In the Northern VA area of the Washington, DC Metro area and want to goto a Vintage Computer Meetup? I have one for you!
7 September 2025 in Chantilly, VA.

https://www.bluewizard.net/dmvvcm/vintagecomputermeetup/

"If you wanted to create a floppy disk from scratch, you'd first have to create the universe." Well, Carl Sagan said that about apple pie, but it basically holds true no matter what you want to create from scratch. Turns out trying to create new floppy disks is also not a small endeavor. This is the second person seriously trying afaik so far, and he's coming pretty close already. I especially like the chapter called "chasing microns". This is really something special, so go watch it
#diskette #disketten #floppydisk #floppydisks #vintagecomputing #diy_electronics
https://youtu.be/TBiFGhnXsh8

Atari TT oder Audi TT? #vintagecomputing #justthinkin

how did radio shack get away with this stuff

i swear that for every toy or handheld game out there, radio shack was in like a dirty shirt 2 days later with an identiclone

edit: haha, unbelievably, this predates the Speak & Spell! and was indeed manufactured by TI for RS http://www.datamath.org/Speech/Spellmaster.htm

AOL to close dial-up service.

I can still hear the modem connection sounds in my head. So many CDs with "free internet" hours.

The kids these days do not know the patience we needed to download content over a 14.4 or 56k modem. This was dependent on others in the house not picking up the phone.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/aol_to_pull_the_plug/

If I recall correctly, it sat on a shelf for 6 months until I touched it.
Then I screwed the SRAM during the assembly, and it sat for another 7 months.
Now I finally completed the rest in just 5 hours: swapped the SRAM and did the final assembly. Curiously looking forward to playing around with thehighnibble.com‘s IMSAI 8080 / Cromemco Z-1 replica #RetroComputing #VintageComputing

We’re running our PDP-7 today, did you catch the twitch stream?

https://icm.museum

Vibing with the 486 + GUS last night*.

*(Actually an AMD 5x86 160)

Happy 40th anniversary to the amazing Amiga!!

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/40-years-of-the-amiga-from-commodore

Our Large Systems Gallery set up is still very much in progress, but if you visit this weekend we'd be happy to give you a sneak peek tour. In addition, you can see our progress on the KI10 restoration.

https://icm.museum

And one of the most interesting things about the PA-RISC based HP-9000 712 series is its Color Recovery system (allowing approximated 24-bit color from an 8-bit framebuffer -- which is effective and fascinating) and also, for me, the fact that it runs NEXTSTEP.

It's my fastest NEXTSTEP machine.

#HP #HPUX #UNIX #NEXTSTEP #NeXT #workstaiton #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #retrocomputers #CPU #computing #blog

https://mastodon.social/@OpenPA/114991772837281984

I'm reading "The Challenge of the Computer Utility" by D.F. Parkhill, 1966, which was referenced in "Project Whirlwind: The History of a Pioneer Computer" by Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, 1980.

It's a book which attempts to "...facilitate [the] growing discussion [of computer utilities] by providing a broad examination that will reveal something of the history, technology, and economics of the computer utility and explore some of its possible implications for our society."

There's a wonderful digression imagining an alternative history for computing if Babbage had succeeded in building the Analytical Engine. Here is that section in full:

It is fascinating to speculate how the course of human affairs might have been changed if Babbage or his son had actually succeeded in completing a working analytical engine. Admittedly, given the primitive state of precision mechanical technology before the twentieth century, it is doubtful that even a working machine would have inspired many attempts at direct duplication. On the other hand, the electrical relay in the form of the Morse telegraph was in general use before Babbage’s death, and there is no reason why large electromechanical analytical engines based on relays could not have been built by the end of the nineteenth century. Primitive as such computers would have been by our standards, they still would have represented an astronomical addition to the scientific resources of their time. Furthermore, in the familiar bootstrap action that has played such an important role in our own scientific progress since World War II, successful analytical engines would have spawned further improvements in themselves.

In electronics, for example, it is possible that the vacuum tube might have found its first large-scale application as a switching device in computers rather than as an amplifier or detector in communications systems. This in turn would have opened up computational and control horizons before World War I that in reality did not appear until the 1950’s. If this had happened, would automation and its first offspring, technological unemployment, then have added their fuel to the fires of economic collapse in the 1930’s? How much faster would aviation have developed? Possibly the jet engine, the guided missile, and the supersonic aircraft would have been commonplace long before the beginning of World War II. What about the atomic bomb? At this point the mind boggles, for the thought of Fascism, in all its hideousness, armed with nuclear weapons, is enough to shatter the complacency of even the most optimistic believer in human progress.

On the other hand, there was nothing inevitable about the political and economic events that have hitherto convulsed the twentieth century. In fact, given the more rapid rate of scientific and economic progress that would have followed an earlier introduction of the computer, it is extremely unlikely that the pace of political change would have remained unaffected.

The book: https://archive.org/details/challengeofcompu0000park

Wild. I just found a 23+ year old time capsule on the Internet.

"New Intel Pentium III 1 GHz Laptop Computer w/14" TFT Display, 384 MB Memory, 20 GB Hard Drive, Rewritable CD ROM Drive, 56k Modem & 10/100 LAN. Durable & Affordable for under $1,800.00"

The Wayback Machine says this text hasn't changed since at least Jan 6, 2002.

http://www.karatech.net/serv01.htm

Dear Fediverse! Being German, I'm quite familiar with German computer magazines. But not with the UK and US world. What were the “professional level” computer magazines in ca. 1980-2010 which wrote about enterprise IT, Unix, supercomputers, hardware? I'm NOT (yet) interested in software engineering or programming languages and also not very much in Linux.

I already know BYTE magazine, Unix Review and several 8bit related magazines. What else? #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #techhistory

Are you ready to receive your #severance ?

Come visit icm.museum this weekend for your next onboarding

Happy Birthday to the venerable MOS 6502

https://hackaday.com/2025/08/04/happy-birthday-6502/ #6502

«How to Write a Computer Manual» found by accident on one of my many wanderings through the internet. The half-title says “Jonathan Price and the staff of the User Education Group in the Apple II Division of Apple Computer, Inc.” The book was released in 1984. #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #documentarian #techhistory

#Osborne1 - 1981 - Die Zeit, als #Disketten-Laufwerke größer als der Bildschirm waren … war aber einer der ersten transportablen Computer.
#80er #vintagecomputing

Hey, my friend Bastian has a new YouTube channel where he fixes vintage computers. Check it out!

https://youtu.be/a-Km5PinzCk?si=q37jniIiEUu8Oyx0