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Testing the Z80 Chip with a 1970s Beauty
The Fairchild Sentry 610 was optimized for engineers
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 304 posts.
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The Beginnings of FM Radio Broadcasting (2018)
The beginnings of FM radio broadcasting in the USA
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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.
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Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II
A vintage keyboard, a mysterious battery, and some questionable 1990s engineering choices...
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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...
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Leaving Arizona – the Story of the Motorola 6800 part 2 and creation of the 6502
Part 2 of The Story of the Motorola 6800
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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 …
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DOS APPEND
For a long time, I couldn’t quite grasp what the DOS APPEND command could possibly be good for. Until I came across a situation which APPEND was made for.
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ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
A surprisingly innovative portable ST
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A History of Microwave Ovens
Some humans put a ~2.4GHz magnetron on a ventilated metal box with a fancy door.
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Wireless Amiga Tank Mouse
Taking a look at a Wireless Tank Mouse that I picked up from Sordan.ie and seeing how well it works with my Commodore computers.
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The Burial of William the Conqueror: A Comedy of Errors
William the Conqueror is one of those historical figures who need no introduction. Thanks to his famous victory at Hastings in 1066, he dra...
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With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-Pad Slate, Everyone's a WiiN-Er
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone wit...
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With more legal action on the horizon, how long before Archive.org closes?
Connect with Lunduke and other members of Lunduke community
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I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals
I spent some time trying to figure out when to make this announcement in a way that didn’t seem like direct sabotage; the day before the VCF East event seems about right. Years ago, clearing …
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The Dogma of Otherness (1986)
The Dogma of Otherness insists that all voices deserve a hearing, that all points of view have something of value to offer.
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When Kodak and Polaroid went to war
This part 2 of the Secret History of Polaroid and Edwin Land. Read part 1 for context. Kodak and Polaroid, the two most famous camera companies of the 20th century, had a great partnership for 20+ …
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The Power Mac 4400
In November 1996, Apple released the Power Macintosh 4400 with a starting price of $1,725. Also sold as the Power Macintosh 7220, it’d be easy to write this machine off as just another grain of sand on the beige beach that was Apple’s product line in the 1990s. I mean, just look at this thing, pictured here with an…
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Non-PC compatible x86 computers (2007)
This is, so far, the only article of mine that's been completely deleted from Wikipedia. I've salvaged a copy of it from Search.com , since it's gone from the site's history now, and am putting it here until I decide what else to do with it. Non-PC compatible x86 computers For much of the time that…
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One Plus One Equals Two (2006)
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Amiga 2000 – Codename: Tesseract (2021)
Amiga 2000 - codename Tesseract - the first part of a series of posts about building an Amiga 2000 from scratch and adding mods to it.
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Tabbed out on the Oregon Trail
Powell's is rightly famed as a destination for book lovers, and I finally made my pilgrimage last weekend. The perils of air travel limited the inevitable splurge -- I had to fit my haul into a single backpack -- but I wound up with some nifty ...
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The history of Unix's ioctl and signal about window sizes
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…
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Spider-Man (Neversoft) Decompilation Project Progress Checkpoint – May 2024
Progress report for the Spider-Man decompilation project
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Massachusetts Bodged Transistor Authority
in which two women are driven into madness by poorly documented cab signaling gear
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