“David A. Wheeler’s #6502 Language Implementation Approaches” including #COMFY. #retrocomputing #toread
on 02026-09-11#PDF of the #documentation for the #SPL systems programming language for #HP’s #HP-3000 line, which looks pretty similar to C and Pascal. #retrocomputing
on 02026-08-27#PDF of #Inmos’s ACM #paper on the #transputer from 01985. #history #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-25#history of Turbo #Pascal on CP/M and #MS-DOS. #CPM #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-12Turbo #Pascal 3.01 for CP/M. #CPM #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-12fact sheet for Turbo #Pascal 3. #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-12Turbo #Pascal 3 for #MS-DOS. #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-10Turbo #Pascal 3 also ran on CP/M. #CPM #retrocomputing
on 02026-06-10Turbo #Pascal 3.01a for #MS-DOS in #emulation. 276K. #retrocomputing #small-is-beautiful
on 02026-06-10#PDF manual for HP 41 machine code (MCODE) by Ken Emery (SYNTHETIX) #retrocomputing
on 02026-05-30“z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode” #retrocomputing #hardware
on 02026-05-30actually #Signetics also brought out an unrelated microprocessor in 01975. #history #retrocomputing #electronics #hardware
on 02026-05-27#Signetics brought out a microprocessor in 01976. #history #retrocomputing #electronics #hardware
on 02026-05-27#video of Len #Shustek explaining #readtape and its #history, for recovering 7-track and 9-track tapes using 16-channel analog data captured by a Saleae logic analyzer. Including Whirlwind tapes at the #CHM. A lecture from 02020. #retrocomputing
on 02026-05-25#video about the “boss key” in old #videogames, comparing Commander Keen 4-5, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Bio Menace, Broderbund Star Wars, and Leisure Suit Larry, and the booby-trapped version in Space Quest III: (#retrocomputing or #history)
on 02026-05-15“It is a custom PCB designed to drop directly into the Z80 DIP-40 CPU socket of any legacy Z80-based computer. Rather than using a discrete #Z80 processor, the board hosts an RP2350B microcontroller — a dual-core 150MHz Cortex-M33 device capable of running at up to 300MHz — whose programmable I/O (PIO) state machines take full, cycle-accurate control of the Z80 address, data, and control buses.” Basically an ICE with Wi-Fi. #RP2350 #electronics #hardware #retrocomputing
on 02026-04-09#ITS from 01967 is running on a PDP-6 #emulation. #retrocomputing
on 02026-03-18Len #Shustek’s "readtape" #retrocomputing #archival software
on 02026-03-15#video #toread of Len Shustek discussing his #readtape #retrocomputing #archival software
on 02026-03-15#retrocomputing: using dBASE II #databases on a #Kaypro II simulated in #MAME. There was neither a dBASE I nor a Kaypro I. Hilarious. Lots of very realistic simulated CRT screenshots. Helpful tips on cpmutils for Linux, etc. #CPM
on 02026-02-16Altair 8800 clone in an Altoids tin, kit for US$19.95. #retrocomputing
on 02026-01-16Dennis Ritchie explaining in 02004 that, “dd was always named after JCL dd cards.” Lynn Wheeler explained how JES2/HASP’s JCL was a big improvement over what came before. “Pre-360s, with 709x/etc, a 1401 was used to perform unit record [card reader/printer] to/from tape[,] and the tapes were moved back and forth between the 1401 and the 709x for actual execution. The university I was at ... with IBSYS monitor on 709 (all tubes) running student fortran jobs tape to tape ... could do student jobs on the order of [a] second. Moving to early OS/360 on 360/65 ... it was taking on the order of 100 times longer for each student fortran job.
