The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Retro computing

Old Vintage Computing Research

oldvcr.blogspot.com

REWIND and PLAY

Retro computingCommodore 8-bitApple / classic MacComputing history

’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
200 from 8 Apr 2020 to 25 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (26 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

2026 19

  1. MacOS Extensions pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0
  2. Refurb weekend II: Alpha Micro Eagle 300 and friends
  3. A Dick Smith VZ200 without the Dick Smith (but with a serial port)
  4. UPS finally refunded the overcharged tariff
  5. MkLinux and the pimped-out Apple Workgroup Server 9150
  6. John C. Dvorak has died
  7. Working around dragons with the Lemote Yeeloong laptop and OpenBSD
  8. Bobby Prince has died
  9. Building a serial and VGA "everything console"
  10. Ahoy, DECmate II! the little PDP-8 that could
  11. The Tomy Tutor and the state of 1983 home computers
  12. Testing MacOS on the Apple Network Server 2.0 ROMs
  13. Mini-review: David Pogue's Apple: The First 50 Years
  14. 6o6 v1.1: Faster 6502-on-6502 virtualization for a C64/Apple II Apple-1 emulator
  15. Refurb weekend double header: Alpha Micro AM-1000E and AM-1200
  16. Hedley Davis has died
  17. Hideki Sato has died
  18. The Scriptovision Super Micro Script video titler is almost a home computer
  19. Hands-on with two Apple Network Server prototype ROMs

2025 30

  1. Stewart Cheifet has died
  2. A Christmas 2007 video present from Old VCR with Jack Tramiel et al
  3. The Texas Instruments CC-40 invades Gopherspace (plus TI-74 BASICALC)
  4. Oblast: a better Blasto game for the Commodore 64
  5. Rebecca Heineman has died
  6. When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
  7. They call it Mister Pibb (again)
  8. The Apple Network Server MacOS ROMs have resurfaced
  9. Back to the Southern Hemisphere Commodore 128DCR
  10. The end of AOL dialup
  11. Refurb weekend: Silicon Graphics Indigo² IMPACT 10000
  12. Microsoft makes 6502 BASIC open source
  13. Reverse-engineering Roadsearch Plus, or, roadgeeking with an 8-bit CPU
  14. A real PowerBook: the Macintosh Application Environment on a PA-RISC laptop
  15. So I saw this headline
  16. Refurb weekend: Gremlin Blasto arcade board
  17. See Jane 128 by Arktronics run (featuring Magic Desk, 3-Plus-1 and the Thomson MO5)
  18. There's not much point in buying Commodore
  19. RIP Bill Atkinson
  20. Harpoom: of course the Apple Network Server can be hacked into running Doom
  21. prior-art-dept.: The hierarchical hypermedia world of Hyper-G
  22. What went wrong with wireless USB
  23. A few retrobits updates on Floodgap
  24. Let's give PRO/VENIX a barely adequate, pre-C89 TCP/IP stack (featuring Slirp-CK)
  25. COMPUTE!'s Gazette revived for July 2025
  26. MacLynx beta 6: back to the Power Mac
  27. The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
  28. More pro for the DEC Professional 380 (featuring PRO/VENIX)
  29. The "35-cent" Commodore 64 softmodem
  30. Refurb weekend: Atari Stacy

2024 25

  1. A mostly merry Southern Hemisphere Commodore Christmas
  2. Composite and hard reset mods for the Tandyvision One
  3. The Hall SC-VGA-2 video processor, the Atari ST and NeXTSTEP: more tales of the unscreenshotable
  4. One-parting some Commodore 64 utilities for fun and profit
  5. The unreleased Commodore HHC-4's secret identity
  6. Ward Christensen dies
  7. Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
  8. So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
  9. Programming the Convergent WorkSlate's spreadsheet microcassette future
  10. Pretty pictures, bootable floppy disks, and the first Canon Cat demo?
  11. Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
  12. The Living Computers Museum finally isn't
  13. Refurb weekend: Canon Cat
  14. Commodore does the iPad "crush" concept right ... in 1985
  15. With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone's a WiiN-er (except Data General)
  16. Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6 (and The Incredible KIMplement goes 1.0)
  17. So long, Z80
  18. Refurb weekend: Data General/One (and the worst LCD in the world)
  19. After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
  20. xa (xa65) 2.4.1
  21. An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at System 7.0 alpha)
  22. CAP-X and COMP-X: how the Tandy Pocket Computers got a sucky Japanese assembler
  23. Thou shalt follow these Vintage Computing Commandments
  24. Reversing the Web-@nywhere Watch: browse fragments of the Web on your wrist
  25. Niklaus Wirth dies

