retrocomputing
-
Tandy's graphic-less graphics card: the Deluxe Text Display Adapter #septandy | VWestlife
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
With Google's assault on Invidious leaving it inoperable, consider watching this video with FreeTube, a nifty open source program that lets you watch youtube videos privately!
- www.wosu.org 45 years ago CompuServe connected the world before the World Wide Web
On September 24, 1979, Columbus-based CompuServe launched its online service for consumers. Its subscribers were among the first to have access to email, online chat, digital newspapers and the ability to share and download files.
Silicon Valley has the reputation of being the birthplace of our hyper-connected Internet age, the hub of companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook. However, a pioneering company here in central Ohio is responsible for developing and popularizing many of the technologies we take for granted today.
A listener submitted a question to WOSU’s Curious Cbus series wanting to know more about the legacy of CompuServe and what it meant to go online before the Internet.
That legacy was recently commemorated by the Ohio History Connection when they installed a historical marker in Upper Arlington — near the corner of Arlington Center and Henderson roads — where the company located its computer center and corporate building in 1973.
The plaque explains that CompuServe was "the first major online information service provider," and that its subscribers were among the first to have access to email, online newspapers and magazines and the ability to share and download files.
-
USB Floppy Drive
Came across an old USB floppy drive. I plugged it into my machine and it shows up, but I can't tell it it's actually working or not. When plugged in, it sounds like it's continuously reading, so I kind of want to test it. Can you even buy floppy disks any more?
That said, if I don't have any disks, I guess the question of whether or not it works is moot anyways.
-
What’s the best method for documenting a ROM that I’m reverse-engineering?
I dumped the ROM out of a piece of retro-tech and have been working through the code in Ghidra. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly decompile it because I don’t think it was originally written in a higher level language.
For example, the stack is rarely used and most functions either deal entirely in global variables, or binary values are passed back using the carry or other low-level bits. Trying to turn it into C would just make spaghetti code with a different sauce.
So my current plan is to just comment every subroutine as best I can, but that still leaves a few massive lookup tables that should be dropped into a spreadsheet of some sort to add context. Not to mention schematics.
My question is what’s the best way to present all of this? I’d like to open-source the result, so a simple PDF is not ideal. I guess I should make a GitHub project? Are there any good examples or templates I can draw on?
-
Legend 730 Update
A few days ago I posted about my old PC and there was some interest, here's an update.
tldr: the hdd saved everything! It has windows 3.1 and all the games I remember are still there.
Longer story: I bought a few adapters for PATA/IDE to USB and they didn't work. I had this weird issue where when I plugged the usb into my computer, the drive would power off. You can hear it spinning when it's on, plug in USB, drive powers off. Unplug USB, drive powers back on. So after buying 2 different adapters, I gave up on trying to read it that way.
Then, I got a floppy reader and a bunch of floppy disks. The software testdisk has a DOS version, so I copied that to a floppy and ran it on the computer. While it was analyzing the HDD it told me in an error message that the drive appeared smaller than it actually is, and I should update my bios settings.
After struggling to figure out how to get to bios (ctrl alt s, AFTER BOOTING), I googled my drive model and found the cylinders, heads, sectors information and manually typed that into the BIOS as a "user defined" hard drive, and that was all it needed to be able to read the drive.
After that it booted straight into PC DOS + Windows 3.1 and everything is there. I found recipes, games, and other programs.
I was going to try to send files over serial, but it wasn't working for me (i still haven't tried zmodem yet) but I couldn't even receive an
echo
to the serial port. So I've been backing things up by copying to floppy disk, then reading the disk on my laptop with a reader. -
Nobody Knows How Many Amigas Commodore Sold, Until Now | Ahoy
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
-
General MIDI and Roland MT-32 Wavetable board: WP32 McCake
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
-
Packard Bell Legend 730
I have this vintage pc that I dug up and recently powered on, the hard drive seems to be failing (sector read errors) but I have a bunch of floppy disks i tried running today and it still works as long as it's running from the floppy and doesn't need to be installed first.
If you guys are interested, I'll post it running some things tomorrow. There's a bunch of things I want to do with it like try to replace the hard drive, get it online, and get a compiler so I can port programs or write new ones for it. Maybe install linux if that's a possibility on 6MB of RAM.
- yeokhengmeng.com DOS's Last Stand on a modern Thinkpad: X13 Gen 1 with Intel i5-10310U
When one thinks of modern technologies like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and modern CPUs, one would associate them with modern operating systems. How about DOS? It might seem impossible, however I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run MS-DOS 6.22...
-
Where can I get a PSU for an Apple IIc
I was recently gifted an immaculate Apple IIc, but it came without a power supply. I wasn’t able to find a replacement online, and so I am hoping someone with more knowledge than me knows where I may be able to find one?