Installation of HASP cut that to on the order of 30 seconds (hasp handling the unit record i/o asyncronously to dasd/disk ... and the job scheduler doing its input/output to/from disk rather than unit record directly). (...) It wasn’t until the university started using WATFOR monitor for student fortran jobs that elapsed time per job got to the point where it faster than what it had been on the 709. WATFOR basically was a subtasking monitor, fortran compile and execution environment.” #history #Unix #retrocomputing
on 02025-12-12discussion on the #YJK #color space used by MSX2+ #retrocomputing
on 02025-12-05#PDF about the #YJK #color space video modes used by screens 10, 11, and 12 of the MSX2+ #retrocomputing
on 02025-12-05“BebboSSH” is an #SSH 2 server and client for #Amiga #retrocomputing. curve25519-sha256, curve25519-sha256@libssh.org, ssh-ed25519, aes128-gcm@openssh.com, chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-256, sha512. “It will work on an unaccelerated Amiga but establishing the connection takes about one minute”. #crypto #security
on 02025-11-26#MSX #retrocomputing #visual-art using the YJK+YAE screen-10 mode #YJK
on 02025-11-15#PDF of REMark issue 12 from 01980. #retrocomputing
on 02025-11-13The ZX Spectrum had 1 bit for each of its 256×192 pixels, then 768 attribute bytes for 8×8 “character cells” which defined a 3-bit paper color, a 3-bit ink color, and bright and flashing attributes. #graphics #retrocomputing
on 02025-11-13running Windows 95 and Linux on #ESP32 (S3) #microcontrollers through 80386 #emulation with He Chunhui’s "Tiny386" and SeaBIOS. #retrocomputing
on 02025-11-11The #Commodore 64 SID #hardware’s sawtooth wave #signals weren’t very linear, more like an RC decay. #retrocomputing #video
on 02025-11-08#retrocomputing #videogames Pango reconstructed assembly sources
on 02025-10-28#IMLAC #retrocomputing notes
on 02025-10-27#IMLAC #retrocomputing software library
on 02025-10-27#IMLAC #retrocomputing issue about Scroll Saver with emulated screenshots. “SSV is the program sometimes resident in MIT-DMS IMLAC terminals. It provides communication with the DEC-1040, copious local storage for characters and graphics, flexible local editing functions, and ARDS-compatible graphics.”
on 02025-10-27#History of #VisiCalc on the Apple ][. #retrocomputing
on 02025-10-24notes on the #PDP-11/70. #DEC #history #retrocomputing
on 02025-10-11#PDF #paper by Dick Sites from Digital Technical Journal in 01992 about the #DEC Alpha. #history #retrocomputing
on 02025-10-05#DEC microprocessor #history #retrocomputing
on 02025-10-05#PDF of Henry #Baker and Clinton Parker’s 01979 language "Micro-SPL", used to write #microcode for the #Xerox #Alto. It is much more similar to Parker’s later Atari language “Action!” than to HP SPL. “The Micro-SPL compiler generates microcode which is competitive with hand microcode, yet takes only 30-50% as long to write and 10% as long to debug. Micro-SPL generated microcode runs over ten times faster than an equivalent BCPL program and perhaps half as fast as good hand written microcode without losing the advantage of writing in a high level language.” #retrocomputing #history
on 02025-09-09#Microsoft has open-sourced Microsoft #BASIC for the #6502. #retrocomputing
on 02025-09-03#taviso ported #Lotus 1-2-3 3.0 to Linux. #retrocomputing
on 02025-09-03#screencast of #Veltas’s ZX Spectrum block editor in simulation #Forth #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-29#video #toread on #retrocomputing "PicoCalc" running BASIC on a pocket computer
on 02025-08-21how the ZX81 generated video; they added a timer in the ULA to generate HSync pulses and poke the CPU with NMIs when it needs to generate data. #history #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-13#video from 02023 by Michael Hill (#bitfixer) of his "esp32s3vga" library, not really bitbanging VGA signals on ESP32-S3 #microcontrollers for a “new retro computer”, simulating an 8-bit CPU with 8 megs of SPI RAM. Actually it includes an RGB LCD driver peripheral that’s perfect for this, which can even use external PSRAM; he’s using a 25MHz dot clock with 640×480 because 25.175MHz wasn't stable, and 40MHz for 800×600. There’s a demo of playing 3-bit-per-pixel and 8-bit-per-pixel (R 3, G 3, B 2) video from an SD card in SPI mode. #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-13someone tried to get ChaCha20 running in #PDP-11 assembly. #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-08Walter Bright’s “Empire” for #PDP-11 in assembly, written for his H11. Non-commercial-use license. #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-08oh apparently #LCD polarizers are made of #acetate and so they can get #vinegar-syndrome! So this Acer K385s from 01992 needed #repair. #archival #electronics #retrocomputing
on 02025-08-03#retrocomputing how the #Apple 1 shift-register video circuit #electronics worked
on 02025-08-03#retrocomputing on #SGI 4D computers with IRIX (use 4.0.5 or earlier on machines with less than 16MiB of RAM, etc.) Not updated since 01997.