2023 39

  1. When the Power Macintosh ran NetWare (featuring Wormhole and Cyberpunk)
  2. xa (xa65) 2.4.0 - finally
  3. The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
  4. What the KIM-1 really needs is an LCD screen
  5. Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)
  6. Finally, an MOS 7600/7601 Video Game Array data sheet
  7. The W65C265SXB gets a SXY case
  8. The Fossil Wrist PDA becomes a tiny Gopher client (with Overbite Palm 0.3)
  9. The spawn of AtariLab and the Universal Lab Interface
  10. Refurb weekend: PowerBook Duo 2300c
  11. Adding a cooling fan to the Commodore 128DCR
  12. Scenes from the Solbourne Computer corporate video, March 1992
  13. MacLynx beta 5: UTF-8, pull-down menus and more dialogue boxes, oh my!
  14. Cracking DesignWare's The Grammar Examiner on the C64
  15. Inflation in 1983 must have been horrible
  16. Apple's Interactive Television Box: hacking the Set Top Box System 7.1 in ROM
  17. Refurb weekend(s): Commodore/MOS KIM-1
  18. RIP, Don Lancaster
  19. Making a potato livecam with the Commodore 128 VDC and ComputerEyes
  20. O Brother GeoBook, Let's Get Thou back on the Internet?
  21. RIP, Bob Applegate
  22. Goodbye, computer cat
  23. New RAM card, prototype Mac Portable, demo System 7
  24. Refurb weekend: Commodore 128DCR
  25. The KIM-1 that sounds like Stephen Hawking (or: "jitbanging" DECtalk)
  26. Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them
  27. Crypto Ancienne 2.2: now supported on AmigaOS and classic MacOS/MPW
  28. Refurb weekend: DEC AlphaPC 164LX
  29. Printing real headline news on the Commodore 64 with The Newsroom's Wire Service
  30. Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2
  31. Dusting off Dreamcast Linux
  32. xa 2.3.14, the 6502/65816 cross-assembler
  33. Instruction fusion and a real serial port for your virtual KIM-1: The Incredible KIMplement 0.3
  34. Here be four bits of dragons: the Mattel Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game and the TMS1100
  35. Bringing TLS to the Magic Cap DataRover
  36. Solbournes in space
  37. SAIC Galaxy 1100: a pre-CDE VUE of the PA-RISC with a security clearance
  38. MacLynx beta 4: now with scrollbars and dialogue boxes
  39. The MOS 6502 is (mostly) Turing-complete without registers

2022 36

  1. Another weird MOS Pong console: 1976 Allied Leisure Name of the Game II
  2. Merry Old VCR Christmas with Dick Smith and his VZ200
  3. A minor memorial for Leo Laporte's terrestrial AM radio show
  4. The strange case of BeOS, SRS and the silent Power Mac 6500
  5. Magic Cap, from the Magic Link to the DataRover and the stuff in-between
  6. Refurb weekend: Sega Dreamcast
  7. Meet your new two-factor authenticator: your Commodore 64
  8. Running a pinball game from a disk image doesn't make me a pirate
  9. Refurb weekend: Commodore SFD-1001
  10. If one GUI's not enough for your SPARC workstation, try four
  11. Battery Eliminator Bible: what's in that classic console AC adapter
  12. Refurb weekend: PowerBook 1400
  13. One more MOS 7600 Pong: Coleco Telstar Gemini
  14. IR-controlling the new air conditioner in the vintage server room
  15. Going where BeOS NetPositive hasn't gone before: NetPositive+
  16. The MIPS ThinkPad, kind of
  17. Refurb weekend: New batteries for the Palm Pilots
  18. Confirmed! the MOS 7600/7601 Pong chip is a true microcontroller
  19. What the KIM-1 really needs is bubble memory (plus: 20mA current loop for fun and profit)
  20. Plua 2 continued: open source under GPL for your classic Palm
  21. The dark ages of history, circa 2030
  22. The Pong you could program, possibly: the MOS 7600/7601
  23. Crypto Ancienne 2.0 now brings TLS 1.3 to the Internet of Old Things (except BeOS)
  24. CP/M is (more) officially open source
  25. A brief dive into Power Mac INITs and NVRAM scripts, or, teaching Mac OS 9 new device tricks
  26. Overbite Palm 0.2
  27. prior-art-dept.: ProleText, encoding HTML before Markdown (and a modern reimplementation)
  28. So long, home T1 line; hello, hacking the T1 router
  29. Gopher on the Palm Pilot and the pitfalls of PalmOS connectivity
  30. Tonight we're gonna log on like it's 1979 (Telenet, Dialcom and The Source)
  31. prior-art-dept.: 5 letter words (Jim Butterfield's Jotto)
  32. xa 2.3.13 and dxa 0.1.5
  33. KIMdle: Sorta-Wordle for the KIM-1
  34. Refurb weekend: Texas Instruments Silent 700 Model 745 teletype
  35. Overbite Android 0.2.6
  36. prior-art-dept.: OWL Guide, early hypertext, and "replacing" the Web

