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#computerhistory

19 posts18 participants2 posts today
Public
William Smith

I love this poem based on days of setting type by hand in the printing industry.

< > ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

Translated:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Pipe curly-bracket comma comma CRASH!

spot.colorado.edu/~sniderc/poe

spot.colorado.eduPoetry
#ComputerHistory#printing#typesetting
Public
Loki the Cat

🕰️ Breaking news from... *checks calendar*... 2012! The legendary AlexNet source code has finally been released. Only took 5 years of negotiations to preserve this piece of AI history. Like finding the digital Rosetta Stone, except this one actually taught computers to see cats on the internet! 🐱 #AI #ComputerHistory

slashdot.org/story/25/03/25/01

slashdot.orgAlexNet, the AI Model That Started It All, Released In Source Code Form - SlashdotAn anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: There are many stories of how artificial intelligence came to take over the world, but one of the most important developments is the emergence in 2012 of AlexNet, a neural network that, for the first time, demonstrated a huge jump in a computer's abili...
Public *
randomwizard

I have been restructuring Richard Garriott's DND1 code that was written in BASIC. The old kind of BASIC where you had line numbers and did a lot of GOTO a line number.

It is fascinating trying to move it around with more modern eyes and years of programming dogma.

The code only has the concept of global variables. Every variable you make is then in the global space.

You can reuse a bit of code anywhere by just doing a GOTO line number. But it makes it very difficult to reason about because you might think of a stack of lines as a function and want to group them together, but some code somewhere else might just jump right into the middle of it!

Some bit of code might rely on some variable from somwhere else but it is difficult to know if some other bit of code is clobbering it.

Anyhow, this is the restructured version I put together.

codeberg.org/random-wizard/dnd

I moved things into GOSUB sections. Each GOSUB gets 1000 lines (usually it goes by 10s so only 100 lines) and the last line always ends in 999 and is a RETURN. A REM SUBROUTINE means nothing will GOTO in the middle of it.

This way it sort of acts like a traditional function. Still does not have arguments though.

I wonder if there are any companies out there looking for BASIC programmers.

#crpg#ultima#basic
Public *
Martin Rundkvist

Late 80s, my buddy writes a programme to zoom in on the Mandelbrot set in interpreted GW-BASIC running on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor. It's glacially slow, hours per picture, but we think it's awesome.

A few months later he gets a floppy disc with a Mandelbrot zoom programme written in hexadecimal machine code and running on a 6 MHz Motorola 68000. It does the same job in seconds.

#computerhistory#fractal
Public *
Ian Davis

For anyone living near #Reading, there's a new exhibition running from
Tuesday 18 March – Wednesday 24 December 2025 about the UK's #SiliconValley...

Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution #Exhibition

"Get switched on with Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution – a new and unique mixed-media exhibition celebrating the life and times of Reading’s digital industries."

#ComputerHistory #DEC

readingmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/

Reading MuseumReading’s DIGITAL Revolution ExhibitionGet switched on with Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution – a new and unique mixed-media exhibition celebrating the life and times of Reading’s digital industries. Sixty years ago, a start-up American computer company called Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) opened its first office at 11 Castle Street. Beginning with just two employees, DEC grew exponentially with a workforce of more than 2,000. Since 1964 Reading has evolved into one of the largest tech clusters in the UK, with more than 11,000 ICT businesses calling the greater Reading area home. The exhibition includes the DEC talk voice synthesizer famously used by Stephen Hawking whose account was with Reading DEC. You can view a unique collection of rare and vintage computing equipment on loan exclusively from Bletchley’s Park’s National Museum of Computing and private collectors across the UK. A video wall installation features reflections on the growth of Reading’s ICT industry from key figures in Reading’s digital story. While innovative new digital artwork includes a large-scale mural exploring Reading’s digital future. The exhibition is made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and in partnership with The National Museum of Computing, Reading’s Digital Revolution traces the origins of Reading’s tech sector, sharing ideas about its influence on our town’s present and future.
Public
William Smith

A co-worker pointed me to this gem on Internet Archive.

From “One To One With Microsoft” published in 1990, issue 12:

"The graphical user interface: Is it really better?”

We take so many things for granted these days, but when computers were beginning to find their ways onto desktops, much of it had to be explained. I still recall when companies would need to send their employees to "computer training" classes.

#ComputerHistory #InternetArchive

archive.org/details/OneToOneWi

Screen shot of an article from “One To One With Microsoft”, Issue 12 from 1990. The headline reads “The graphical user interface: Is it really better?”
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