on 02025-08-03Hunt the Wumpus #videogame for the #HP #41C pocket calculator from 01979. 251 instructions. #retrocomputing
on 02025-07-24#PDF of the #documentation for the Zenrom addon to the #HP #41C pocket calculator or handheld computer from 01979, documenting its CPU instruction set, etc. #retrocomputing #history #architecture
on 02025-07-23#retrocomputing multimenu in BASIC for an MSX
on 02025-07-23The Nascom character set has some fun-looking control characters. They look more like extra letters than quasigraphics, really. #retrocomputing
on 02025-07-21#history of #Sun 3 workstations and servers. #retrocomputing
on 02025-07-20#history #retrocomputing Game Boy Advance used 200mW #energy running Donkey Kong
on 02025-07-20IBM 360 #retrocomputing #architecture.
on 02025-07-09#video of John #Carmack saying video games, even Atari, are nowhere close to being solved by #neural-networks yet, which is why he’s doing Keen Technologies. They’re going to open-source their RL agent! Which they’re demoing playing an Atari 2600 (emulated on a Raspberry Pi) with an Atari 2600 joystick and servos (“Robotroller”), running on just a gamer laptop with a 4090. (No video of the demo, though, just talking head and slides.) He says now he’s using PyTorch just like anyone else instead of implementing his own matrix multiplies. Mentions that the Atari screen is 160×210, which I’d forgotten. They’re using April-tag fiducials so their camera can find the screen, but patch them into the video feed instead of trying to get the lighting right for stickers. He says the motion-to-photons #latency at Oculus had to be below 20ms for avoiding nausea (26'58"). Finding the Atari scores on the screen was surprisingly hard. #retrocomputing #AI
on 02025-07-09#retrocomputing #history #video about how in the 5-bit ILLIAC-I character code the characters following 0123456789 were KSNJFL, so those were used for sexadecimal.
on 02025-06-12#RT-11 system call interface #PDF (this system reference manual also documents the CLI, the editor, the debugger, etc.) #retrocomputing #history
on 02025-04-18#video of #Contiki running a web browser on an Apple iiGS #retrocomputing
on 02025-03-16#Debian #games from mostly 01998, compiled for i386. #retrocomputing
on 02025-01-07#video of 01974 "Tank" Atari arcade game. #retrocomputing #games
on 02024-12-20The old Zortech C and C++ #compilers for #MS-DOS #retrocomputing (but not free software). This is potentially interesting because of memory handle support.
on 02024-11-28discussion of overlays and other #MS-DOS #retrocomputing memory model stuff
on 02024-11-26how Zortech C did virtual memory on #MS-DOS with its “handle memory model” #retrocomputing
on 02024-11-26#retrocomputing summary of #MS-DOS memory models
on 02024-11-26obsolete #retrocomputing #electronics #hardware for #delay-lines; right now there’s an ADL-SE2246F combo filter/delay line (for PAL) for £3. But most of the alternatives are silicon chips.
