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Man, Myth and Magic
Collect the set! I don’t really need a digital copy of Man, Myth and Magic—I’ve been the fortunate owner for many years of the bound set of original magazines you see above—but I imagin…
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 422 posts.
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Understanding British Money: What's a Quid? A Shilling? (2020)
British money has a lengthy history, so it's not surprising that it's evolved and changed over the years. Whether you're watching British TV, reading British
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The origin of the law of torture: A cautionary tale
+ Ordeals and Plea Bargaining
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Savings and Loan Crisis 1980–1989
In the 1980s, the financial sector suffered through a period of distress that was focused on the nation's savings and loan industry.
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History is just one damn thing after another
This is a short story about what happened to the U.S.
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Emulating an iPod Touch 2G using QEMU
My personal website.
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MiniDisc Hacking
Most MiniDisc aficionados are aware of unit hacking to gain access to new features. The unit that perhaps benefits the most from this is the Sony MZ-N510, which also comes in the N520 and NF610 variants. The 2001 model R700 can be hacked to add many features of its upscale brother, the R900 , as well as the Type-R…
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OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
Published: 09-04-2023 23:59 | Last update: 11-04-2023 22:29 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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SS United States, the fastest passenger liner ever built
The fastest passenger liner ever built, the SS United States was a joint undertaking by a civilian shipping line and the US Navy. SS United States, rusting away in Philadelphia photo from WikiCommo…
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Inside the 8086 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry
The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and se...
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Reverse-engineering the division microcode in the Intel 8086 processor
While programmers today take division for granted, most microprocessors in the 1970s could only add and subtract — division required a sl...
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Reverse-engineering the 8086 processor's address and data pin circuits
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...
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When is a PC not a PC? The PC-98
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 …
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The complex history of the Intel i960 RISC processor
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...
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Admiral Rickover's 'Paper Reactor' Memo (1953)
Rickover's famous speech about the distinction between academic (paper) reactors and practical reactors.
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Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
Shocking new research confirms the ancient Carthaginians ritually sacrificed children as offerings to the gods, overturning decades of denial. Uncover the dark secrets of this long-forgotten civilisation.
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Hippo Meat Nearly Became an American Food Staple
Visit our Ripley’s Believe It or Not! aquariums and attractions, today. Immerse yourself in a world of wonder and create memories with your friends and family.
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Unix is both a technology and an idea
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…
320
The Pattern Language of Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu as a pattern language, rather than a failed software project
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Japan’s silent movie culture is still going
There was a cultural divide in benshi preferences, rather like the difference in taste between those
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The Greatest Counterfeiter (2021)
What if you could counterfeit so much money that it stopped being illegal?
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I come here not to bury Delphi, but to praise it (2019)
What helps a programming language gain traction? Patrick Martin remembers why he used to use Delphi.
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IBM PC 8088 replaced with a Motorola 68000
I was wondering what the IBM Personal Computer would have been like if they had chosen the Motorola 68000 instead of the Intel 8088, so I used my MCL86+ to emulate the 68000 and find out! The MCL86…
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Fitting 44% More Data on a C64/1541 Floppy Disk
The physical data format on a Commodore 1541 5¼-inch floppy disk as used by the C64 is completely defined in software. The drive’s operating system fits 170 KB on a disk. This article explores different strategies, each with its pros and cons, to fit up to 246 KB.
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A Personal History of APL (1982)
October 1982 TR-03.214 A PERSONAL HISTORY OF APL by Michael S. Montalbano International Business Machines Corporation General Products Division Santa Teresa Laboratory San Jose, California A PERSONAL HISTORY OF APL Introduction I have several reasons for calling this talk a personal history. For one, I want to make it…
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The curious Soviet mini-sub of South Alabama (2018)
While running around South Alabama, I came across the sleepy shrimping capital of Bayou La Batre along the Mississippi Sound. The basis for Winston Groom’s (who grew up in Mobile County and f…
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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 …