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Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
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Playstation Vita Architecture (Part 1)
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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Iron, How Did They Make It? Part I, Mining
This week we are starting a four-part look (I, II, III, IVa, IVb, addendum) at pre-modern iron and steel production. As with our series on farming, we are going to follow the train of iron producti…
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The story of my home made pipe organ (2000)
As the course progressed, I discovered that some of this stuff was actually logical, and also kind of fun. I found myself using the piano room just to play around. I never cared much for attempting to play sheet music, but the idea of hitting keys and getting a sound that was sometimes harmonious was strangely…
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Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator?
More or less anyone using modern PCs has to wonder: Why does Windows use backslash as a path separator when the rest of the world uses forward slash? The clear intermediate answer is “because DOS and OS/2 used backslash”. Both Windows 9x and NT were directly or indirectly derived from DOS and OS/2, and certainly…
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Aaron Swartz's Thoughts on djb (2009)
I think it’s time to remind people that D. J. Bernstein is the greatest programmer in the history of the world.
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How much did a tunic cost in the Roman Empire? (2021)
If this isn't the famous robbery scene, from Arsenal MS. 5070 Boccaccio Decameron its as close as I can bother to get for a...
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Plastic Money
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the balance tracking and authorization decisions happen within a financial institution that…
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Advanced Mac Substitute: API-level reimplementation of classic Mac OS
Advanced Mac Substitute is an API-level reimplementation of 1980s-era Mac OS. It runs 68K Mac applications in an emulator without an Apple ROM or system software .
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Atom feed format was born 20 years ago
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the effort that became the Atom feed format. It all began on June 16, 2003,
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The Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's clever exponential circuit, reverse-engineered
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became extremely popular, defining the sound of 1980s pop music. Because micro...
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HDMI ISA graphics card for vintage PCs by improving the Graphics Gremlin
HDMI is a relatively modern video connector we take for granted on modern PCs and monitors. Now vintage PCs can join in the fun too with a native connection to modern HDMI monitors without any additional adapter. (A production run has been made for this board. You can contact explit[at]mailbox[dot]org if you wish to…
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Bjarne Stroustrup Awarded 2017 Faraday Medal
For significant contributions to the history of computing, in particular pioneering the C++ programming language, Bjarne Stroustrup has been named … <a href="https://www.cs.columbia.edu/2017/bjarne-stroustrup-awarded-2017-faraday-medal/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Bjarne…
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30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness
I want to wish everyone happy Yule festivities! Midwinter in the northern hemisphere has passed, the days are now slowly becoming longer.
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Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)
These are some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler. These are all real. (If you must know I was bored one afternoon and decompiled the String resources for the compiler.) The compiler is 324k in size so these are just an excerpt I hope. I'm not sure where I stand on the copyright issue. Tony…
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FireChat was a tool for revolution, then disappeared
With FireChat, people were free to communicate and coordinate with each other without the message having to first filter through someone's data center. Why did the app shut down without notice?
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Plane Lands/Takes Off in Only 20 Feet (2013)
I posted a video earlier today of a Super Cub airplane landing on the side of a mountain. Super Cubs are ideal for that undertaking because of their low stall s
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Ericsson to WhatsApp: The Story of Erlang
How a programming language from Sweden powered one of the most valuable startup of the 2010s.
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Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
Regular readers of this blog will have seen me reference “Arcade Raids” in previous articles. This might create images in your head of hooded gangs of arcade collectors breaking into warehouses in …
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A retrospective of my time on the internet
A thorough retrospective of my time on the internet.
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A secret Apple Silicon extension to accommodate an Intel 8080 artifact
Lately I’ve been spending time on Mastodon for … reasons. Here’s my link: https://oldbytes.space/@blakespot. In my recently active time on the platform, I have found quite a few excellent retrocomputing-related posts by creative members of the community. One such post, … Continue reading →
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How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct
It was the familiar story of human cruelty and greed: the sperm whales were hunted to the oblivion. Then, in the 1970s, the better part of humanity led by good people - ecological activists - saw the error of their ways and stopped the murder. Good triumphed over evil. Amen. The problem with such…
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The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities
Fireside this week! We actually haven’t had one of these in quite a while; we had a gap week in April but the last Fireside looks like it was in March! In any case, here we are and here’…
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The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown
This is a different type of post. Here, instead of presenting the voice of a single person, I have translated selected stories shared on Weibo and elsewhere on the Chinese Internet—or more fittingl…