on 02024-11-22a game in #Forth for the original Macintosh and Commodore 64 under #CC BY-SA. #retrocomputing
on 02024-11-20Scan of the July 01980 issue of Recreational Computing with the Wizard’s #Castle type-in #BASIC. #retrocomputing #games
on 02024-11-19First Osborne Group library disks for #CPM #retrocomputing, including #games, printer drivers, example Pascal code, dBase II programs, an outliner called TOUR, assemblers and disassemblers, Supercalc spreadsheets, etc. From 01985 to 01991.
on 02024-11-19#CPM “FOG Library disk FOG-CPM.066” #retrocomputing #games collected by the First Osborne Group, mostly in #BASIC
on 02024-11-19Wizard’s #Castle game from July/August 01980 issue of Recreational Computing magazine. Written for Exidy Sorcerer by Joseph R. Power. Modified for Heath Microsoft BASIC by J.F.Stetson. #retrocomputing #games
on 02024-11-19"sjasmplus" is a #Z80 cross-assembler for #asm #retrocomputing with Lua scripting
on 02024-11-15#retrocomputing archaeology of the BBC Micro version of the game "Elite", including fully documented (reverse engineered) source code
on 02024-11-15the #documentation for Brian Reid’s Scribe runoff program #retrocomputing #history #toread
on 02024-11-15the #documentation for Larry Tesler’s PUB programmable runoff program on TENEX which inspired Scribe and TeX. #retrocomputing #markup #history #toread
on 02024-11-15IBM made a MIPS almost-ThinkPad called a WorkPad in about 01999. This guy tested one. #history #retrocomputing #toread
on 02024-10-27"Lo-tech" 8-bit ISA (PC-XT) bus adaptor for IDE (ATAPI, PATA) hard disks “for vintage PCs”. #retrocomputing #hardware
on 02024-09-18“The GNUstep project has halted development of Display GhostScript, and is not soliciting volunteers to work on Display GhostScript. It is still in our CVS repository, but is not under development, and may not work any longer.” #retrocomputing #PostScript
on 02024-09-11CP/M floppy disk formats; the 5¼" standard was 35–40 tracks, 18 sectors per track, 128 bytes per sector, but, “You could go from 18 x 128 byte sectors to 10 x 512 byte sectors.” #retrocomputing #CPM
on 02024-09-04CP/M eventually added more features to its #filesystem. #retrocomputing #CPM
on 02024-09-04The CP/M #filesystem structure has one 32-byte directory entry for each “extent” of up to 16 kibibytes, allocated in units of 1024 bytes or more. #retrocomputing #CPM
on 02024-09-04Auction of Paul Allen’s LCM+L (Living Computer Museum & Labs) assets, including four PDP-10s. #history #retrocomputing
on 02024-09-04#video showing #Forth #retrocomputing with #F83, #F-PC, CHForth, and volksForth running under MS-DOG in DOSBox on a Raspberry Pi
on 02024-08-27#F83 #Forth for #8080 #CPM #retrocomputing
on 02024-08-27Fairchild’s gold-doped 2N709 transistor was designed specifically to enable the #CDC 6600 to achieve its 10MHz clock speed and therefore good #performance despite using RTL, by reducing saturation charge. The PMBT2369 or MMBT2369 is a current replacement that works slightly better. A six-stage ring counter on a PCB runs at 17.7MHz, which is a propagation delay of under 5ns, reducible to 3.5ns with a higher gate current of 10mA. #hardware #retrocomputing #electronics
on 02024-08-25original #Forth for IBM 1130 from the Mohasco carpet company. OPERATION SWAP 0 LS XCH FF LS 0 SS XCH FF SS RETURN OPERATION + 0 LS FF MS 0 ADD FS 0 SS RETURN #retrocomputing #history
