History of Computer Hardware
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silicon transistors — long awaited by the electronics industry — are finally out of the laboratory and on the market (1954)
cross-posted from https://lemmy.ml/post/15044893
https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/first_silicon_transistors.html
image description
Image of a magazine advertisement with the title text "silicon transistors now in production!"
Text at the bottom left identifies it as the June 1954 issue of ELECTRONICS.
The advertisement consists of a row of eight three-pin solid state components "growing" in a field. There is a building in the distance behind them. The components are alternately labeled with Texas Instruments' Map-of-Texas logo and the number "900". From left to right, each component is closer to the viewer, and the fifth-to-closest one is labeled "actual size".
This text is overlaid on the image: > silicon transistors — long awaited by the electronics industry — are finally out of the laboratory and on the market ... brought to you first by Texas Instruments, a leading transistor manufacturer. A new and unrivaled degree of design freedom is created by the TI n-p-n grown junction silicon transistor, now available in production units with glass-to-metal hermetic sealing, silicon transistors radically improve temperature stability and power handling while retaining the best amplification and frequency characteristics of previous semiconductor devices. > > write today for detailed information on the silicon transistor! > > TEXAS INSTRUMENTS > > INCORPORATED > > 6000 LEMMON AVE. DALLAS, TEXAS
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"The Orange Micro card is a Wintel compatible computer in your Macintosh" (1997)
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/orange-micros-orangepc
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How did the world before BIOS, compilers and OS look like?
I really don't understand how complex programs like compilers and browsers have come to an existence.
From little what I know about 8086, it resembles a digital abacus in a way that we can set, push and do all the fancy magic with registers and store them in memories using buttons.
For the like of me, I cannot figure out how an OS was created out of thin air? Do they keep pushing, adding and popping registers back in the day to create OS or compiler? What about the TTY? Was there no such thing as booting? What about file systems? Partitions? How did any of that even work in the first place?
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A Trove of Apple Promo Videos from the '80s and '90s
bytecellar.com A Trove of Apple Promo Videos from the '80s and '90s - Byte CellarFor a few years now I’ve been sitting on two DVDs full of Apple promotional videos that someone put together and auctioned on eBay. Happily, most of the content was new to me. The videos promote various Apple systems, primarily … Continue reading →
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Pages by Pages - Wrestle WordPerfect. Futz with FrameMaker, Or simply use Pages
computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Pages by PagesWrestle WordPerfect. Futz with FrameMaker, Or simply use Pages
- computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Northglenn Software's Artificial Intelligence Guru
Your very own Guru - Amaze friends and yourself with this
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Are You a Windows or Apple User? - Use this simple chart from MacAddict
computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Are You a Windows or Apple User?Use this simple chart from MacAddict
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U.S. Blocks Shipment of Ken Thompson's Chess-Playing Computer to Soviet Union (1982)
In the last 17 minutes of this video from 2019 you can hear Ken Thompson talk about chess computers and this incident in particular.
- www.righto.com Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip. In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generati...
Highly interesting read by Ken Shirriff
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How Dead Is Moore's Law? (Sabine Hossenfelder)
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4443753
> In the past 10 years or so, tech specialists have repeatedly voiced concerns that the progress of computing power will soon hit the wall. Miniaturisation has physical limits, and then what? Have we reached these limits? Is Moore’s law dead? That’s what we’ll talk about today. > > * 00:00 Intro > * 00:53 Moore’s Law And Its Demise > * 06:23 Current Strategies > * 13:14 New Materials > * 15:50 New Hardware > * 18:58 Summary > > --- > > * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWTnpy7sw2g > * https://piped.video/watch?v=gWTnpy7sw2g
- oldvcr.blogspot.com Printing real headline news on the Commodore 64 with The Newsroom's Wire Service
Besides other things I've written or supervised, so far in my time I've also edited three periodicals, and Springboard Software's The News...
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Infinite Mac: browser-based 68k and PowerPC emulators running System 1.0 through 7.5.5 and Mac OS 7.6 through 9.0.4
- https://system6.app
- https://system7.app
- https://kanjitalk7.app
- https://macos8.app
- https://macos9.app
besides the above five domains, https://infinitemac.org has multiple point releases of every major release of the Mac System Software from 1.0 onwards.
source code is here: https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac
@[email protected] - in case you see this - thank you so much for building this!
- invidious.projectsegfau.lt Oral History of Benny Lau and Lee Lau
Interviewed by Doug Fairbairn on 2021-07-13 in Toronto, Canada © Computer History Museum Lee and Benny Lau (not related), co-founders of ATI Technologies sat for a joint oral history and described their early lives growing up in Hong Kong and both eventually emigrating to Toronto, Canada. They both...
- hackaday.com The PalmPilot Returns, This Time In Your Browser
The PalmPilot doesn’t seem to get much retrocomputing love, but maybe it should. After all, it might not have been the very first handheld, but it was probably the most successful, and that u…
- lunduke.substack.com The story of the 1991 HP DOS Palmtop
Evolving from an enhanced calculator... to a full DOS compatible PC in your pocket.
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This is Sony - 1989 Analog HDTV 1080i HDVS Video Demonstration Disc
I do not need to mention the impact it had on the PC as well as on consoles.
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The IBM Research innovations powering IBM z16
research.ibm.com The IBM Research innovations powering IBM z16 | IBM Research BlogFrom 7 nanometer node chips to built-in AI acceleration and privacy, IBM Research was behind many of the groundbreaking aspects of the new IBM z16 system.
- www.howtogeek.com Windows 3.1 Turns 30: Here’s How It Made Windows Essential
30 years ago—on April 6, 1992—Microsoft released Windows 3.1, which brought the company to a new level of success, kept the PC platform competitive with Macs, and set the stage for Windows PC domination. Here’s what was special about it.
With 3.1 the beginning of computer sales as we know it basically started. In that time IBM had basically full market control.
- spectrum.ieee.org Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
The daring and design that went into the best-selling computer of all time
- computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Kensington Microware's System Saver
The most important peripheral for your Apple II
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- computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Micro-Craft Dimension 68000
The Most Compatible Personal Computer You Can Buy
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Lotus 1-2-3 ad
computeradsfromthepast.substack.com Lotus 1-2-3This ad hit US televisions in 1983. Lotus 1-2-3 was released in January of 1983. It was a spreadsheet application that also offered graphing and database functions. It because very popular and replaced VisiCalc as the number one spreadsheet application. Lotus 1-2-3’s popularity helped IBM sell milli...
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Siliconpr0n - High Resolution Hardware Chip Maps Collection
Basically a website dedicated to collect and show DIE shots. I think it belongs in here because DIE shots are expensive and having a solid collection can help people understand and research hardware.
- www.hackster.io A History of Raspberry Pi Single-Board Computers
To celebrate Pi Day, we put together an infographic with a comprehensive list of every single-board computer released by Raspberry Pi.
- arstechnica.com A brief tour of the PDP-11, the most influential minicomputer of all time
It helped popularize the interactive computing paradigm we take for granted today.