2021 26

  1. Merry Old VCR Christmas
  2. Monitoring the vintage server room (and reverse-engineering USB sensors)
  3. xa 2.3.12
  4. Shiner ESB, an Apple Network Server prototype, and what it did at Netscape/MCom
  5. A happy ending (and future) for Plua
  6. RIP Sir Clive Sinclair
  7. The Incredible KIMplement 0.2b: a KIM-1 emulator for the Commodore 64 (and the Superkim)
  8. More Tomy Tutor homebrew
  9. The Commodore Plus/4, 3-Plus-1 and computer literacy
  10. Plua revisited: Lua for PalmOS (and resurrecting plua2c)
  11. Unplanned Floodgap downtime
  12. Cracking into the Sun Ray General Dynamics-Tadpole M1400
  13. The parallel universe of FireWire hubs
  14. Monterey? BTDT. Try Project Monterey.
  15. Refurb weekend: Hewlett-Packard 9000/350
  16. The better way to get VICE on Ethernet with SELinux
  17. Don't be fooled by cheap USB multimeters
  18. The final official release of Classilla
  19. When you have too much memory for SheepShaver
  20. Those mysterious Toshiba T-chips (plus: VTech madness with the Laser 50 and Type-right)
  21. Over the weekend: Commodore 128DCR keyboard extension, updates to Be-Power
  22. So long, Fry's
  23. MacLynx beta 3 -- really!
  24. Make the BeBox great again: TLS 1.2, inetd and more for PowerPC BeOS R5
  25. The quest for Wolfenstein 3D music on the Apple IIgs
  26. Things I've learned about A/UX

2020 25

  1. Unboxing the best gift of 1983: the Commodore SX-64
  2. Stereoscopic computing: anaglyph sprites on the Commodore 64
  3. Modern console, old protocol
  4. Not a refurb weekend: Apple IIgs
  5. Fun with Crypto Ancienne: TLS for the Browsers of the Internet of Old Things
  6. MacLynx "beta 2"
  7. A Gopher view of Gemini
  8. Refurb weekend: Power Mac G4 MDD
  9. Stereoscopic computing: converting Quake and Doom
  10. Hacking a gopher client into the Alpha Micro
  11. 64-bit build of Tutti II, the Tomy Tutor Emulator
  12. RIP, Curt Vendel
  13. A second look at computer stereoscopy with the Minoru 3D webcam and Camaglyph
  14. PAL RF or bust with the LCDT600: unscreenshotable part IV
  15. Refurb weekend: Mac mini G4
  16. AppleShare PC on MS-DOS and the Apple LocalTalk PC Card
  17. Carry on (the) Arithmometer
  18. Refurb weekend: Alpha Micro Eagle 300
  19. Terminal sleep for old Macs
  20. TFW you find the last cartridge
  21. xa 2.3.11
  22. SAIC Galaxy 1100: finally screenshots of the unscreenshotable, part III
  23. Inogeni VGA2USB3: screenshots of the unscreenshotable, part II
  24. Video Ghost review: screenshots of the unscreenshotable?
  25. Welcome to your Old VCR