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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 311 posts.
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Master of Magic
Steve Barcia started thinking about his second grand-strategy game well before he had finished creating his first one. While he was waiting for his latest iteration of Master of Orion to compile each day in the cramped Austin, Texas, offices of his company SimTex, he sketched in the mental details of a follow-up that…
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Per Brinch Hansen's books on compilers
Brinch Hansen was one of the pioneers of concurrent programming and operating systems (kernels). In the 1960s, Brinch Hansen worked at the Danish computer company Regnecentralen, first in the compiler group headed by Peter Naur and Jørn Jensen, and, later, as the chief architect of the RC 4000 minicomputer and its…
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A Map of the Trees of London
Ever wondered what that tree is you passed during your lockdown exercise walk? There's a website that tells you the answer.
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Sanitation conquered disease long before vaccines or antibiotics
Of all the technologies against infectious disease, which mattered most? A data-driven approach
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Reverse engineering the 76477 “Space Invaders” sound chip from die photos (2017)
Remember the old video game Space Invaders? Some of its sound effects were provided by a chip called the 76477 Complex Sound Generation ch...
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Inside the HP Nanoprocessor
The Nanoprocessor is a mostly-forgotten processor developed by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 1 as a microcontroller 2 for their products. Stra...
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Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day Four
Please try this experiment for me. Try asking this question out loud, in a tone of intellectual interest and engagement: “Are you suggesting that the two have the same effect?”. Now try asking this question out loud, in a tone of hostility and incredulity bordering on sarcasm: “Are you suggesting that the two have the…
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Was Knuth Really Framed?
Recently, the formal methods specialist Hillel Wayne posted an interesting article discussing whether Donald Knuth was actually framed when Jon Bentley asked him to demonstrate literate programming . (Knuth came up with an 8-page long monolithic listing, whereas in a critique Doug McIlroy provided a six line shell…
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War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)
Today, in Part II of our three part series on War Elephants, we’re going to look at the drawbacks of war elephants. Last time (here), we discussed the factors that made war elephants so power…
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Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones (2017)
The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones
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Inside the 8086 processor, tiny charge pumps create a negative voltage
Introduced in 1978, the revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor led to the x86 processors used in most desktop and server computing today....
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Compaq and Coronavirus
Compaq’s descent from a company of action to a brand is a frightening parable for the the West’s focus on talk over action.
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Reverse-engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064
A Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) can implement arbitrary digital logic, anything from a microprocessor to a video generator or crypt...
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What “Roguelike” Meant
Several recently released games have rekindled the old discussions on the meaning of the word “roguelike”. This post is an attempt to…
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Imperial Wars Always Come Home
There’s a person I think about from time to time.
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The Forgotten Ones: HP Nanoprocessor
Original Nanoprocessor prototypes from 1974-75. Note hand written wafer number, open die cover and early part number (94332)
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Debian 10.4
[05 Dec 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.7 released [26 Sep 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.6 released [30 Aug 2020] DebConf20 online closes [01 Aug 2020] Updated Debian 10: 10.5 released [18 Jul 2020] Updated Debian 9: 9.13 released [09 Jul 2020] Debian 8 Long Term Support reaching end-of-life [16 Jun 2020] Ampere donates…
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Philip Anderson 1923-2020
I heard this morning about the death yesterday of Philip Anderson, at the age of 96. It’s not hard to make the case that Anderson was the most important condensed matter theorist of the twent…
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Myst: the Drawbacks to Success
Robyn Miller, one half of the pair of brothers who created the adventure game known as Myst with their small studio Cyan, tells a story about its development that’s irresistible to a writer like me. When the game was nearly finished, he says, its publisher Brøderbund insisted that it be put through “focus-group…
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January 1, 2021 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1925 are open to all
By Jennifer Jenkins, Director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain January 1, 2021 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1925 are open to all! On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 will enter the US public domain,1 where they will be free for all to use and build upon. These […]
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The Secret Origin of the Action RPG
Who knew that the knowledge of the true progenitor of the action RPG would be hidden in a stuffy basement in Akihabara, Tokyo?
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Logic, Before ICs
When integrated circuits were too expensive for common hobby use, we had to build digital logic out of discrete transistors.
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Glass viscosity calculations debunk the myth of flow in medieval windows (2017)
Glass scientists have taken a closer look at the urban legend of glass flow in medieval windows—combining theory and experimental techniques, the results definitely bust the myth and indicate the highest ever direct measurement of glass viscosity at low temperatures.
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Airports for the Supersonic Age
A look at how back in the 1960s airports dealt with the advent of SST aircraft. In the late 1960s, the expectation was that, by the late 20th century, the majority of long-haul passengers would fly in supersonic aircraft. In this article, we will examine