2011
The 6502 CPU's overflow flag explained at the silicon level
In this article, I show how overflow is computed in the 6502 microprocessor at the transistor and silicon level. I've discussed the mathema...
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
2012
The Secret Life of Machines
SERIES 1 The Vacuum Cleaner The Washing Machine The Sewing Machine The Refrigerator The Central Heating System The Television
2013
The Art of Computer Typography
Ever since I came across Jürg Lehni’s essay on typographic technology and digital fonts, Typeface As Programme, I’ve been fascinated with the story of Donald E. Knuth and his unexpected contributions to typography. You see, Knuth is a professor and computer scientist well known to pr…
2014
2015
Fun With Pinball
Fun With Pinball small board assembly instructions explanations flipper solenoid stepper video
2016
Rumors of Cmd’s death have been greatly exaggerated
This post is in response to a story published on December 6th 2016 by ComputerWorld titled "Say goodbye to the MS-DOS command prompt" and its follow-up
2017
How did people deal with punch cards?
In the fall of 1976 I started as a Freshman at SUNY Stony Brook intending to major in Math and Computer Science. I took Honors Calculus I a...
2018
Analogue Pocket Hate Story
Back in late 2019, the FPGA -based hardware emulation company Analogue , known for their near-flawless clones of various retro video game consoles announced an exciting new product. This time around, instead of plugging into your TV and playing the games of one system (per device), the product called the Analogue…
2019
Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing?
A delve into CD ripping and metadata
2020
The reason GCC is not a library (2000)
This is the mail archive of the gcc@gcc.gnu.org mailing list for the GCC project .
2021
2022
Windows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older one
A very primitive version of recovery.
2023
Columbo: an origin story (2018)
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Prescription: Miurder, here’s a little bit about the origins of the Columbo character – and the actors who played him before …
2024
Why “process substitution” is a late feature in Unix shells
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…
2025
Sid Meier's Pirates – In-depth (2017)
In-depth written review with pictures of Sid Meier's Pirates! on the Amiga.
2026
Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe ca...
2027
A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit
How did a six second drum sample go on to inspire entire sub-genres of music? Let's examine the history of the Amen Break.
2028
Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
One of the most interesting navigation instruments onboard Soyuz spacecraft was the Globus INK, 1 which used a rotating globe to indicate...
2029
2030
2031
The Soviet license plate game and Kolmogorov complexity
Physicist Lev Landau used to play a mental game with Soviet license plates [1]. The plates had the form of two digits, a dash, two more digits, and some letters. Rules of the game His game was to apply high school math operators to the numbers on both side of the dash so that the
2032
2033
The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
Tomorrow I head for “ Sci Foo ” at the Googleplex. I proposed a discussion session there, “Are We Becoming Less Cooperative? If So, Why?” and I’d like to use today’s blog to help…
2034
So Long Last /8 and Thanks For All the Allocations
On 17 April 2018, we allocated the last available block of 1,024 addresses in 185/8 - the last /8 we received from IANA back in 2011. This article looks at how this address space was allocated and how it is used today. It's important to keep in mind that while 185/8 is finished, we still have aroun…
2035
Why use old computers and operating systems?
On this blog, I write about the various computers I use and about the operating systems I use on them. Apart from Windows 7, which is relatively modern, these include Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, which at this point is quite old, and Mac OS 9, which is practically ancient. I’d like to talk a bit about why I use such old…
2036
How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story
A Newspaper Classifieds Story
2037
The biggest churches in the world: Anglo-Norman eleventh-century cathedrals
Usually the idea of what a cathedral ought to be, that is, a colossal church building with a vast hall-like interior verging on the sublime, is said to originate in France in the twelfth century. A…
2038
2039
Reflections on DOOM's Development
The year of 1993 was a magical one, more so than any other. It was the only time we challenged ourselves as a group to create a game that was as good as anything we could have imagined at the time. We didn’t challenge ourselves like that before DOOM, nor after it. It was the right time to shoot for
2040
What Happened in the 2010s
My friend Steve Kane suggested I take a longer view in my pair of year end posts this year: What, no decade end/decade ahead posts? 😕 — Steven Kane (@stevenkane) December 26, 2019 And so I will. Here are the big things that happened in tech, startups, business, and more in the decade that is […]