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A detailed introduction to running the historic PDP-1 Lisp implementation from 1960, including startup procedures and its significance as the first interactive programming environment.
A developer created SwiftII, a Swift-flavored mini development environment for the Apple II, including a REPL, file browser, and text editor, bringing a taste of modern programming to vintage hardware.
The article explains the timing challenges of using the Web MIDI API to communicate with vintage 1980s synthesizers like the Yamaha DX7, and provides techniques for pacing data and parsing vendor-specific SysEx formats.
A retrocomputing experiment driving five independent monitors from a Commodore 128 by splitting RGBI signals with a custom circuit board, along with similar tests on IBM CGA/EGA systems.
Using a SCSI-to-USB adapter to connect a 90MB Bernoulli disk from the 1980s to a Wii U, successfully installed and ran the Game Boy Advance game 'Metroid Fusion', demonstrating a compatibility experiment between retro storage media and a modern game console.
The PDP-11 minicomputer, introduced in 1970, was highly influential in computing history, helping to birth UNIX and the C programming language. This article provides an overview of its architecture and impact.
A blog post investigates the origin of an ANSI title screen for the BBS door game Solar Realms Elite, correcting a misconception the author helped spread 20 years ago.
The article details the debugging process for the 'Lake' effect in the Area5150 demo on the MartyPC emulator, explaining the need for a title-specific hack and the subsequent fix using bus sniffing and dynamic clocking to achieve cycle-accurate CGA emulation.
A blog post exploring how to use a Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 with PIO to monitor the address and data buses of a Z80 microprocessor, including timing considerations and clock speed limits.
A detailed blog post exploring the DECmate II, a desktop word processor derived from the PDP-8 minicomputer, covering its history, architecture, and plans for restoration.
A detailed reverse-engineering analysis of the microcode inside the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor, focusing on the FXCH register exchange instruction and the chip's internal architecture.
An article about the Soviet 80s supercomputer project 'Start'.
Microsoft has officially open-sourced the original 6502 BASIC source code from 1976, which powered early Commodore and Apple II computers, marking a historic preservation milestone.
The article details z386, an open-source FPGA implementation of an 80386 CPU built using the original Intel microcode. It can boot DOS 6/7, run protected-mode programs, and play classic games like Doom, serving as both an educational reconstruction and a usable FPGA CPU.
A detailed write-up of a 16-byte x86 real-mode DOS demo that generates an infinite Sierpinski fractal in video memory while simultaneously producing audio output, showcasing extreme algorithmic density in the demoscene tradition.
A developer ports a 3D points renderer to the ZX Spectrum 48K, optimizing with Z80 assembly to achieve 14 frames per second, and creating a precomputed version that runs at 40 fps.
Theseus is a new static Windows/x86 emulator that translates programs at compile-time rather than interpreting or JIT-compiling them at runtime, representing an alternative approach to traditional emulation architectures.
A hobbyist successfully runs a Minecraft server, NES emulator, webserver, and modern crypto on a restored 1960s UNIVAC 1219B with only 250 kHz CPU and 90 KB RAM.
The author documents the process of building a vintage PC from 1997-1998 to play all versions of Quake, covering hardware choices like the Pentium MMX, 3dfx Voodoo2, and Socket 7 motherboards.
A detailed examination of the conditional tests used in the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor's microcode, part of a reverse-engineering effort to understand its algorithms.