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The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 386 posts.
In the middle of the 1980s, Apple found itself with several options regarding the future of its computing platforms. The Apple II was the company’s bread and butter. The Apple III was pitched as an evolution of that platform, but was clearly doomed due to hardware and software issues. The Lisa was expensive and not…
You might think it’s unlikely for any interesting mathematics to arise from incense appreciation, but that’s only because you’re unfamiliar with the peculiar character of Muromachi (室町) era Japanese nobles. There has never been a group of people, in any time or place, who were so driven to display their sophistication…
Mobile before iOS and Android
This post covers the design and creation of the Floppy8, a microcomputer and cartridge system which fits inside a floppy drive. To see it in action, checkout this video! The Floppy8 plays 4K movies and games on custom cartridges, features wireless controllers, status lights, motorized cartridge ejection and more! Simil
The story of a geeky twist on "Party like it's 1999".
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.
I praise his work as a composer—but also as plumber, taxi driver, steel mill worker, and in other trades
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...
Posted on Wednesday 21 Feb 2024. 1,196 words, 13 links. By Matt Webb.
Emulating the unknown: Blood testing device for the GBA
In addition to the basic materials, a number of safety-related items were needed to conduct this experiment. First, a suitable location for the experiment was required, it being expected that the kitchen was not the appropriate place for blow-torching SPTs. The author's driveway was chosen as a suitable site. Second…
Launched in 1998, the 380Z was one very fine ThinkPad. It was the last ThinkPad to come in the classic bulky and rectangular form factor. It was also one of the first to feature a huge 13.3" TFT display, powerful 233MHz Pentium II, and whopping 160 megs of RAM.
A previously lost cache of celebrity and historical interviews from a long-dormant radio show have been discovered, digitized, and made available for all. The Internet Archive is now home to 53 episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe, a 1980s radio show about the new world of home computers. The program included computer…
A couple of followups on a recent episode of In Our Time.
A new analysis of mummified brains pushes back the timeline for the globalization of coca
Here’s a gem from the archive of the NY Times. One day in September 1976, NY Times food critic Mimi Sheraton and Colonel Harland Sanders stopped into a Manhatta
Rabbit Waves
What’s the real reason that cellphone manufacturers stopped fitting this simple, robust connector?
The origin of the term is credited to Dr Gary L. Henderson, of the University of California at Davis. A designer drug is based on the structure of an existing drug – which may be naturally sourced from a plant (like cocaine or morphine ) or be synthetic (like amphetamine ) - but with a slightly different structure…
Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between bankers and borrowers is symbiotic and occasionally counter-intuitive. Here is a pertinent adage:
In 1999, Butler Lampson gave a talk about the past and future of “computer systems research” . Here are his opinions from 1999 on "what worked".
Techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century’s most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer.
Revisiting the timeless von Neumann Architecture
I’ll admit, the question took me back a bit. But I’d say yes, it is.
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of Apple's Lisa.
I'm very interested in the history of Dungeons & Dragons , but I'm not a historian – especially when compared to someone like Jon Peterson. ...
On June 26, 1826, John James Audubon sat aboard the cotton schooner Delos off of Florida’s Gulf coast, en route from New Orleans to Liverpool, where he was hoping to find a publisher for his extensive portfolio of paintings of American birds.[1] On this particular day, the winds were still, leaving Audubon’s boat to…
