SPARCstation IPX running Solaris 2.6. (Credit: This Does Not Compute, YouTube) The best part about retro computing is the idea that you’ll save some poor system from being scrapped and revive it to a working state, at which point you can bask in the glory of a job well done. That’s when reality often strikes […]
Nothing lasts forever, but you’d think the leaded-glass face of a CRT would not be a place you’re likely to see Father Time causing failures. Alas, the particle accelerators we all lovingly stared at were very often not unitary pieces of glass: in case of implosion, safety glass was glued onto the front of the […]
Devices that were limited to only run a web browser were relatively common around 2000, as many people wanted to surf the Information Super Highway, but didn’t quite want to get a regular PC — being in many ways the retro equivalent of a Chromebook. The Compaq iPAQ IA-2 from 2000 that [Dave Luna] got […]
Iomega’s Zip drives filled an interesting niche back in the 1990s. A magnetic disk that was physically floppy-sized, but much larger in capacity– starting at 100 MB, and reaching 750 MB by the end–they never quite had universal appeal, but never really went away until flash memory chased them out of the marketplace in the […]
Assembler syntax is a touchy subject, with many a flamewar having raged over e.g. Intel vs AT&T style syntax. Thus when [Humberto Costa] recently acquired an MSX system for some fun retro-style ASM programming, he was dismayed to see that the available Z80 assemblers did not support the syntax of his favorite ASM tool, NASM. […]
If you’re a diehard fan of the chiptune scene, you’ve probably heard endless beautiful compositions on the Nintendo Game Boy, Commodore 64, and a few phat FM tracks from Segas of years later. What the scene is yet to see is a breakout artist ripping hot tracks on the Sharp PC-E500. If you wanted to, […]
Although the Apple II range of computers were based around the 6502 processor, they could still run x86 software using expansion cards that were effectively self-contained computers. This way an Apple IIe owner, for example, could install an Intel 8088-based AD8088 co-processor card by ALF Products and run CP/M-86 as well as MS-DOS. Unfortunately, as […]
The early history of colour TV had several false starts, of which perhaps one of the most interesting might-have-beens was the CBS field-sequential system. This was a rival to the nascent system which would become NTSC, which instead of encoding red, green, and blue all at once for each pixel, made sequential frames carry them. […]
Some PCB corrosion on the bottom of the 1541 drive. (Credit: TheRetroChannel, YouTube) Recently [TheRetroChannel] came across an interesting failure mode on a Commodore 1541 5.25″ floppy disk drive, in the form of the activity LED blinking just once after power-up with the drive motor continuously spinning. Since the Flash Codes that Commodore implemented and […]