Top all-time · #1645
Old Vintage Computing Research
Personal blog · oldvcr.blogspot.comhardwarehistory
Old Vintage Computing Research is a personal blog at oldvcr.blogspot.com about hardware and history. Since 2020, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 252 times, most often “Reversing the Web-@nywhere Watch: browse fragments of the Web on your wrist”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
REWIND and PLAY
Most-linked posts?
- Reversing the Web-@nywhere Watch: browse fragments of the Web on your wrist6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-01-19
- Magic Cap, from the Magic Link to the DataRover and the Stuff In-Between4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-12-03
- Gopher on the Palm Pilot and the pitfalls of PalmOS connectivity4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-05-05
- 6o6 v1.1: Faster 6502-on-6502 virtualization for a C64/Apple II Apple-1 emulator4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-03-29
- Reverse-engineering Roadsearch Plus, or, roadgeeking with an 8-bit CPU4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-08-24
- New two-factor authenticator: your Commodore 643 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-11-13
- MacLynx beta 6: back to the Power Mac3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-04-06
- The Living Computers Museum finally isn't3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-06-26
- Fun with Crypto Ancienne: TLS for the Browsers of the Internet of Old Things3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-11-16
- Old Vintage Computing Research: Bringing TLS to the Magic Cap DataRover3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-22
What Hacker News says?
HN hasn't focused on those topics in a long time, they rarely are on the front page. Skip the top 20 articles and you'll start to see some interesting content instead of all the VC & AI drivel. Hackaday is a content aggregator site that usually has more content on these topics - https://hackaday.com Or there are still some good old blogs out there with RSS feeds http://www.righto.com/ http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/ htt…
Comment linking /
on “Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help”Submitted The April Fools joke that might have got me fired as a story · 528 points
HN discussionRelated: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-living-computers-muse... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802686 but we merged those comments hither)
Comment linking /2024/06/the-living-computers-museum-finally-isnt.html
on “Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items”Submitted What went wrong with wireless USB as a story · 331 points
HN discussion>I can even chat with friends on it via IRC With Bitlbee you can connect to far more services with just an IRC client: https://bitlbee.org Public servers: https://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/servers.html On each server, join the "&bitlbee" channel (not a typo), and run the "commands" plugins in order to see the supported protocols. Usage upon connecting: https://www.bitlbee.org/user-guide.html#quickstart You can also p…
Comment linking /2020/11/fun-with-crypto-ancienne-tls-for.html
on “My Favourite Computer, an Old Mac”Submitted When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts as a story · 320 points
HN discussionI found these pictures of that era: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/04/refurb-weekend-hewlett-pa... I think the 1024x768 CRT is a 2-person lift -- Sony Trinitron inside? (Vertically flat)
Comment linking /2021/04/refurb-weekend-hewlett-packard-9000350.html
on “X debut 40 years ago (1984)”Submitted So thieves broke into your storage unit again as a story · 275 points
HN discussionBolt it on! Here's XMosaic 2.7b5 with TLS 1.3 on my own SPARC. (Disclosure: my project.) https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/07/crypto-ancienne-20-now-b...
Comment linking /2022/07/crypto-ancienne-20-now-brings-tls-13-to.html
on “Why I Don't Use Netscape (1999)”Submitted So long, home T1 line; hello, hacking the T1 router as a story · 199 points
HN discussionThere is some curvature on real terminals; here's my AM-75, which is a rebadged Wyse. https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/06/refurb-weekend-alpha-mic... However, it's probably not as extreme as what this does, and when you're sitting in front of it (the photo is at an angle) I don't notice much text distortion.
Comment linking /2020/06/refurb-weekend-alpha-micro-eagle-300.html
on “Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display”Submitted Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6 as a story · 189 points
HN discussionWorse than that: other than Apple and the clones, there were hardly any PPC OEMs at all, and Old World Power Mac hardware wasn't PReP (which is why it couldn't run it). Largely only IBM's hardware could, like the rare as hen's teeth Power Series ThinkPads, or the unobtainium Power Series workstations, and some of Motorola's equally rare stuff. Those landed with a thud in the market and were extremely expensive, and…
Comment linking /2023/03/refurb-weekend-dec-alphapc-164lx.html
on “Windows NT for GameCube/Wii”Submitted Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated as a story · 182 points
HN discussionPretty sure it was BT and AppleLink (disclosure: my article): https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/03/an-apple-district-manage...