-
Is an IBM PC usable at the same clock speed as an Apple II?
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
-
How a little East German Computer Monitored a Nuclear Tomb | Robotron 1715M
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
- www.righto.com Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans,...
-
Using vintage laptops in 2024: How do you make it work?
I have an old ThinkPad T42 coming my way. I plan to use it alongside my daily driver mainly for reading, emacs, and retro gaming. I will be dual booting a lightweight flavour of Linux (TBD) and Windows 98 on it.
However, I am a bit concerned about its ability to handle today's internet, with all of its heavy websites.
I would love to hear from those of you who are still using old ThinkPads (or other vintage laptops) in 2024. How do you make it work? Do you use lightweight browsers, specific configurations, or lightweight websites to get around the limitations of older hardware?
Are there any specific tips or tricks you can share for getting the most out of an old ThinkPad on the modern web?
Looking forward to hearing about your experiences!
- jordaneldredge.com The bizarre secrets I found investigating corrupt Winamp skins
I started looking through corrupt Winamp skins and it lead me down some very strange rabbit holes
- www.righto.com Inside an IBM/Motorola mainframe controller chip from 1981
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit. 1 But before I discuss the chip, I need to give some background on main...
- www.tomshardware.com Developer ports Windows NT to Power Macintosh systems — firmware and boot loader now available
It's not stable, but it will boot and run ... most of the time.
-
Parallel computing with 64,000 processors, in 1986: The Connection Machine CM-1(1986)
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
Created by a company called Thinking Machines, and intended for AI applications... how far we've come 😆 .
-
Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server - Concepts And Planning (1993)
archive.org Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server - Concepts And Planning (1993) : Microsoft Corporation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveThis video really shows off the flexibility and versatility of Windows NT; demonstrating the use of it in large server environments, and discussing its...
A fascinating look back at a time when people and businesses had to be sold on the idea of client/server paradigms.
-
Get the BBS Scene Vibes back with Neon Modem Overdrive (lemmy client)
xn--gckvb8fzb.com Get the BBS Scene Vibes back with Neon Modem OverdriveMiss the internet from the 80s? Want to (re-)experience BBS scene vibes but still participate in today’s conversations? Then Neon Modem Overdrive is for you!
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17127944
-
Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic)
I've been playing with an idea that would involve running a machine over a delay-tolerant mesh network. The thing is, each packet is precious and needs to be pretty much self contained in that situation, while modern systems assume SSH-like continuous interaction with the user.
Has anyone heard of anything pre-existing that would work here? I figured if anyone would know about situations where each character is expensive, it would be you folks.
- yt.artemislena.eu The Spectrum Show EP142
Welcome to episode 142. I get my hands on an Opus Discovery 1. I play the Tengen Trilogy - Cyberball, Klax and Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. I look at Area 51 a new game and also Eddie Edwards Super Ski. I also chat to Geoff and end with a type-in. If you like the show, please co...
- hackaday.com Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum And Labs To Be Auctioned
After the Living Computers museum in Seattle closed like so many museums and businesses in 2020 with the pandemic, there were many who feared that it might not open again. Four years later this fea…
-
Oric-1 First Look (Listen?)
yt.artemislena.eu Oric-1 First -Look- (Listen?)We take a first (short) look at Tangerine Computer System's ORIC-1, a British-made 6502-based computer that had some, but not a lot of success in the UK and France in the early 1980s, competing primarily against the ZX Spectrum. I couldn't manage to get any video output from the computer and normall...
-
"Chornobyl Family" - YouTube channel dedicated to Soviet-era computers and tech.
I recently stumbled upon a channel that definitely belongs here. A pair from Slovakia presents rare Soviet-era computers and other technology.
- yt.artemislena.eu What was the last IBM ThinkPad?
The ThinkPad line of business and prosumer laptops began under IBM in 1992 and has been under Lenovo's umbrella since 2005. But that takeover wasn't as clean as you probably thought. With many ThinkPad fans considering 2005 as a watershed year when the entire line changed, I take a look at whether t...
-
Gateway 2000 Computer - Brand New - Free to a good home!
So I'm cleaning out a house and found a brand new Gateway2k Pentium 4 computer. Someone opened the boxes but never took the computer out, its all still in the plastic and I don't want to ruin the unboxing for someone that is into this. The computer is free to a good home in the Boston metro area to make your retro gaming dreams come true! Shoot me a message, first come, first served.
P4 Computer - Gateway 2000 model 510 - part number 2800434
17" TFT Monitor - Gateway FPD1730
Speakers - Boston Acoustics BA745
Edit: Found a taker, hopefully it goes to it's forever home on Saturday!
Edit edit: its gone!