241
America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report
America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 326 posts.
242
The myth of Snow Leopard
It was a hot mess, but the myth is useful today.
243
Windows 95 released August 24, 1995
People lined up around stores at midnight like they do for a new Apple product.
244
Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork
Published: 05-07-2026 20:33 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
245
Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the Space Shuttle's cargo bay, providing lab space for astronauts and experiment...
246
ZX Spectrum Next Laptop
Having created a laptop style case for my ZX Spectrum Next dev board previously, I wanted to re-visit the idea of a Spectrum laptop and address some of the issues faced in the previous version.
247
What was a Token Ring network?
Token Ring and ARCNET once competed with Ethernet as networking standards
248
dBase: 1979-2026
Litigation, neglect killed dBase. The dBase newsgroup servers went off-line since November 2025. Court-smart dBase vendors and AI accelerated the fall.
249
The last Romans are still around
For some of us, our Roman Empire actually is the Roman Empire. As far as pre-modern states go, the Roman Empire was incredibly powerful, culturally influential, and well documented. Rome’s expansio…
250
Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
This is exciting news, there is a fork of Qemu that has workable Itanium Merced emulation, and it’s good enough to run Windows XP/2003! Enter Malte Kuhlmann ‘s Qemu fork of syunnPC ‘s AI Itanium infused Qemu fork .
251
MacOS Extensions Pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0
By now regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with my affection for the 1996 Apple Network Server , Apple's Unix-through-and-thro...
252
Charles Tandy, the mastermind behind Radio Shack
He was also involved in taking the Pier 1 chain nationwide
253
My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza
Over the last few weeks, I created a computer game set in the Arctic. Or maybe I’ve been working on it since 1981. It all depends on how you count.
254
The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 1: SimEverything
I’m still to this day just blown away by continental drift and things like that, stuff that most people think sounds pretty boring.
255
The Early History of Smalltalk (1993)
Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing…
256
Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict
A beloved hometown impersonator had no idea what he was signing up for with this photoshoot.
257
Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (2025)
Retrospective on Project Xanadu’s success and failure: a lack of design iteration, meaningful use-cases, or practicality stopped a valuable vision from maturing into something useful. (And contrasted with my approach.)
258
Discovery of Cold War-era rare Eastern Bloc computers in a German hangar
In 2006, CHM curators traveled to Germany to follow a lead on an abandoned collection of historical computing artifacts. In a three-story warehouse, they found a real-world timeline of computing history. After days of exploring and assessing, they brought back nearly 2,000 items for the permanent collection.
259
Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)
At long last, Relic Entertainment has announced that Age of Empires 4 is coming. Strategy gamers rejoice! I am excited – I played the first one back in ’98 (I may be dating myself here)…
260
Bring Back MiniDV with This Raspberry Pi FireWire Hat
In my last post, I showed you to use FireWire on a Raspberry Pi with a PCI Express IEEE 1394 adapter. Now I'll show you how I'm using a new FireWire HAT and a PiSugar3 Plus battery to make a portable MRU, or 'Memory Recording Unit', to replace tape in older FireWire/i.Link/DV cameras. The alternative is an old used…
261
The Boring Part of Bell Labs (2025)
It took me a long time to realize that Bell Labs was cool. You see, my dad worked at Bell Labs, and he has not done a single cool thing in his life except create me and bring a telescope to my thir…
262
Reading English from 1000 AD
The past was not as foreign as we think.
263
Reverse engineering circuitry in a Spacelab computer from 1980
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, providing lab space for astronauts and exper...
264
Why Is Greenland Part of the Kingdom of Denmark? A Short History
From the Vikings to Trump: Greenland’s historic development negates recent White House territorial demands.
265
Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
What started as endearingly bootstrapped marketing descended into soulless corporate sales.
266
Edge of Emulation: Game Boy Sewing Machines (2020)
Emulating the unknown: Controlling Sewing Machines with a Game Boy
267
Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually...
268
Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT
A celebration into the IBM PC, the Model F/XT keyboard, where it came from and what it became
269
Rome is studded with cannon balls (2022)
Did you know that Rome is studded with cannon balls? Not many know that the city is full of sites where you can still see cannon balls. We’ll accompany you and share with you the story of the many cannon balls you can see around the city. Come and have a look for yourself! Come to Rome to see the city and its cannon…
270
RAM: the forgotten history (2024)
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working memory.