1981
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
1982
Happy 23rd Birthday, DOOM
It's that time of year again, where we say Happy Birthday to one of my most favorite games, DOOM! Every year I try to reveal something about the game's development that hasn't been documented to death. Believe me, DOOM has been documented more than most games. But never fear, I have so much stuff th
1983
Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)
A long time ago, there was no Internet. Ok, there was an internet, but I lived outside of it. It was 1992 or 1993, and I only saw my first webpage and send my first email in 1995. And I was perhaps…
1984
The Odd Story of Factory-Downgraded 486s (2020)
Counterfeits CPU were very common in the mid-90s. The worst period was between 1993 (just after the launch of the Intel 486 DX2) and 1998 (when the Pentium II started to be multiplier-locked). It was extremely easy for tricksters to remove the original marking and reprint another one with a higher f
1985
1986
Usenet, authentication, and engineering: early design decisions for Usenet
A Twitter thread on trolls brought up mention of trolls on Usenet . The reason they were so hard to deal with, even then, has some lessons for today; besides, the history is interesting. (Aside: this is, I think, the first longish thing I’ve ever written about any of the early design decisions for Usenet. I should…
1987
What Is Textmode?
An illustrated description of what Textmode Art is and how to get started.
1988
First actual computer bug was found today, 66 years ago
On the 9th September, 1947, operators of the Mark II Aiken Relay Computer being tested at Harvard University, found a bug. And, in so doing, made history.
1989
1990
The album art of Phil Hartmann (2022)
You might remember him from such roles as Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz, but in the years before legendary comic Phil Hartman shaved the second ‘n’ from his name, he was designing album art for some West Coast rock bands.
1991
First Is the Worst: Nintendo's Color TV Game 6 and 15
If you told Yamauchi Fusajiro that the little playing card business he had just started would one day sell video game consoles, he would have no idea what yo...
1992
The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang (2008)
ABOUT ME My name is Helmut and I was born in 1980 in Graz (Austria). Trains were my hobby since childhood. My 2nd hobby is travelling. Du...
1993
1994
Gordon Moore, Intel Co-Founder, Dies at 94
Moore, who set the course for the future of the semiconductor industry, devoted his later years to philanthropy.
1995
1996
Neil Armstrong's reply to a Moon landing skeptic
In a letter recently published in a new book, A Reluctant Icon: Letters to Neil Armstrong, a teacher wrote a letter to the first human to set foot on the Moon a
1997
1998
20 Years of Gentoo
Let’s see how Gentoo is doing these days. Below is a plot of Gentoo’s rankings on DistroWatch :
1999
The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at an architecture that’s completely new to me, and I haven’t done any since creating my new scheme for dedicated platform guides. I’…
2000
2001
The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass
I praise his work as a composer—but also as plumber, taxi driver, steel mill worker, and in other trades
2002
2003
PalmOS on Raspberry Pi
My PalmOS port is making progress on a desktop computer, with keyboard, mouse and a 1920×1080 monitor for display. While that was interesting, I wanted to try a different form factor, one tha…
2004
The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion and the O-ring
A tragic case of how poor data analysis can lead to very bad outcomes.
2005
The Story Of Mel
This was posted to Usenet by its author, Ed Nather ( < nather@astro.as.utexas.edu > ), on May 21, 1983.
2006
2007
Turning the Apple //e into a lisp machine, part 1
Alex Clemmer is a computer programmer. Other programmers love Alex, excitedly describing him as "employed here" and "the boss's son".
2008
Reverse engineering a forgotten 1970s Intel dual core beast: 8271, a new ISA
" As I recall, those two chips were fairly large. And fairly late -- to the marketplace. We had lots of issues with them. [...] Sometimes th...
2009
2010
Inside a Titan missile guidance computer
I've been studying the guidance computer from a Titan II nuclear missile. This compact computer was used in the 1970s to guide a Titan II ...