Comment linking /2024/03/an-apple-district-managers-macintosh.html
on “Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL's 'you've got mail' alert, has died”Submitted The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of as a story · 166 points
HN discussionI think this is true only up to a point. The sets of Gopher enthusiasts and Gemini enthusiasts surely overlap, but they are not coterminous (disclosure: I administer gopher.floodgap.com). From my view in Gopherspace, Gemini is a better fit for the Gopher+TLS thing people keep trying to do which is both incompatible and doesn't square with Gopher being an ultra-light protocol, and thus most appealing to those people…
Comment linking /2020/11/a-gopher-view-of-gemini.html
on “Poor Man's Web”Submitted Old Vintage Computing Research: Dusting Off Dreamcast Linux as a story · 163 points
HN discussionThen they started loading the protection code from disk doing tricky things. One I cracked recently was a pair of Commodore 1541 sectors that appeared to be the same logical sector (because the drive head is blind). It needed to hit both of them to compile the next portion of the loader. Naturally the segment up to that point was encrypted as well, but nothing survives a VICE breakpoint. https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/…
Comment linking /2023/08/cracking-designwares-grammar-examiner.html
on “Patching 68K Software – SimpleText”Submitted Going where BeOS NetPositive hasn't gone before: NetPositive+ as a story · 155 points
HN discussionThey did. The original plan was a PowerPC native version of A/UX "4.0." This was the PowerOpen idea, in which both A/UX and IBM AIX were to be personalities and value-adds on a central OS. This new A/UX would still have been able to run Macintosh applications natively. Eventually it faltered because of second-system effect from Pink/Taligent running at the same time, as well as Spindler's brief flirtation with NetWa…
Comment linking /2023/11/the-apple-network-servers-all-too.html
on “A/UX”Submitted Refurb Weekend: Silicon Graphics Indigo² Impact 10000 as a story · 152 points
HN discussionReminds me of the COMP-X machine and CAP-X assembly language that was invented for Japanese IT exams. It was invented so that nobody taking the test would be at an advantage or disadvantage depending on platforms they had experience with, so the exams could just test pure understanding of the concepts. But standardized exams being what they are, so many people started studied this specific ISA that eventually it mad…
Comment linking /2024/02/cap-x-and-comp-x-how-tandy-pocket.html
on “When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?”Submitted Confirmed the MOS 7600/7601 Pong chip is a true microcontroller as a story · 151 points
HN discussionThe target market for Xserve and Xsan included creatives (video servers, render farms, etc.), education, and science/biotech. Note that the Xserve was just the last of an interesting history of Apple servers. I'm especially fond of this 1996 behemoth: https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-apple-network-server...
Comment linking /2023/11/the-apple-network-servers-all-too.html
on “Tour of new custom M1 macOS runners racks with Christina Warren [video]”Submitted A Real PowerBook: The Macintosh Application Environment on a Pa-RISC Laptop as a story · 145 points
HN discussionMy personal experience with this: finding an old test NNTP server from Netscape. http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/10/shiner-esb-apple-network-...
Comment linking /2021/10/shiner-esb-apple-network-server.html
on “Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data”Submitted After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor as a story · 145 points
HN discussionSome more market and technical information about the DEC PRO/VENIX system here: https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/03/more-pro-for-dec-profess... And this wonderful quip here: "Keep that kernel version history in mind for when we get to oddiments of the C compiler. As for networking, though, with the exception of UUCP over serial, none of these early versions of Venix on either the PDP-11 or 8086 supported any kind of…
Comment linking /2025/04/lets-give-provenix-barely-adequate-pre.html
on “Let's give PRO/VENIX a barely adequate, pre-C89 TCP/IP stack, featuring Slirp-CK”Submitted If one GUI's not enough for your SPARC workstation, try four as a story · 142 points
HN discussion
