2416
Intel 286 secrets: ICE mode and F1 0F 04
With some recent interest in undocumented opcodes and microcode on modern Intel chips, I decided to do a proper writeup on what I found out while researching and playing around with the venerable 80286 ("Beige Unlock"?).
2417
A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut
“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”
2418
Help My c64 caught on fire
Angelo Pesce's homepage & blog on computers, graphics and other things.
2419
M/S Estonia accident radio transcript
Transcript of VHF channel 16 on the night of the Estonia disaster.
2420
Scottish Nitroglycerin and One Legged Stools (2014)
Main Menu - click above Man, thermometer, one legged stool & vat of nitro 1870 . Alfred Nobel chose Ardeer, in Ayreshire, as the ...
2421
Bell Labs: An Institute of Creative Technology (2015)
This week I finished the most recent book in my self-guided study of 20th century technology, namely The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner. As the title implies, it’s a chronicle of research and development wing of AT&T, a history that lasts...
2422
Leaving Arizona – the Story of the Motorola 6800 part 2 and creation of the 6502
Part 2 of The Story of the Motorola 6800
2423
The History of Usenet and FidoNet
Between roughly 1975 and 1995, access to computers accelerated much more quickly than access to computer networks. First in the United States, and then in other wealthy countries, computers became …
2424
Die analysis of the 8087 math coprocessor's fast bit shifter
Floating-point numbers are very useful for scientific programming, but early microprocessors only supported integers directly. 1 Although...
2425
How the C64 Keyboard Works (2017)
I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but just 1 year ago when I started working on C64 OS, I didn't have the first clue how the C64 Keyboard worked. I knew there was a thing called the keyboard buffer, but I had cloudy thoughts of it being inside the keyboard itself. When I had to actually write the keyboard scanning…
2426
The Dying Computer Museum
One can choose to focus on the car crash, or the lessons learned from the car crash. Let’s do a little of both. The proposition of the Living Computer Museum was initially simple, and rather …
2427
Rome is studded with cannon balls (2022)
Did you know that Rome is studded with cannon balls? Not many know that the city is full of sites where you can still see cannon balls. We’ll accompany you and share with you the story of the many cannon balls you can see around the city. Come and have a look for yourself! Come to Rome to see the city and its cannon…
2428
RAM: the forgotten history (2024)
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working memory.
2429
How Many People? Ancient Demography
One of the first questions anyone asks about past societies is, ‘how many people were there?’ It is one of those basic bits of information and generally speaking those of us who teach t…
2430
Office 2000 is good to go
The biggest competition for Office 2000 was…Office 97. –Realization at the end of the project