This documentary has me obsessed with The Oregon Trail game and its history. I didn't play it regularly as a kid either. This is well worth the watch #GamingHistorian #history #ComputerHistory #RetroGaming #OregonTrail
The Story of The Oregon Trail
#computerhistory
I didn't join the PC world until 1994 when Windows 3.x/DOS 6.x were new. Even from my corner of the computer universe I heard about how "bad" DOS 4.0 was initially. OS/2 Museum does a detailed history of it coinciding with its source release. #ComputerHistory #history #Retrocomputing https://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-4-0/
Thanks to the Retro-Computing Roundtable Podcast I learned that John Romero, of id Software/Doom fame, co-hosts a podcast interviewing classic game designers/developers. It is very intermittently published but very good. #ComputerHistory #RetroComputing #RetroGaming
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/apple-time-warp/id735180050
My first apps pushing real memory requirements, "hundreds of KB to MB", were on Unix systems. The second was Windows 95. The peculiarities of PC memory issues were just running config tools to get Tie Fighter running. Seeing it spelled out so painfully makes me glad I missed all that. #history #ComputerHistory #programming #RetroComputing
From 0 to 1 MB in DOS
This is by far the most in-depth walk through of the earliest 86-DOS (pre-cursor to PC/MS-DOS) that I've seen. Hardware history walk through, live code walk through porting code from Z-80 CP/M to 8086 86-DOS. Very well done #RetroComputing #ComputerHistory #history #86dos #cpm
Showing how to use the Earliest known copy of 86-DOS, the antecedent to IBM PC-DOS. (MS-DOS)
The Itanium/Itanic history is so deeply indepted to Soviet VLIW supercomputer architectures. Itanium failed but the Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies is still developing new VLIW chips. Fascinating #ComputerHistory #history #hpc
The Itanic Saga
I've been a bit Apple Lisa fan for some time. I even own one. I was a customer of Sun Remarketing back in the day too. It is interesting to see how they got started, the deals they made with Apple, and to learn a lot more about the landfill trashing of them (a la the E.T. Atari Cartridges). If you've never heard of Lisa this goes into the backstory very well too. #ComputerHistory #AppleLisa #apple
Lisa: Steve Jobs’ sabotage and Apple’s secret burial | FULL DOCUMENTARY
Transplanting the Mac’s Central Processor: Gary Davidian and His 68000 Emulator - CHM
The title of the video is "Birth of BASIC" but it is really as much or more about the birth of computing in the university setting and the creation of the Dartmouth Time Sharing System to make it far more accessible. I had no idea the first version of DTSS was written by undergraduate interns (basically). Lots of wonderful insights and anecdotes about design decisions, what it was like to be working on it, and the feeling of seeing the first time two teletype terminals interfaced with the system to run the new BASIC Development Environment concurrently #history #BASIC #ComputerHistory #RetroComputing #Dartmouth https://youtu.be/WYPNjSoDrqw
This is a very detailed and well laid out exploration of the history of the S-100 bus, its technical details, and why it was ultimately displaced. #RetroComputing #ComputerHistory #s100bus #altair8800 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKP-P_wo3UY
RIP Sim Wong Hoo, one of the principle people who gave us SoundBlaster. #retrocomputing #obituaries #ComputerHistory #SoundBlaster https://www.engadget.com/tech-pioneer-sim-wong-hoo-sound-blaster-dies-151258136.html
I love computer history and alternative processors to the x86 line so this series on the history of the ARM CPUs that power all our phones, tablets, and the latest Apple computers is right up my alley. #ComputerHistory #arm https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/
I've read all of Brian Bagnall's books on the history of Commodore. This is the most succinct presentation of the history of Amiga after Commodore though. It starts with the bankruptcy of Commodore and goes through the end of the Gateway2000 ownership years. I think any Amiga or retrocomputing/computer history fans will appreciate it. #amiga #RetroComputing #ComputerHistory #commodore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVNLXv-Dm_c
A great review of 1982-era CGI for the making of Tron, including John Lasseter describing his first viewing it as a Disney animator and becoming inspired. #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory https://youtu.be/Tm4i6D3XXBQ (Jotted at: https://nequalsonelifestyle.com/2022/07/05/daily-jots)
First Computing Conference?
Amazeballs
The Los Alamos peak moment was the brilliant lecture on the British WW II Colossus computing engines by computer scientist and historian of computing Brian Randell. Colossus machines were special-purpose computers used to decipher messages of the German High Command in WW II. Based in southern England at Bletchley Park, these giant codebreaking machines regularly provided life-saving intelligence to the allies. Their existence was a closely-held secret during the war and for decades after. Randell's lecture was — excuse me — a bombshell, one which prompted an immediate re-assessment of the entire history of computing. Observes conference attendee (and inventor of ASCII) IBM's Bob Bemer, "On stage came Prof. Brian Randell, asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II? From there he went on to tell the story of Colossus — that day at Los Alamos was close to the first time the British Official Secrets Act had permitted any disclosures. I have heard the expression many times about jaws dropping, but I had really never seen it happen before."
https://computerhistory.org/playlists/international-research-conference-on-the-history-of-computing/
Hey everyone, I’m #newhere. Looks like the pod I signed up with to transfer over from Pluspora shut down. So, I'm over at Sysad now.
BTW, what's happening with Pluspora? I heard a few months ago it was shutting down "in weeks," yet it's still up.
I’m interested in #atari, #computerhistory, #lisp, #mos6502, and #retrocomputing.
Adapt and Survive is a (slim) #computerhistory book with lots of #retrocomputing detail. So I bought a copy, and learnt all about Business Computers Limited…
… of Brighton, on the south coast of England and not well-placed to serve their customers. They made a couple of drum-based machines (SADIE and SUSIE) and then moved into core memory with MOLLY, aka the Molecular 18. It’s an 18 bit machine, with parity, so 17 bits net - just enough for each word to encode 3 characters from a 50-character set. You can run up to 8 input stations if you spring for the 32k word core option. You’ll be running LOS, the Leicester Operating System. BCS programmed the machine very much at bare metal level - there was never a high level language or even a filing system. Multiple programs could be loaded at once, but each copy had to be adjusted first to occupy a different part of memory - no load-time relocation, no relative addressing. The architecture had a very long life, into the 90s, mostly being programmed by BCS and sold as an appliance. In a sense it lived longer than the company, which had to reborn a couple of times after running out of money.
If you don’t have the book - it's avaliable from the TNMoC shop - try the BCL Computers website. Loads of detail, original press, and user stories within. Or, visit The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley and buy a copy from the gift shop!
(Posted previously from my pluspora account)