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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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.)
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Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2026125 points118 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
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)…
187
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…
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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…
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Reading English from 1000 AD
The past was not as foreign as we think.
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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...
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Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
What started as endearingly bootstrapped marketing descended into soulless corporate sales.
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Edge of Emulation: Game Boy Sewing Machines (2020)
Emulating the unknown: Controlling Sewing Machines with a Game Boy
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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...
194
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
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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…
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RAM: the forgotten history (2024)
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working memory.
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Let's all meet up in the Y2K
Back in 2024 I posted a few of these on Twitter (thread reader) after digging out old photos from the dot-com boom. I was working in London at a digital agen...
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The GDR and Vietnam: From Fake Coffee to Coffee Empire
New stories from the East German specialists behind this Cold War project
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Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time
On the March 10, 2025 episode of Do You Speak Tech?, I sat down with two names woven into the early fabric of modern computing: Larry Masinter and Frank
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Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2026118 points33 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This is the third part (I, IIa, IIb, III) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. In th…
201
Cash issuing terminals
In the United States, we are losing our fondness for cash. As in many other countries, cards and other types of electronic payments now dominate everyday commerce. To some, this is a loss. Cash represented a certain freedom from intermediation, a comforting simplicity that you just don't get from Visa. It's funny to…
202
Ju Ci: The Art of Repairing Porcelain
Ju ci (锔瓷), the Chinese craft of repairing broken porcelain has roots dating back to the Song dynasty (960-1279), with illustrations of craftsmen mending pots appearing in Chinese paintings as earl…
203
Reverse Engineering the Prom for the SGI O2
mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the SGI O2
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Running DOS on Behringers DDX3216 with a DIY x86-Bios from Scratch
In 1994 I got my first computer: an Intel i486 DX2-66 with 4 MB RAM and a 512MB harddisk. The software was IBMs OS/2 and Microsofts Windows 3.11. In the next four years I was upgrading this machine every few months with more RAM (up to 16MB), a CD-ROM-drive and a soundblaster card. So I learned upgrading this machine…
205
Publishing Schematics Before “Open Source” Was a Word
The Akihabara institution that every Japanese maker knows — run on cash, instinct, and one founder’s restless curiosity
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Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)
How tracing words can illuminate history
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Vacuum-Form Signage
Branding Main Street America and a rabbit hole into the history behind the vacuum-formed signage found in our daily lives
208
A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator
About a eight weeks ago I had virtually no interest in calculators. Blank, dull, tedious-looking objects that remind me of long, arduous rainy afternoons in 1980’s/1990’s school maths classes.
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The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)
In the age of smart devices and instant entertainment, can a medium as old as MUDs survive? Driven entirely by text, these Multi-User Dimensions ― or Dungeons,