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Browser History (2013)
Wow! This takes me back! Please check the date this post was authored, as it may no longer be relevant in a modern context.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
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How to Roman Republic 101, Part IIIa: Starting Down the Path of Honors
This is the third of our planned five part series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, IV, V, A1, A2) on the structure of the Roman Republic during the third and second centuries. Last time we discussed Rome&…
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The MS-DOS Showcase
2,400 MS-DOS games and programs have gone live on the Internet Archive. The full collection is here and the games-specific section (basically all of them, for now) is here. But wait before you clic…
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Story of the Flash Fill Feature in Excel
My POPL 2011 “Flash Fill” paper was the most important turning point in my research career. I went from searching for the hardest problem I can solve to searching for the simplest problem that will…
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DHL pioneered the sharing economy (2016)
DHL was guaranteed timely delivery of critical business documents by giving away airplane tickets. That made it was a pioneer in the sharing economy.
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Ships Buried Under San Francisco
UpOut, profesyonel ses sistemleri, LED ekran teknolojileri, konferans ve konser çözümleri ile dış cephe aydınlatma projelerinde global standartlarda hizmet sunar
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Silicon die analysis: inside an op amp with interesting “butterfly” transistors
Some integrated circuits have very interesting dies under a microscope, like the chip below with designs that look kind of like butterflies....
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The internet was designed with a narrow waist
When you hear the term, you should picture an hourglass with M things on one side, N on the other, and an important concept in the middle.
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Visi On by VisiCorp – The obscure first full GUI for the IBM PC
Visi On was the first full GUI for the IBM PC. First demonstrated by VisiCorp at Fall Comdex 1982 and released at the end of 1983, just prior to the Apple Macintosh, it pre-dated the release of Microsoft Windows by several years.
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Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
Homemade clone of the Dick Smith Wizzard/VTech CreatiVision game console.
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A look at IBM S/360 core memory: In the 1960s, 128 kilobytes weighed 610 pounds
I recently received a vintage core memory array, part of an IBM System/360 mainframe computer. These arrays were used in a 128-kilobyte core...
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Sony News Portable Workstation NWS-1250 (2020)
We do not see many vintage Japanese workstations in the West. We also do not see many portable workstations (of any make). So, what we really rarely see, are Japanese portable workstations. I feel …
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The Scranton Iron Furnaces
The remains of four iron furnaces, operated by the Lackawanna Iron Works, are located in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
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The Apple-1's unusual MOS clock driver chip
Apple's first product was the Apple-1 computer, introduced in 1976. This early microcomputer used an unusual type of storage for its disp...
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8-bit 64K 1802 computer with front panel and serial port in an Altoids tin
Once upon a time, microcomputers were simple and easy to understand. So simple in fact that a kid like me, with no computer experience whatsoever, could actually understand them, build them, program them, and put them to work in his very own projects!
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The History of Album Art
Matt Ström-Awn · Designer, leader, and coach focused on building exceptional products and teams.
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Whither Plan 9? History and motivation
Wherein the author discusses the Plan 9 operating system. First of several.
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Ultima Underworld bugs
As we (Blue Sky Productions, later Looking Glass Technologies / Studios) were developing Ultima Underworld in 1991–1992, largely in a basement room in an office building in Somerville’s Davis Square, we received bug reports both from our own people and the QA team at Origin Systems, who published the game. “Our own…
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A History of Hard Drives
2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the hard drive. Let's look back at how the tech has changed over the years.
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How did MS-DOS decide on two seconds to keep the floppy disk cache valid?
A stopwatch and a race against time.
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1971 Social Engineering Attack
From Betty Medsger’s book on the 1971 FBI burglary (page 22): As burglars, they used some unusual techniques, ones Davidon enjoyed recalling years later, such as what some of them did in 1970 at a draft board office in Delaware. During their casing, they had noticed that the interior door that opened to the draft…
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Windows 3.x VDDVGA
While working on my Windows 3.x display driver , I ran into a vexing problem. In Windows 3.1 running in Enhanced 386 mode, I could start a DOS session and switch it to a window. But an attempt to set a mode in the DOS window (e.g. MODE CO80 ) would destroy the Windows desktop, preventing further drawing from happening…
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