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The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
About Arch Linux is an i686-optimized linux distribution based on ideas from CRUX , a great distribution developed by Per Lidén. It is lightweight and contains the latest stable versions of software. Packages are in .tar.gz format and are tracked by a package manager that is designed to allow easy package upgrades…
The following article is a historical look at the era that spawned first raytracers for home computers, a predecessor to Blender among them. Writing it was possible thanks to the fact, that, for the first time, the program and source code of said predecessor are publicly available.
Did you know there were typewriters that used ball point pens to draw not just text but also graphics? I’ve collected several of these over the years. Read on to discover a world that you didn’t know existed.
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…
The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones
British money has a lengthy history, so it's not surprising that it's evolved and changed over the years. Whether you're watching British TV, reading British
+ Ordeals and Plea Bargaining
Has any successful piece of software ever deserved its success less than the benighted, unloved exercise in minimalism that was MS-DOS? The program that started its life as a stopgap under the name of “The Quick and Dirty Operating System” at a tiny, long-forgotten hardware maker called Seattle Computer Products…
One scientist did it twice
Restaurant prices in the 19th century (followed by 20th, below) Note: Until the mid-19th century prices were often quoted in shillings and pence, or in Spanish dollars. One Spanish bit = 12½¢; One …
Before search engines were what they are today, webrings were a great way to find websites that interested you. So what happened to them?
In the 1980s, the financial sector suffered through a period of distress that was focused on the nation's savings and loan industry.
Programming blog of Eugene
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 .
Some time ago I came across a cinematic experience ......... @@@@@ @@@@@ ........... ......... @ @ @ @ ........... ......... @@@ @ @ .......... ........ @@ @ @ ......... ........ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ th ....... ...... ----------------------- ...... ..... C E N T U R Y .... .... ----------------------- ... ... @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @…
“Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.”
A few weeks back I got a note on Bluesky, linking me to a website offering a free computer. The owner was in Cambridge, not far from me, and the computer was an HP 9000/300 Series - a Model 340, specifically.
A mysterious full-length sound card recently arrived at the OS/2 Museum. It was clearly manufactured by IBM in 1985, and sports a 20 MHz Texas Instrument TMS32010 DSP (the DSP is the large black DIP chip near the lower left corner, not the ceramic gold cap chip).
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…
Giant azhdarchid pterosaur in flight. Images like this virtually always trigger discussions about the validity of giant pterosaur flight h...
Institutional memory comes in two forms: people and documentation. People remember how things work and why. Sometimes they write it down and store that information somewhere. Institutional amnesia works similarly. The people leave and the documents disappear, rot, or just become forgotten (as it were).
The Computer History Museum has two operational IBM 1401 computers used for demos , but a few weeks ago one computer suddenly couldn't prin...
Introduced in 1978, the revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor led to the x86 processors used in most desktop and server computing today....
David Shayer worked at Apple for 14 years, and he has a wild experience to share. Apple has a unique culture, and David will give us an insider view of what it was like for him at Apple during the 2000s, roughly between 2001 to 2015 when Apple transformed into the powerhouse that it is today. David worked as a…
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Op 8 juli 2019 start het Rijksmuseum Operatie Nachtwacht, het grootste en meest veelzijdige onderzoeks- en restauratieproject van Rembrandts meesterwerk in de geschiedenis. Operatie Nachtwacht heeft tot doel het schilderij optimaal te behouden voor de toekomst.
I had the pleasure of catching the opening night showing of Robert X. Cringely's rediscovered TV interview with Steve Jobs in 1995. In the interview Steve mused...
