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1500 questions
64
votes
1 answer
Why didn't Windows 98 need the "Starting Windows 98..." screen?
In Windows 95, when you start up your computer, you see this message:
Starting Windows 95...
But in Windows 98, this is replaced entirely by the boot logo.
Was this just for a better appearance, or was this because of something else?
no ai please
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When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? Under what background? By whom?
On all Unix-like operating systems, sudo is often provided as the standard package for executing commands as superuser (or an alternative user). When sudo is invoked by the user for the first time, many systems print the following well-known "Sudo…
比尔盖子
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64
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10 answers
What makes accurate emulation of old systems a difficult task?
Thanks to a lot of passionate and skilled people, we can emulate pretty much any retro platform today.
For most people they perform well enough, but in fact, a substantial amount of these emulators are hardly accurate when compared to the original…
Eric Cartman
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63
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12 answers
How did people get apps on their computer before the Internet?
The Internet has existed since the 90s, but how did people get apps and games installed on their computers before that and how were they accessed and saved?
Chadley123
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63
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3 answers
How does the LOADALL instruction on the 80286 work?
This undocumented instruction existed in the 80286 and, I believe, the 80386. I think it was added while debugging the chip, so the engineers could quickly put the processor into any state and test it from there without having to write tons of code…
mcleod_ideafix
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62
votes
3 answers
Who set the 640K limit?
We all know that "640K should be enough for everyone". But who actually set this limit? The quote is often attributed to Bill Gates, but it doesn't seem like a decision for an Operating System vendor to make. And does MS-DOS have some kind of 640K…
PkP
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62
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5 answers
Is it safe to turn on a 40-year old TRS-80?
My father is a retired programmer. When I was in high school in the late 1970s, he purchased a TRS-80 model 1 (on which I learned to program in BASIC). At some point in the early 1980s it, together with various accessories, was put in a box and…
John Coleman
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62
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7 answers
Why did some old MS-DOS games lack the ability to exit them?
While playing around in DOSBox-X, I'm reminded of some DOS games which appear to entirely lack the ability to exit/quit/close them.
One prime example of that is "Paratrooper" from 1982. I've tried every key on the keyboard, including Alt+F4. Nothing…
Kenas
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62
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6 answers
Reason for the Amiga clock speed
The Amiga used a CPU rated for 8 megahertz, but clocked at 7.14 megahertz. What was the reason for this number? I remember it was something to do with a multiple of the frequency of the video circuitry, but I forget the details.
rwallace
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62
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6 answers
Why were most PCs and electronics beige back in the day?
Back in the day (especially during the 70's and 80's), it seems that most computers and electronics were colored 'beige'. It seems it would be easy to use different colors, so why didn't they?
Some theories are:
Beige was cheaper/easier to produce…
Unknown
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62
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7 answers
Why did the MS-DOS API choose software interrupts for its interface?
Access to the DOS API was done through the INT 21h x86 instruction. This was always counter-intuitive to me, coming from 8-bit systems that accessed system services by calling subroutines through a jump table. This simple system seems to give the…
Brian H
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62
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7 answers
What did the 'turbo' button actually do?
I remember the computer I played Commander Keen on as a child had a turbo button that I was forbidden to touch, what did this button actually do?
Neil Meyer
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61
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8 answers
Are there any modern compilers that can generate Amiga/m68k executables?
I would quite like to resurrect my openkick project. As I note on that project's README.md, it is stalled because GNU GCC is not fit for purpose.
Sadly, there do not seem to be any other modern compilers which still have (or ever had) m68k support.…
pndc
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61
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7 answers
Why have consumer-level graphing calculators seemingly not developed in 20+ years?
I am not a mathematician, though I was reading up on the various technological advancements of calculating technology.
The TI-84Plus was released in 2004. I used it in high school; it cost me around $120.
If you go online now and search for graphing…
PropertyBrother
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61
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19 answers
Why were computer customers called "Users"?
The term User for computer hardware and software customers has been universal for as long as I can remember. It has always applied to both hardware and software customers - There were "Lotus Users" and "WordPerfect Users", just as Commodore and…
Brian H
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