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1500 questions
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Can someone make a photograph of the original Apple 1 Integer BASIC cassette?
I'm wondering if anyone here has an original Integer BASIC cassette and might be willing to upload an image of it to the wiki commons? There's a serious lack of imagery in the article in en.wiki, and this seems like a reasonable way to spruce it up.
Maury Markowitz
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When did argument types first appear in formal argument lists?
Following on from this popular question about K&R-style argument specification, in which we discussed the history of routines with formal argument lists not including type information (i.e., as in K&R C), I'd like to ask when the more modern form of…
dave
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16
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l-------l.com, a weird web page from 2000
I remember a mysterious web page from 2000 with the domain name l-------l.com. This domain name goes against RFC 5891 but it was valid back in the day. It's pretty hard to search for this. Most search engines decide I want to know about "L".
The…
Daniel Darabos
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Inserting NOPs to improve IIgs shadow copy performance
The answer to this question discussed a technique on the Apple IIgs for copying memory onto itself. The motivation for the technique was to maximize use of "fast" (2.8MHz) RAM over "slow" (1MHz) RAM shared with the display hardware. Writes to the…
fadden
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16
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Unknown device in MANIAC I machine room
In my answer to the question about the LANL MANIAC I posted a picture of it in its natural habitat. In the picture there's a mystery device electrical-taped to one of the columns by the system console. Can anyone identify what it is and say why it…
Alex Hajnal
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16
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3 answers
Can the 6502 clock be changed on the fly?
I was wondering if the original NMOS 6502 has any timing limitations on changing the clock rate during operation?
I ask, because the CSG 8502 version could "run at double the clock rate of the C64", which sounds like a normal 6502B. But it did…
Maury Markowitz
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16
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Slowdowns in CBM BASICs between 4.x and 7.x?
I recently came across a thread suggesting the versions of CBM BASIC on later machines, I believe the Plus4 and 128 were mentioned, were significantly slower that earlier versions. I haven't found benchmarks comparing the two, but I'm wondering if…
Maury Markowitz
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What happened to IntelliFont (i.e. Amiga vector fonts)?
One of the oft maligned weaknesses of AmigaOS 1.x was that the included bitmap fonts were not very good, especially when compared to those included with Classic Mac OS. Commodore closed this gap with AmigaOS 2.x by licensing and porting the…
Brian H
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5 answers
What is the source of the Apple logo?
What is the source of the Apple logo? I heard that it was a reference to Alan Turing, who died of cyanide poisoning after eating an apple.
Neil Meyer
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What is an XRGB video signal? (NOT the modern XRGB mini-DIN.)
I have a mid-1980s CRT monitor, a C. Itoh Chroma Pro CM1000, with an 8-pin DIN RGB input that's visually similar to the digital RGB input on a Commodore 1084. The input is selectable between "RGB," "RGBI," and "XRGB."
Presumably "RGBI" is an RGB +…
Willis Blackburn
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Why did instruction sets since the late 1970s seemingly stop including an "execute" instruction?
Many mainframe instruction set architectures (ISAs) in the 1960s included an Execute instruction, which would treat data as an instruction.
I haven't found an architecture designed after 1976 which includes such an instruction. The Wikipedia article…
Stavros Macrakis
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Windows 3.1 Hardware acceleration API
As far as I know, there were many video cards which offered 2D acceleration (tasks like line drawing, colorfill, bitblit etc.) on Windows as early as Windows 3.1. Did they have any sort of standardised software interface?
Eagle nebula
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Was there a cartoon series in the UK computer press called "Computability Brown"?
My dad was a computing professional in Scotland in the 1970s. He received a couple of industry trade magazines every week, such as Computer Weekly and Computing. In one of them, I remember there being a cartoon strip called Computability Brown (a…
scruss
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16
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What is known about the Wang VS series CPUs?
I'm trying to do research about the Wang VS series, and there's very little on these computers on the internet (as the company was effectively dead before the internet era, this is hardly shocking).
I've stumbled across a scan of a sales brochure…
John O
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Did vacuum-tube computers ever reach a physical limit to their speed?
Grace Hopper famously used 30 cm pieces of wire as a teaching aid to show how far signals can travel in one nanosecond. Indeed, the speed of light has become a limitation for many computers. The Cray-1 supercomputer was built in a "C" shape to…
DrSheldon
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