#Computer history

[dinosaurspen]

CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, on display at the Scienceworks museum.

[foone]

So I'm watching someone play Still Wakes The Deep and it's neat and spooky and WAIT A FUCKING SECOND

IS THAT A FUCKING TRACKBALL? IN 1975?

Okay, look, trackballs date back to the 40s, but THAT IS NOT A 70'S TRACKBALL.

That is, in fact, a Reveal RA010 from 1993.

You're eighteen years off!

(And you made it look old, too, implying it isn't brand new in 1975. Damn it)

[whereserpentswalk]

[1863-project]

Okay, I've been having trouble finding this, but I know it existed because my dad showed it to me multiple times.

My dad, recently retired, had a 40+-year IT career starting in the 1980s. (His biggest claim to fame is writing the programming for the printer driver for a program called PC Paintbrush, which was purchased by Microsoft and became Microsoft Paint, but I digress.) When I was a kid, he showed me an Easter egg snuck into an early Windows operating system where if you typed in a certain command an animation of Bill Gates as Godzilla would show up and start using his breath to zap people into Windows logos. I know it existed and isn't something I imagined because he pulled it up for me upon request multiple times, but seeing as this was the 1990s and I was a child I didn't have the details, like what OS it was. (My best guess would be 95 or 98.) I just want to see if I can recover that animation and document its existence somehow, but I haven't been able to find anyone else looking for it or who knows about it.

Any leads or information you might have would be super helpful! Thanks in advance!

UPDATE FROM DAD: it was on the desktop, you got it to show up by inputting a key sequence that he doesn't remember, and he's pretty sure it was Windows 98.

[coupleofdays]

Margaret Hamilton, Director of the Apollo project Software Engineering Division, with a stack of papers containing the code to the Apollo Guidance Computer navigation software. The software that on this day, in 1969, guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they landed on the Moon.

[bloopychips]

Some lesser known Mark 1 photos, including one of the many times he could not fit into a doorway.

[centralbunnyunit]

[facts-i-just-made-up]

facts about the return button on a keyboard

Originally called the Enter key, the invention of the Return key was an error that happened while several thousand computer keyboards were being manufactured and labeled. As so many had been made with the Enter keys labeled Return, returning the Enter keys would have been too expensive, so no Return return was entered into, rather the Enter keys were simply renamed, and thus the Return key had the new name until someone entered the Enter entry into the printer interface to return the Returns to Enter.

No records remain of the entry level intern who entered the return, nor of where they may be interred.

[basic-retro-programming]

Commodore 8296 ...

Der Commodore 8296 ist der Höhepunkt der Büro-Computer-Serie. Sie beginnt mit dem PET 2001. Der 6501-MOS-Prozessor bringt 128 KByte Arbeitsspeicher mit. Das angeschlossene Diskettenlaufwerk steuert zweimal 1 MByte bei. Der Bildschirm stellt 25 Zeilen zu 80 Buchstaben bei. (Computermuseum Kiel, Deutschland)

Post #318: Der Büro-Computer "Commodore 8296", Commodore International Ltd., West Chester, U.SA., 1984.

[questionableadvice]

~ Burroughs B 200 computer; Newsweek, October 12, 1964

Everyone please say hello to the many-times-great-grandparent of whatever you are using to see this post. Punch cards! Magnetic tape storage! Can fit in only one room if it's large enough!

If you used to work on this - or something like it - can you tell us about it? I'd love to know more.

Also, if you want to you can read the manual for this over here (pdf).

[nemfrog]

Advanced technology. Univac-9x000-family. 1967.

Internet Archive

[dinosaurspen]

Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 8 (misidentified by the source - actually a PDP-11) computer and CRT monitor, Maynard — ca. 1979. Via Boston Public Library.

[arconinternet]

(Most of) Practical Computing (Magazines, 1978-1987)

You can read it here.

[commodorez]

What is the appeal of vintage computers to you? Is it the vintage video games or is it the programs? If so, what kind of programs do you like to run on them?

Fair warning, we're talking about a subject I've been passionate about for most of my life, so this will take a minute. The answer ties into how I discovered the hobby, so we'll start with a few highlights:

I played old video games starting when I was 9 or 10.

I became fascinated with older icons buried within Windows.

Tried to play my first video game (War Eagles) again at age 11, learned about the hardware and software requirements being way different than anything I had available (a Pentium III-era Celeron running Windows ME)

I was given a Commodore 1541 by a family friend at age ~12.

Watched a documentary about the history of computers that filled in the gaps between vague mentions of ENIAC and punch cards, and DOS/Windows machines (age 13).

Read through OLD-COMPUTERS.COM for the entire summer immediately after that.

Got my first Commodore 64 at age 14.

I mostly fell into the hobby because I wanted to play old video games, but ended up not finding a ton of stuff that I really wanted to play. Instead, the process of using the machines, trying the operating system, appreciating the aesthetic, the functional design choices of the user experience became the greater experience. Oh, and fixing them.

Then I started installing operating systems on some DOS machines, or playing with odd peripherals, and customizing hardware to my needs. Oh, and programming! Mostly in BASIC on 8-bit hardware, but tinkering with what each computer could do is just so fascinating to me. I'm in control, and there isn't much of anything between what I write and the hardware carrying it out (especially on pre-Windows machines)! No obfuscation layers, run-times, .dlls, etc. Regardless of the system, BASIC is always a first choice for me. Nova, Ohio Scientific, Commodore, etc. I usually try to see what I can do with the available BASIC dialect and hardware. I also tend to find a game or two to try, especially modern homebrew Commodore games because that community is always creating something new. PC stuff I focus more on pre-made software of the era.

Just to name a few examples from a variety of systems: Tetris, terminal emulators, Command & Conquer titles, screen savers, War Eagles, Continuum, video capture software, Atomic Bomberman, demos, LEGO Island, Bejeweled clones, Commander Keen 1-3, lunar lander, Galaxian, sinewave displays, 2048, Pacman, mandelbrot sets, war dialers, paint -- I could keep going.

Changing gears, I find it funny how often elders outside of the vintage computing community would talk about the era I'm interested in (60s-early 90s). [spoken with Mr. Regular's old man voice]: "Well, computers used to be big as a room! And we used punch cards, and COBOL!" I didn't know what any of that meant, and when pressed for technical detail they couldn't tell you anything substantial. Nobody conveyed any specifics beyond "that's what we used!"

I noticed that gaps remained in how that history was presented to me, even when university-level computer science and history professors were engaged on the subject. I had to go find it on my own. History is written by the victors, yeah? When was the last time a mainstream documentary or period piece focused on someone other than an Apple or Microsoft employee? Well, in this case, you can sidestep all that and see it for yourself if you know where to look.

Experiencing the history first hand to really convey how computers got from point A to B all the way down to Z is enlightening. What's cool is that unlike so many other fields of history, it's near enough in time that we can engage with people who were there, or better yet, made it happen! Why do you think I like going to vintage computer festivals?

We can see the missteps, the dead-ends, the clunkiness, the forgotten gems and lost paradigms, hopefully with context of why it happened. For the things we can't find more information on, when or documentation and perspectives are limited, sometimes we have to resort to digital archeology, and reverse engineering practices to save data, fix machines, and learn how they work. The greater arc of computer history fascinates me, and I intend to learn about it by fixing and using the computers that exemplify it best, and sharing that passion with others who might enjoy it.

[nickysfacts]

Remember, girls have been programming and writing algorithms way before it was cool!

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