Top all-time · #585
The DigiBarn Computer Museum
Personal blog · digibarn.comhistoryhardwareculture
The DigiBarn Computer Museum is a personal blog at digibarn.com about history, hardware and culture. Since 2007, 104 different Hacker News readers have linked it 131 times, most often “Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link DigiBarn's scans, screenshots and documents on the Xerox Star, Alto and other early computers, usually as sources for GUI and programming-language history.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- one commenter calls the Xerox Star screenshots "very impressive", citing their attention to detail.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-05-22
- Jef Raskin: Holes in the Histories4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-05-05
- Pictures of the first GUIs from Xerox2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-07
- I.B.M., Happy men, smiling all the way (IBM company songbook)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-04-18
- /collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8010/xerox-star-8010-07.jpg2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-10-20
- /collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8010/xerox-star-8010-05.jpg2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-14
- /collections/posters/tongues/ComputerLanguagesChart-med.png2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-06-02
- The Woz Wonderbook (1977) [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-07
- Xerox Star Keyboard2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-14
- /friends/curbow/star/keyboard/keyboard2.JPG2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-30
What Hacker News says?
The Bell & Howell version came in Darth Vader black too: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/appleII-bell-and...
Comment linking /collections/systems/appleII-bell-and-howell/index.html
on “Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC”Submitted Pictures of the first GUIs from Xerox as a story · 216 points
HN discussion- nl · 2014-06-02
Fortran came before Algol and arguably influenced it[1]. I agree with COBOL and SQL in particular, though. [1] http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/tongues/Computer...
Comment linking /collections/posters/tongues/ComputerLanguagesChart-med.png
on “Introducing Swift” Submitted The Woz Wonderbook (1977) [pdf] as a story · 85 points
HN discussion> That Windows was a visually pleasing design? For a while, it was. Windows 2 was kinda ugly. https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win203 Windows 3/3.1/3.11 were fine. https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win30 Muted, boring, but you could look at it all day. And we did. 95 improved it. https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win95osr2 Tasteful greys, spot colour. NT 4 improved that a bit more. https://guid…
Comment linking /collections/screenshots/KDE%201-x/matthiase2.jpg
on “IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)”Submitted Xerox Star Keyboard as a story · 72 points
HN discussionAlmost everything else, besides any language that is copy-paste compatible with C, including systems languages that predate C for a decade, like JOVIAL, ESPOL, NEWP, PL/I and other ALGOL inspired systems languages. Xerox PARC started with BCPL for their systems, but eventually created Mesa exactly for safe systems programming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) http://toastytech.com/guis/star.…
Comment linking /friends/curbow/star/XDEPaper.pdf
on “This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm”Submitted KDE 2 Screenshots (2000-2002) as a story · 72 points
HN discussion> in particular being able to drag overlapping windows on top of each other That's not true. The Xerox Alto had overlapping windows, and it was released in 1973! http://www.digibarn.com/collections/software/alto/index.html Also, MIT Lisp Machines had overlapping windows by the late '70s, and MIT had borrowed this idea from the Alto.
Comment linking /collections/software/alto/index.html
on “StarCraft: Orcs in space go down in flames”Submitted The Sac State 8008: The First Full-Fledged Microcomputer (2008) as a story · 55 points
HN discussionMore software development than CS, I was waaaaay too young to understand anything about CS but making computers do my bidding was very interesting. Microelectronics and the Personal Computer Scientific American 237, no. 3 (1977)(Sep.): 230-244. scans at https://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/xerox-parc-1970-8... Programming Your Own Computer , in Science Year, The World Book Annual Science Supplement, 183-195. (…
Comment linking /collections/books/xerox-parc-1970-80/alto-article/
on “Ask HN: The book that did it for you in math and/or CS?”Submitted Jef Raskin: Holes in the Histories as a story · 42 points
HN discussionThe Xerox Star had a Copy key.[1] IBM used Ctrl+Insert in the 1987 CUA standard.[2] [1] http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/index.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
Comment linking /friends/curbow/star/keyboard/index.html
on “Mac keyboard shortcuts”Submitted Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists as a story · 36 points
HN discussionApple's UI and the UI from the Alto are while conceptually similar (insomuch as any two cars are conceptually similar), not even in the same family, in look, feel or user interaction - its a bit like comparing a Model T with a 39 Ford - while both are cars, the controls work in pretty dissimilar manners. Alto: http://s7.computerhistory.org/is/image/CHM/500004657-03-01?$... Lisa: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/s…
Comment linking /collections/systems/apple-lisa2xl/apple_lisa_screenshot.gif
on “Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival”Submitted Original Sketch of the Ethernet Concept as a story · 35 points
HN discussionIt looks a lot like the TRS-80 Model 100: https://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/trs80-model100/
Comment linking /collections/systems/trs80-model100/
on “The first RISC-V portable computer is now available”Submitted So you think there's been progress in GUIs since 1981. as a story · 23 points
HN discussionWe've all been fans of Ken's blog for years, so were thrilled that he took an interest in this project. Not only is Ken doing these amazing writeups, he gathered together the master restorers and engineers, some of whom worked on Altos at the time, who are now working on this one. Seeing them set to it, inspecting the Alto and figuring out what would be needed, was a real lesson in self-organization. I felt honored…
Comment linking /collections/games/xerox-maze-war/
on “Y Combinator's Xerox Alto: restoring the legendary 1970s GUI computer”Submitted Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists: "Most of you steal your software." [JPG] as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> styling of the "To Be Continued" Bit of a callout [0] to Be, I should think, cf. [1]. That's neither Unix nor Apple, although it's fairly close to both. [0] http://www.wareriver.com/izzysanime/tobecontinued.jpg [1] http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/bebox/Image123.j...
Comment linking /collections/systems/bebox/Image123.jpg
on ““Ghost in the Shell - Remake””Submitted Why Alto? Butler Lampson's Historic 1972 Memo as a story · 11 points
HN discussionAh, what a delightful rabbit hole your comment led me down.. I've got about twenty tabs open now, articles on the history of (and the relationships between) programming languages and graphical user interfaces. Will enjoy this food for thought! My recent reading has included: Unix: A History and a Memoir (Brian Kernighan) - https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/memoir.html The Development of the C Language (Dennis Ritchi…
Comment linking /collections/papers/dick-sweet/xdepaper.pdf
on “The naked truth about writing a programming language (2014)”Submitted IBM Company Songs as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA few interviews here: http://www.digibarn.com/stories/wordstar-rob-barnaby/
Comment linking /stories/wordstar-rob-barnaby/
on “What ever happened to Wordstar?”Submitted LINC (the very first PC) History, Restoration and 45 Year Retrospective as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Robert X. Cringely is often incredibly observant and accurate. Quite the opposite: http://www.digibarn.com/friends/jef-raskin/writings/holes.ht... Cringely is a good writer and storyteller. The stories he tells are often hearsay or wildly inaccurate recounting of events by third parties. His writings should in no way be treated as being accurate, and should not be referenced as historical sources or anything like…
Comment linking /friends/jef-raskin/writings/holes.html
on “Quotes from 1992”Submitted People's Computer Company Newsletter #1 (1972) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou can see it in this picture: https://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-star-...
Comment linking /collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8010/xerox-star-8010-04.jpg
on “Iconography of the X Window System: The Boot Stipple”Submitted Why Alto? (1972 Xerox Internal Memo) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
![Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists: "Most of you steal your software." [JPG]](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_01/homebrew_V2_01_p2.jpg){kind=link}
