271
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. 311 posts.
272
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
James Boswell and the Nature of Genius
273
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…
274
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…
275
The Nobel Peace Prize 2020
The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 was awarded to World Food Programme (WFP) "for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict"
276
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.
277
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…
278
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:…
279
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…
280
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.
281
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 ...
282
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…
283
284
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
285
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…
286
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…
287
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.
288
Weird and Innovative Chips (2007)
The GDP was exclusively object oriented - normal linear memory access wasn't allowed, and there was hardware support for data hiding, methods, inheritance, late binding, and access protection, and it was promoted as being ideal for the Ada programming language. To enforce this, permission and type checks for every…
289
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.
290
Connecting a Macintosh SE to the Internet with a Raspberry Pi
How to connect a 68k Mac to the internet without an ethernet card!
291
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…
292
Fairchild, Fairchildren, and the Family Tree of Silicon Valley (2016)
Through an unprecedented series of technical, business, and cultural innovations, Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation spawned hundreds of ventures that established Silicon Valley as a world center of entrepreneurial activity and technological leadership. Although the firm’s market valuation never exceeded $2.5…
293
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!
294
295
A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS
Ways of dealing with the fractured address space.
296
Debian 10.3
[05 Dec 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.7 released [26 Sep 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.6 released [30 Aug 2020] DebConf20 online closes [01 Aug 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.5 released [18 Jul 2020] Updated Debian 9: 9.13 released [09 Jul 2020] Debian 8 Long Term Support reaching end-of-life [16 Jun 2020] Ampere donates…
297
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…
298
299
300
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.