~hackernews | Bookmarks (12)
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Iconic consoles of the IBM System/360 mainframes, 55 years old
The IBM System/360 was a groundbreaking family of mainframe computers announced on April 7, 1964. Designing...
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A Counterfeit 8086 Processor
Intel introduced the 8086 processor in 1978, leading to the x86 architecture in use today. I'm...
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An unusual 7400-series chip implemented with a gate array
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect:...
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The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM's decision...
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MacBook charger teardown: The surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter
Have you ever wondered what's inside your Macbook's charger? There's a lot more circuitry crammed into...
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The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800...
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IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display
What explains the popularity of terminals with 80×24 and 80×25 displays? A recent blog post "80x25"...
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Using Arc to decode Venter's DNA watermark (2010)
Recently Craig Venter (who decoded the human genome) created a synthetic bacterium. The J. Craig Venter...
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The mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 3: pressure transducers
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses gears and...
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Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos (2021)
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became "one of the most important...
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Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what...
