Soldering My Way to 1MB

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The Atari ST, launched in the mid-1980s under Jack Tramiel’s leadership, offered affordable and powerful computing with a Motorola 68000 CPU, a graphical desktop, and notably built-in MIDI ports that attracted musicians and developers alike. The author recalls personally upgrading their 520ST by soldering extra RAM chips onto the motherboard, doubling its memory and extending its lifespan, highlighting the machine’s hands-on, user-friendly nature. Although it never achieved widespread success in the U.S., the Atari ST remains a significant and nostalgic computer for its era, especially in music production.

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/soldering-my-way-to-1mb/

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AmigaOS 2: The Greatest Upgrade

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AmigaOS 2, released alongside the Amiga 3000 in the early 1990s, marked a major advancement over the original 1.x series by improving system stability, speed, and usability. It introduced a standardized GUI toolkit with a modern 3D look, enhanced file management features, modular preferences, and new developer frameworks such as BOOPSI and ARexx scripting, greatly expanding the platform’s functionality and ease of development. While some beloved features, such as the Guru Meditation error message and speech synthesis, were removed, AmigaOS 2 significantly modernized the user experience and prepared the Amiga line for the 32-bit computing era.

https://datagubbe.se/os20up/

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What Was Nice About the UI of Windows 2000

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The Windows 2000 UI is praised for its clear, consistent visual design featuring distinct buttons, 3D relief effects, always-visible scrollbars, and well-grouped options that provide immediate, intuitive visual feedback. Its icons and font rendering helped users quickly identify interactive elements and navigate the system easily, contrasting with modern flatter, less obvious interfaces. Despite running slowly on minimal hardware, Windows 2000 offered a balanced, functional, and offline-capable UI that emphasized usability and clarity.

https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html

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I Love the Computer

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Michael Enger reflects on his lifelong passion for computers, starting from his childhood encounter with a 1990s IBM 486 running Windows 3.0, through his immersion in early tech magazines and the pre-Internet era, to his deep engagement with programming and online exploration. He discusses how computers shaped his identity and career amid shifting tech cultures, lamenting the current commercialization and gatekeeping of technology while remaining hopeful about grassroots, decentralized alternatives and his enduring love for computing.

https://michaelenger.com/blog/i-love-the-computer/

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Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later

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The article describes an experiment in building a game for Windows 1.0 using the original WinAPI and development tools from the mid-1980s. By recreating software with the first Windows programming interface, the author shows that many core concepts of Windows development—message loops, event handling, windows, and graphical APIs—were already present in the earliest release and have remained remarkably stable for four decades. The main point is that the longevity of the WinAPI demonstrates an unusual level of backward compatibility, allowing software concepts introduced in 1985 to remain recognizable and relevant in modern Windows development.

https://medium.com/@stassaf.uae/windows-1-0-and-the-winapi-40-years-later-abaf64832918

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Online Playable Commodore 64 Games

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This webpage offers an extensive collection of classic Commodore 64 games that can be played online directly in a browser. It features a wide variety of iconic titles such as Prince of Persia, Impossible Mission, Bubble Bobble, and many others, preserving the retro gaming experience for enthusiasts. The site serves as a convenient platform to revisit and interact with vintage C64 games without requiring original hardware or emulation software.

https://c64.krissz.hu/online-playable-games/

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Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles

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Video game consoles have featured official web browsers since the early days of the internet, evolving from rudimentary, limited tools like the CD-i’s ‘internet-lite’ browser to more integrated and capable systems such as the Nintendo DS’s Opera browser and the Dreamcast’s multiple browser offerings. These browsers often reflected the technical constraints and intended audiences of their consoles, providing insight into both early web development suited for TV displays and the expansion of online connectivity in gaming culture. The article details the history and features of various console browsers from platforms including the Sega Saturn, Apple Bandai Pippin, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Colour, and PlayStation 2, highlighting their significance in the broader narrative of internet access on gaming hardware.

https://vale.rocks/posts/game-console-browsers

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Ahoy, DECmate II! the Little PDP-8 That Could

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The article explores the history and significance of the DECmate II, a 1982 desktop microcomputer by Digital Equipment Corporation that condensed the PDP-8 minicomputer architecture into a word-processing machine aimed at office use. It traces the PDP-8’s evolution from the 1960s, highlights the challenges DEC faced with microcomputers, and details the role of the CMOS microprocessor implementations like the Intersil IM6100 and Harris HD-6120 in enabling the DECmate line. The DECmate II featured improvements over earlier models with a more modern design and pricing strategy, making it an accessible office system that maintained much of the PDP-8’s legacy despite compatibility quirks.

https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2026/05/ahoy-decmate-ii-little-pdp-8-that-could.html

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How the ZX80 Works

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The Sinclair ZX80, launched in 1980 as a low-cost home computer, operates primarily by drawing the TV screen using clever hardware and running mostly NOP instructions rather than focusing on code execution. It achieves video output without a dedicated video chip by using the Z80 CPU, minimal RAM and ROM, and TTL logic chips to multiplex the address and data buses, intercepting reads in the high address mirror area to generate video signals through character ROM lookups and timing the CPU clock precisely to match TV scan lines, enabling the screen to be refreshed 50 times per second while handling input and memory access with minimal hardware complexity.

http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2019/10/how-the-zx80-works.html

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