apparently #HDOS #interactive-fiction “A Galactic Experience” by Hughes Hoyle III is preserved. #retrocomputing
on 02024-08-16Hoyle & Hoyle Software, vendors of the #HDOS adventure game “A Remarkable Experience”, listed Hughes Hoyle as the contact person and was located in Greensboro, NC, so probably the obituary I found is relevant. #interactive-fiction #retrocomputing
on 02024-08-16A Unitarian Universalist named Hughes Hoyle IV of Greensboro, NC, died in 02014, predeceased by his father, Hughes Hoyle, in 02008. Probably one of them was the author of the #HDOS adventure game “A Remarkable Experience”. “Hughes attended Ragsdale High and North Carolina State University. He lived in Raleigh for twenty years, where he made many gaming and trucking friends. Back in Greensboro, he was employed by Guilford County Schools. He had many interests and talents but especially enjoyed his books.” #interactive-fiction #retrocomputing
on 02024-08-16#retrocomputing #history #video of #Symbolics #Lisp #3D #graphics. Probably from about 01987. Maybe a digitization of a 30' VHS tape made by Symbolics at the time with shitty elevator music. He’s interactively modeling of a little airplane.
To orient the 3-D axes, their negative sides are “marked with gaps”, and the Z-X plane is “marked with a triangle” (the Y axis being the normally vertical one, as in Minetest).
The original might have been higher resolution, because all the user interface text is illegible except in occasional zoom shots.
It takes about 4 frames at 30fps for each popup menu to fully draw, making the #UX a bit sluggish, and larger menus can take as long as 8 frames. Similarly, the little airplane model (with about 30 polygons) can only redraw about once every 4 frames, making interactive rotation clumsy.
Interesting choice called out at 6'28": the popup menu pops up with the mouse on top of the last choice, easing the task of repeating it. As IIRC is usual with Genera, the menus have black shadows, and the active menu item is highlighted by drawing a box around its text.
Object edges and points are highlighted by making them thicker; object faces are highlighted by filling them with black. Presumably at this point they didn’t have color.
It can import data from “Cattom [?], CATIA, and IGES formats”!
At 11'55” he’s enthusiastically explaining how Genera supports multitasking, as he demonstrates a somewhat Flash-like animation program called “S-Dynamics”.
At 14'44” he shows “a look at [the bird animation] on the color screen”, which implies that indeed the screen he's been looking at is monochrome.
At 18'28” he starts doing a UI demo on the color screen itself, which is even slower, probably because it uses 32-bit RGBA. There’s a sort of ribbon-like thing across the bottom with a hierarchical menu tree structure inside of it. Drawing a translucent gradient circle is demonstrated at 21'25” and takes over two seconds of computation!
At the end, he mentions being able to export to “any video format”: “PAL, NTSC, or HDTV”, and the first (satellite) HDTV broadcasts were in 01989, so this might have been at the very tail end of Symbolics, around 01990.
Oh, yes, at the very end it says it's “Copywrite [sic] 1989 Symbolics Inc.”.
