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Retrocomputing

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For questions about the applications and programs that can be run on retro devices (computers, etc.)

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Nowadays, you can use Ansible, Chef, Salt and others, to manage Linux/*BSD systems, keep them updated, install software in a reproducible way etc... What tools were used to manage large UNIX installs (...
Renan's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
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I have seen some working software on-line for the IBM 704 (e.g. FORTRAN), and even for the EDSAC, ENIAC (in some form) and Manchester Baby. However, I have been unable to find any software for the ...
Schilive's user avatar
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1 answer
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...With formatting higher than notepad. Like at least, it supported bold and italics. Did it come with the PC or is it a separate product? I think I dimly remember a free mini word processor that ...
Miss Understands's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
270 views

I'd like some help creating a retro DNS server, and I have a few questions: How do I get the pages in the wayback and put them in my DNS? How do I point the server to mount these pages? I would like ...
Marmelucos's user avatar
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2 answers
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The IEEE 754 floating point arithmetic working group began in 1977 and was formally accepted in 1985. One of the original driving factors of the standard itself was Intel who wanted a standard to go ...
Adam Hyland's user avatar
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Sales of the Commodore 64 itself appear to have peaked (along with sales of 8-bit home computers in general) around 1984, though continued for another decade after that. I'm curious about sales of ...
rwallace's user avatar
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10 votes
3 answers
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The iconic personal computer sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation, was most famous for its use in UK schools, so I was surprised to read in The Legacy of the BBC Micro: By October 1983, ...
rwallace's user avatar
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In a blog entry at The Old New Thing, Raymond Chen states that Windows NT first started supporting the 603 and 604 series of PowerPC processors. Was there a specific firmware version which was needed ...
user1628056's user avatar
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21 votes
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I'm looking for any copy of the X Window System older than release 10. The oldest on x.org is X10R3. Bob Scheifler doesn't have anything. Jim Gettys may have something, but has yet to retrieve it ...
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SAP, the well-known ERP software company, started out in the 1970s, with the first version of their software running on IBM mainframes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_R/2 What was unique about R/2 ...
rwallace's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
262 views

I have a Windows 2000 system which no longer boots. We've narrowed it down to disk corruption of some Windows components, and a clean install of Windows should fix that. But there's some specialist ...
Chris H's user avatar
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I know there has long been a thriving homebrew scene for games and demos for the original Sinclair Spectrum range and also for the Russian and Eastern Bloc Spectrum clones. But I expected some old ...
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Many early operating systems were single-tasking. However, sometimes small programs were developed that could share the system and user interface with a main program. Examples include Borland ...
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In his description of the QED editor, Dennis Ritchie writes READ9 and READ6 return the next character from the ASCII or Hollerith file currently being read (if any). I know about ASCII, of course, ...
Cecilia's user avatar
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6 answers
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Could many/most home-computers of early 80's, have been capable of saving BASIC-Language-Programs to cassette/disk, as machine-code, or possibly even as assembly-code, with a little extra code (or ...
dntknw's user avatar
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17 votes
1 answer
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PROMAL is a procedural programming language from the 1980s. Its designer, Systems Management Associates, released compilers for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC. The language and development ...
Psychonaut's user avatar
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The traditional standard display for business computers was 80 column text (with either 24 or 25 rows). Business software, roughly speaking, falls into two categories: Horizontal applications like ...
rwallace's user avatar
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8 votes
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The /etc/crontab file on ubuntu has a header that reads: # /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab # Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab' # command to install the new version when ...
GammaGames's user avatar
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1 answer
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I have a copy of the book, DESIGN: a program to create data entry programs by J. Michael Wuerth. Does anyone know where I can obtain a copy of the accompanying software for the book?
Wes Robinson's user avatar
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1 answer
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I want to use OpenSSH for Amiga, copied ssh and other files to OS:Utilities from extracted archive, but I'm unable to run the binary. Tried to set protection but it didn't help either. How to make it ...
Bartek Malysz's user avatar
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29 votes
2 answers
3k views

It is a familiar fact that scientific software tends to do a lot of vector arithmetic and similar, that one does not want to keep rewriting the low-level code for such, so the usual practice is to use ...
rwallace's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
564 views

A couple of days ago, I was given some old tapes with programs written on them. However, I am having some trouble with them. I do not know what computer they were programed for. After recognising the ...
user3141592's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
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In the mid-1990s, I purchased a Swedish boxed copy of v1.0 (I believe) of Klik & Play in a computer store. Since that, the floppies have died and I stupidly even threw away the entire big box and ...
D F's user avatar
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1 answer
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VisiCalc represented numbers in BCD to be able to handle decimals precisely. But how did it decide how many decimal places to display? In some screenshots like https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-...
rwallace's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
453 views

I have fond memories of using Lotus AmiPro word processor. If it would run on 64-bit Windows, I'd probably still use it today. One of the most infamous bugs in the program was its inability to show ...
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