Top all-time · #2534
Ken Shirriff
Personal blog · oldbytes.space · on HN as themodelplumbersystemshardwarehistory
Ken Shirriff's personal blog at oldbytes.space covers systems, hardware and history. Since 2022, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “Unix v4 tape dumped and booted”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Full of old bytes. Please don't demagnetize the core memory, thanks. Do you like old hardware ? Do you use them ? Perfect you're welcome here !
Most-linked posts?
- Unix v4 tape dumped and booted3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-20
- The Pentium FDIV bug, reverse-engineered3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-12-07
- /@kenshirriff/1121242830961678612 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-20
- In 1981, Intel released the iAPX 4322 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-04-20
- Tape containing UNIX v4 found2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-07
- I wonder if you could make a useful DOS executable with just emoji2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-06
What Hacker News says?
I've added https://oldbytes.space/@bitsavers/115505135441862982 and https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_t... to the toptext as well. Thanks!
Comment linking /@bitsavers/115505135441862982
on “Unix v4 Tape Found”Submitted The Pentium FDIV bug, reverse-engineered as a story · 213 points
HN discussionThe original submission was to a post that explains why this is news, and not just a random project: A brand new 68k Mac emulator quietly dropped last night!! “Snow” can emulate the Mac 128k, 512k, Plus, SE, Classic, and II. It supports reading disks from bitstream and flux-floppy images, and offers full execution control and debugging features for the emulated CPU. Written using Rust, it doesn't do any ROM patching…
Comment linking /@smallsco/114747196289375530
on “Snow - Classic Macintosh emulator”Submitted IBM Audible Random Timer as a story · 97 points
HN discussionhttps://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum
Comment linking /@bloopmuseum
on “Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions”Submitted Windows 9x and Word 9x at 800x600 resolution. Spacious. Comfy as a story · 43 points
HN discussionIn case it's interesting...add .rss or .atom to the end of any user profile address to get their feed. Example: https://oldbytes.space/@marcolas.rss
Comment linking /@marcolas.rss
on “What Is the Fediverse?”Submitted In 1981, Intel released the iAPX 432 as a story · 22 points
HN discussionI'm always happy to discuss sound cards with mixers, though! As a supporter of the Bloop Museum[1], I think that the "What might have been" if we had dedicated hardware for playing dozens or hundreds of sound files at a time is an interesting question. There's a lot of experimentation in the audio space that has kind of died out, because audio is so cheap - While over in in graphics, we're still seeing interesting a…
Comment linking /@bloopmuseum
on “InitWare, a portable systemd fork running on BSDs and Linux”Submitted A book that belonged to Grace Hopper as a story · 12 points
HN discussionA thread from Mastodon, with a few pictures: https://oldbytes.space/@swordsjew@mstdn.social/1098487070662...
Comment linking /@swordsjew@mstdn.social/109848707066272168
on “A grim environmental disaster is happening in Ohio and you've not heard about it”Submitted The Pentium FDIV bug, reverse-engineered as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI'm afraid that chip is too complicated for me. I'm still trying to figure out the 386 :-) But I did colorize the A19 die photo with Apple's M1 rainbow gradient, just for fun: https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/115256179526128051
Comment linking /@kenshirriff/115256179526128051
on “Apple A19 SoC die shot”Submitted Tape containing UNIX v4 found as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThree ways you can read the thread: a) Log into Twitter. b) Read the same thread on Mastodon [1]. c) Wait until I turn it into a blog post. [1] https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/112124283096167861
Comment linking /@kenshirriff/112124283096167861
on “Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering”Submitted Unix v4 tape dumped and booted as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThis was also posted on mastodon https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/112124283096167861 (I assume it's the same post, couldn't read the one on twitter)
Comment linking /@kenshirriff/112124283096167861
on “Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering”Submitted The "Unix v4 tape" running in simh PDP11 emu on IRIX as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIain Sharp has built two physical Lunar Lander games, one of which is on permanent exhibition at the Under The Pier Show in Southwold, UK: https://www.underthepier.com * 2009: https://lushprojects.com/lunarlander/ * 2022: https://lushprojects.com/lunarlandermk2/ He just built an absolutely beautiful mechanical version of Flappy Bird: https://lushprojects.com/appybird/ Unfortunately I can't find any video of it runni…
Comment linking /@rc2014/112557511719828847
on “Electromechanical Lunar Lander”Submitted What's Inside the Pentium Chip? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://oldbytes.space/@bitsavers/114661628149581952
Comment linking /@bitsavers/114661628149581952
on “CP/M 2.2, CP/M 3.0, CP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M-86 listings by Digital Research”Submitted A look inside Intel's 1985 386 processor chip as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBlog spam for https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/113606898880486330
Comment linking /@kenshirriff/113606898880486330
on “Ken Shirriff Tracks Down Intel's Infamous Pentium FDIV Bug in the Silicon Itself”Submitted Ken Shirriff: inside a Fujitsu Ethernet chip from 1984 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI set it up on my 486-class PC tonight and did my first toot from it (followed by a selfie of sorts). https://oldbytes.space/@blakespot/111898550167322715
Comment linking /@blakespot/111898550167322715
on “DOStodon, the MS-DOS Mastodon Client”Submitted Info about 70s hard drive contaminants as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe tape being read for the first time: https://discuss.systems/@ricci/115747843169814700 Tape running on PDP11 emu: https://oldbytes.space/@flexion/115752573933914452
Comment linking /@flexion/115752573933914452
on “Here you can find the contents of the Unix v4 tape ready for bootstrapping”Submitted Reverse Engineering NASA's 1960s Apollo Up-Data Link "Mystery Box" as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is looking fun. I was really surprised to see the Snowspeeder take multiple hits. That kind of thing wasn't exactly taken for granted back in the day. BTW there have been some pretty fascinating C64 & retrocomputing hobby posts on Mastodon, see Not A Wizard's feed for example. https://oldbytes.space/web/@notawizard@mastodon.social
Comment linking /web/@notawizard@mastodon.social
on “Empire Strikes Back – C64 fan version”Submitted Adding on a computer is trickier than you'd expect as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
