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The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
There are a couple of version control commands that deserve wider appreciation: SCCS what and RCS ident . They allow you to find out what source a binary was built from, without having to run it – handy if it is a library! They basically scan a file looking for magic strings that contain version control metadata and…
While programmers today take division for granted, most microprocessors in the 1970s could only add and subtract — division required a sl...
The Epoch Cassette Vision was a moderate success. But in 1983, that all ended, when Nintendo and Sega released new consoles, which had more advanced hardware...
We recently restored an Apollo Guidance Computer 1 , the computer that provided guidance, navigation, and control onboard the Apollo flight...
2020 has been a weird year, for everyone around the world. In my specific case, that meant being away from my home in Shanghai, as we were in Europe at the time Covid hit and China did not make it easy to return until somewhere towards the end of the year.
The Intel 8086 microprocessor (1978) started the x86 architecture that continues to this day. In this blog post, I'm focusing on a small p...
Original Nanoprocessor prototypes from 1974-75. Note hand written wafer number, open die cover and early part number (94332)
Some C++ folk seem to think so, but they're wrong!
Among the most impressive manufacturing achievements of the US during WWII was the number of ships it produced.
Roughly speaking, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem states that there are true mathematical statements that cannot be proven. When I was in 11-th grade, my geometry teacher Mr. Olsen, my friend …
The United States was born of a desire to leave behind monarchial government and instead live under a republic. Although the structure of the United States was explicitly crafted to have both …
A beloved hometown impersonator had no idea what he was signing up for with this photoshoot.
Everything put into the building that is unnecessary, every cubic foot that is used for purely ornamental purposes beyond that needed to express its use and to make it harmonize with others of its class, is a waste — is, to put it in plain English, perverting someone’s money — George Hill, commercial real estate…
I’ve covered PC compatibility in the past, and tried to explain how just having an x86 CPU and running DOS does not necessarily make your machine compatible with an IBM PC. At the time, this …
The first mechanical device used in Russia for computational purposes was the Russian abacus ( schoty ). This device became "the national calculator" and was used in cashier's offices down to the middle of the 90's. It is interesting to note that the textbook "Trade calculations" published in 1986 devotes a whole…
The 8-bit Z-80 processor is famed for use in many early personal computers such the Osborne 1, TRS-80, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and it is s...
A Japanese man came into the restaurant. I had seen him before, wandering around; he was trying to sell abacuses. He started to talk to the waiters, and challenged them: He said he could add numbers faster than any of them could do.
The Intel i960 was a remarkable 32-bit processor of the 1990s with a confusing set of versions. Although it is now mostly forgotten (outs...
Fifty years ago, PC software pioneer Gary Kildall demonstrated CP/M, the first commercially successful personal computer operating system.
Almost every smartphone uses a processor based on the ARM1 chip created in 1985. The Visual ARM1 simulator shows what happens inside the...
[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…
MS-DOS game programmers had to deal with several limitations. This article goes over some of these obstacles and explores how we used the DOS/4GW extender & protected mode to unleash the power of 32-bit DOS.
On December 17, a 26 year old Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi reached the end of his rope. An unemployed university graduate, Bouazizi had become a seller of fruits and vegetables in the southern Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license…
The Intel 4004 after 44 years: scalable vector mask artwork, Rubylith cutters, replica PCB rev 2, printer emulator code.
If you haven't read my Nintendo 3DS intro blog post first, I'd suggest it as it's a fun short read that gives some backstory of my interest...
Rickover's famous speech about the distinction between academic (paper) reactors and practical reactors.