on 02024-08-07Lynn Wheeler’s home page, with his archived newsgroup postings, including the #history of CP/67 #retrocomputing
on 02024-07-24The #X-Windows boot stipple and X-shaped cursor are now turned off by default. #retrocomputing
on 02024-07-11DRMed #ebook of the 01996 “Inside the AS/400” by Frank G. Soltis, its chief architect; I guess this is a well-regarded #AS400 book #retrocomputing
on 02024-06-30a public-access #AS400 with 40000 users #retrocomputing
on 02024-06-30#Z80 single-board computer #hardware "Agon" (really eZ80) #retrocomputing
on 02024-06-16Goran Devic’s cycle-accurate LGPL-licensed #Z80 core simulator the "A-Z80" #retrocomputing #gateware
on 02024-06-16#Z80 successors #retrocomputing
on 02024-06-16More about the end of #Z80 #hardware production. “While the Z80 was manufactured under license by many different companies at the time. SGS Thompson, Siemens, many of the Japanese semiconductor companies, etc. But I'm not aware of any still manufacturing it. Zilog may have been the last.” #retrocomputing
on 02024-06-16#video of Terry Davis explaining how #TempleOS aspires to be a Commodore 64 #retrocomputing, while Linux people are all deluded with their file permissions and aspirations to be a 01970s mainframe that never crashes. Linux is a semi, Windows is a car, TempleOS is a motorcycle. “You know what’s pretty crazy? If you lean over on a motorcycle, it crashes. Isn’t that crazy? Don’t do that.” He argues that virtual memory is more important when you have 100 users using a 2-megabyte mainframe, and Linux gets unusably slow whenever it goes into swap, which is true. He loads whole files into memory instead of reading them sequentially because his highest ideal is minimum lines of code. So he has no linker, just compiles from source to executable with F5 with no separate compilation (just <a href="../tag/include.html">#include). He demonstrates recompiling his 30kloc kernel and 20kloc compiler in under a second. He spends a lot of time gloating about how he’s a “shepherd” rather than “sheep”, likening himself to Tesla, and how other people aren’t very smart. Then he explains how he doesn’t change privilege levels or memory maps, so he can do 4 million task switches per second. His explanation is somewhat disjointed, jumping from topic to topic frequently. “In fairness of, okay, so, when I’m waiting for my disk, I do while (INport()) Yield(). Okay, and what it, this is, I don’t know, I don’t care, you know, somebody’s going to call it ‘blocking’. It’s these little brainwashed book people who couldn’t, it’s Tesla being mocked by, you know, somebody who, you know, reads a book. You know what I'm saying? If you got it out of a book, you know, yeah, whatever. So I adapt to a new reality. They’re all fighting the last war. They’re making 1970s mainframes. I don’t know why. And they’re mocking me. ... We all started with Commodore 64s. Nobody, nobody knows what a pointer is, nobody knows what assembly code is, they’ve all been so confused by the liberals trying to make it easy for them.” Most of what he says here is true, despite the confused presentation and his delusions mentioned elsewhere. The video gives every appearance of having been recorded in a VGA text mode (the overlapping windows snap to character boundaries) until rotating 3-D graphics appear in the middle of a scrolling text window at 22'39" — for some reason their scrolling sometimes gets desynchronized from the text they’re scrolling with.
#video of Mike Albaugh running Fortran II on an IBM 1401 at the Computer #History Museum. He’s using the famous 63-pass compiler. #retrocomputing
on 02024-05-26#video #hardware #electronics US$10 #calculators as of last year apparently run Android 9 (Pie) with multitouch screens? This “GHLBD” brand four-function calculator has a gigabyte of RAM, a 32-bit quad-core Allwinner A50 507 CPU (1512MHz Cortex-A7), 3+ gigs of Flash, and a 2700mAh LiPo battery. So this wild hacker installed bunch of #retrocomputing N64 #games in an emulator. Doom 3 runs at 16–32 fps.
on 02024-05-08“amazing new OS” "C64OS" for the #Commodore 64 #video #retrocomputing #toread
on 02024-05-08#Reko-Decompiler #disassembling #retrocomputing written in C#
on 02024-04-15"Reko Decompiler" is written in C# and supports #disassembling 68k, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, Risc-V, Sparc, x86, Z80, etc., code (and even decompiling to C), with a GUI and command-line interface, mostly targeted at #retrocomputing I think
on 02024-04-15#Gold-Hill recommends 640KiB of RAM for their “Gold Hill Common #Lisp SE” #retrocomputing
on 02024-01-31current #Gold-Hill web site offers “GCLISP Developer, the most powerful 5th generation Object-Oriented development tool for Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95.” #Lisp #retrocomputing
on 02024-01-31Angstrem still manufactures their 1806VM2 #PDP-11 on a chip. #retrocomputing
on 02024-01-30#PDF scan of Phil Koopman’s article (01986? #FORTH Dimensions Volume VIII, No. 6) giving #Bresenham’s line-drawing algorithm in Forth. 23 lines of code provide a driver for 4-color CGA with comments explaining how to patch it for EGA or 2-color CGA. He got the algorithm from p. 435 of “Foley and Van Dam, Fundamentals of ICAD”, maybe actually “Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics”, where p. 435 gives an implementation in Pascal. 2D #graphics #retrocomputing
on 02024-01-28#retrocomputing documents for the CDC 6600, among other things, including the reference manual, I/O spec, etc.
