Collaborate Disseminate
Going anywhere interesting this weekend? No, of course you aren’t. None of us are. So why not tune your computer or smartphone to the online stream of one of the virtual Vintage Computer Festivals that will be taking place between October 10th and 11th. Granted only one of them is …read more
Continue reading A Double Shot Of Vintage Computing This Weekend
At a time when practical graphical user interfaces were only just becoming a reality on desktop computers, Apple took a leap of faith and released one of the first commercially available mice back in 1983. It was criticized as being little more than a toy back then, but we all …read more
Continue reading Recreating Early Apple Mice For the Modern Era
You’re likely familiar with the old tale about how Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple and started his own company, NeXT. Apple then bought NeXT and their technologies and brought Jobs back as CEO once again. However, Jobs’ path wasn’t unique, and the history of computing since then could’ve gone …read more
The field of computer science has undeniably changed the world for virtually every single person by now. Certainly for you as Hackaday reader, but also for everyone around you, whether they’re working in the field themselves, or are simply enjoying the fruits of convenience it bears. What was once a …read more
Continue reading Tony Brooker And Autocode – The First High-level Language
This week marks the twenty-five year anniversary of the demise of Commodore International. This weekend, pour one out for our lost homies.
Commodore began life as a corporate entity in 1954 headed by Jack Tramiel. Tramiel, a Holocaust survivor, moved to New York after the war where he became a …read more
Continue reading Twenty Five Years Since The End Of Commodore
It is easy to forget how disconnected computers used to be. There was a time when sites with similar computers would do a tape rotation where a tape (or whatever media) would arrive in the mail. You’d spend some time looking at what was on it and then add anything interesting that you had to the end of it before sending it on to the next person. Eventually, the tape would come back to you, presumably loaded with more things. Late in 1967, Dr. James Peters started a newsletter called MUDPIE — Museum and University Data Program and Information Exchange. …read more
Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Before the Internet: MUDPIE
When multiple tipsters write in to tell us about a story, we can tell it’s an important one. This morning we’ve received word that the holding warehouse of the Australian Computer Museum Society in the Sydney suburb of Villawood is to be imminently demolished, and they urgently need to save the artifacts contained within it. They need Aussies with spare storage capacity of decent size to help them keep and store the collection, and they only have a few days during which to do so.
The ever-effusive Dave from EEVblog has posted a video in which he takes a tour, …read more
Continue reading Help Save Some Of Australia’s Computer History From The Bulldozers
For a few years in the mid-1980s, the RAM industry and the oil industry had a lot in common: Supply fluctuations could get severe. That’s why the most common kind of RAM was hard to find in the summer of 1988. Continue reading The Year That the Entire Computer Industry Ran Out of Memory
It wasn’t just about games. In the 80s and 90s, shareware democratized the way computer software was sold. Unfortunately, adware sort of dimmed its charm. Continue reading The Story of Shareware, the Original In-App Purchase
The word processor doesn’t just deserve scolding. Here’s an honest look at some budding word-processor innovation efforts. They’re worth writing home about. Continue reading The Future of the World’s Most Boring Software, the Word Processor