on 02024-01-14Stewart C. Russell’s #retrocomputing blog with #NAPLPS, #Hershey-fonts info (#fonts!), embedded #hardware, #speech-synthesis, etc.
on 02024-01-12ASR-33 #terminal emulator #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-19#PDF of assembly listing of UT3, Utility Tape 3, the first debugger, for the TX-0. #retrocomputing #history
on 02023-07-12#Sketchpad listings from I guess the TX-2 but probably not on the Flexowriter; they look like they're from a Charactron. #history #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-12some #asm programs from 01958 from the TX-2 at Lincoln Lab, no longer the Servomechanisms Laboratory, possibly printed on a Flexowriter. #history #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-12#PDF scan of the six-bit Flexowriter #character-set used on the #TX-0 at Lincoln Lab (in early 01958 still the Servomechanisms Laboratory) #history #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-12Chip Morningstar's Habitat and Macross source code for the #6502 found! #retrocomputing #history
on 02023-07-08#CADR #Lisp-machine #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-06building a hash table in MIDAS #asm #macros for PDP-6 Lisp. #retrocomputing #hashing
on 02023-07-02MIDAS #asm source code for PDP-6 DDT. #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-02aap's homepage. #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-02#Apple //e ROM monitor #asm listings. #retrocomputing #history
on 02023-07-02Dan Murphy's #PDF #paper on the #history of #TECO. #retrocomputing #editors
on 02023-07-02Dan Murphy is the original author of #TECO, perhaps the second of all text #editors after Expensive Typewriter, and this is his home page with notes on TECO. #history #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-02"NABU" #retrocomputing on a #Z80: 2200 new-old-stock machines from 01983 are now in the hands of hobbyists for US$60–100 each, though on HN they report US$180: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36567876
on 02023-07-02#video from 01987 about the #Acorn #Archimedes and the origin of the #ARM, including an #interview with Sophie Wilson featuring the term “order codes”, and some machine specs for the 305, 310, 410, and 440. It comes with optional built-in “Econet”, which turns out to be 800kbps RS-422. Features footage of PCB rework, pick-and-place machines, and “flow soldering”, which I think is not quite wave soldering. Inspiring examples of what you can do with 4 MIPS, 1 MiB RAM, and I guess a TrueColor display, including real-time 3-D with hundreds of flat-shaded polygons. #manufacturing #history #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-02A 202x version of the untyped, word-oriented #B language that preceded C, for use on the 32-bit #PDP-8/X. #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-02#history of #Intel i960. #retrocomputing
on 02023-07-01a #PDP-11 core in VHDL. #retrocomputing
on 02023-06-22The status of #PDP-10 WAITS as reconstructed by XKL's Rich Alderson. #retrocomputing #history
on 02023-06-02The Gigatron TTL implements an 8-bit computer in 39 chips (mostly CMOS rather than TTL, including one microcontroller); one 8-bit operation per 6.25 MHz cycle. #retrocomputing #hardware
on 02022-09-16Andres Navarro’s GPL-licensed #VT52 #terminal #gateware in Verilog, 2000 LUTs including USB, PS/2, and VGA, with no processor; buildable with Icestorm #retrocomputing
on 02022-09-16#documentation for the Medley #Lisp IDE for #Interlisp #retrocomputing
on 02021-11-12#PDP-10 ITS images and instructions for #retrocomputing
on 02021-11-11WAITS files could be inserted into because they contained variable-length records, allowing the E editor to not bring the entire file into core or rewrite it. #PDP-10 #retrocomputing #history
on 02021-11-11#C on Unisys, Cray, Prime, Symbolics, Eclipse, etc. #retrocomputing
on 02021-11-06the #ITS #TECO command set #editor #retrocomputing
on 02021-05-29porting GNU software to #ITS. #retrocomputing
on 02021-05-29public-access #TOPS-20 #retrocomputing system. With 14000 user accounts!
on 02021-05-29Dan Bricklin distributing #VisiCalc for the IBM PC under a noncommercial license. I guess the Apple version is maybe lost. #retrocomputing #UX #history
on 02021-01-24in-browser #emulation of #VisiCalc on the IBM PC. #retrocomputing #UX #history
on 02021-01-24notes on the TRS-80 model 100 from an old reporter. #retrocomputing
on 02021-01-24OriansJ’s simulator for the Knight minicomputer from the 1970s. #bootstrappable #emulation #retrocomputing
on 02021-01-20the #hardware setup on the #Nintendo that permitted smooth scrolling of 256×240 pixels despite a 1.79 MHz CPU and 2 KiB of RAM. #retrocomputing
on 02021-01-20Warren Young, who I guess wrote the PiDP-8/I emulator, documents the somewhat hairy #PDP-8 memory model. #retrocomputing #emulation
on 02020-06-20The “straight 8” DTL #PDP-8 only contained 1409 transistors, but 10148 diodes, 5615 resistors, and 1674 capacitors. Warren Young describes the PDP-8's memory model as “complicated”; Douglas Jones explains the “diode-capacitor-diode” gates used. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20David Gesswein restored a “straight 8” DTL #PDP-8, serial number 184, to working order, sometime before 2012. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20A list of #PDP-8 #software and documents. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20#PDF catalog of DECUS #software, mostly for the #PDP-8. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20Highgate's #PDP-8 page, last updated 2003, including selected #software. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20DECUS #software files, including things like POLY BASIC for the #PDP-8, and a SIMH script to load it. I think the Subversion repository is cloneable. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20Chip-8 was a simple hexadecimal programming language or #virtual-machine for 1970s home computers, with 36 instructions, with sprites and beeps. #retrocomputing
on 02020-06-20“The IBM 1401 Demo Lab and Restoration Project Computer #History Museum” they have two working 1401s. #retrocomputing
on 02017-07-08photos of the Museo de Astronomía y Geofísica UNLP with a bunch of old computer hardware. #retrocomputing
on 02017-07-01#Retrocomputing #performance on the Xerox Alto code for the Mandelbrot. #history
on 02017-07-01Archives of an active #retrocomputing #history mailing list, cctalk.
on 02017-05-11a Dekatron-based digital computer, known as the WITCH. #history #retrocomputing
on 02017-05-09#PDF of #paper “Reviving Smalltalk-78: the First Modern #Smalltalk Lives Again” #history #retrocomputing
on 02017-04-18#Reverse-engineering the 74181 ALU from 1970, kind of a predecessor to the Am2901 which provides 32 functions (including AND, OR, XOR, and binary addition) for 4 bits using 67 gates (!!) and about 170 transistors (!!!) and was used in the PDP-11, Nova, VAX 11/780, and the Datapoint 2200 that gave us the 8008. Its XOR consists of two transistors! He decapped the chip from a ceramic package with a chisel instead of the traditional red fuming nitric acid or boiling sulfuric acid technique. Includes high-res die photos. #hardware #history #retrocomputing
on 02017-03-22Textfiles has a replica of the bitsavers computer #history repository. #retrocomputing
on 02017-03-22