Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between 1981 and 1996. They were not the…
Category: Retro computing news
Robotron explained: the story of East Germany’s state-run computer giant
In the history of European computing, the story of Robotron is both impressive and uncomfortable. It…
The Story of Columbia Data Products, one of the first IBM PC clone makers
When the IBM PC arrived in 1981, it did more than introduce a new machine. It…
GentleOS/32 a new lightweight operating system for vintage 32-Bit PCs
Old PCs often sit in the uncomfortable space between usefulness and disposal. They may still power…
ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 are back: new hardware, old rivalry and a growing market
The renewed interest in the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in 2026 is not just another…
How Taiwan became the backbone of PC manufacturing
For much of the personal computer’s history, the most visible names were American, Japanese or European.…
How Apple beat the Apple II clones: inside the Franklin Computer lawsuit
In the early 1980s, the personal computer business was still young enough to feel open and…
When Italy built a better PC: Olivetti’s proud role in the computer revolution
In the early 1980s, the personal computer market was becoming a race of standards, speed and…
The Japanese computer that beat IBM at home: inside the NEC PC-98
Computer history is usually told from a Western desk. The machines in that story are familiar:…
The Dutch PC pioneer: how Tulip Computers challenged IBM’s standard
In the early 1980s, the personal computer market was still raw, restless and open to challenge.…
Phoenix BIOS: the company that made PC compatibility legal
The history of the personal computer is usually told through machines you could see and touch:…
IDT WinChip: the forgotten low-power x86 CPU that was ahead of its time
In the crowded PC market of the late 1990s, the processor business was a noisy contest…
How Verbatim, Maxell, Sony, and 3M fought to own the floppy disk era
There was a time when the most important object on a computer desk was not the…
Fujitsu FM Towns: the Japanese computer that saw the future first
Long before the multimedia PC became a marketing slogan, Fujitsu built a machine around CD-ROM, rich…
Micro Channel Architecture explained: IBM’s battle against the PC clones
When IBM launched the Personal System/2 in 1987, it was doing far more than refreshing its…
Pentium vs PowerPC: inside Apple’s boldest processor gamble
There was a moment in the mid-1990s when buying a computer felt less like choosing a…
Lotus VS Borland: the spreadsheet lawsuit that shaped software copyright
Before Excel became the spreadsheet most office workers both rely on and quietly resent, there was…
The Rise and fall of Maxtor: what happened to the famous hard drive maker?
Before cloud storage, before SSDs, and before every phone casually carried more storage than an entire…
Lernout & Hauspie: how Belgium’s speech technology star rose and collapsed
Before Siri answered questions, before Alexa started sitting in kitchens pretending not to hear private conversations,…
3dfx vs NVIDIA: how the Voodoo empire collapsed
In the late 1990s, before graphics cards became the size of roof tiles and required enough…
Sun Microsystems history: from UNIX workstations to Java, Solaris, and Oracle
Sun Microsystems was once one of the most important names in serious computing. Its workstations and…
The 1989 CERN proposal that accidentally built the internet age
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal at CERN to solve a problem that sounded painfully…
How Xerox invented the GUI and watched Apple and Microsoft win
There are few stories in computing as brilliant, maddening, and strangely funny as the tale of…
PalmPilot history: the success, software, impact and end of a tech icon
Before the iPhone made everyone a part-time photographer, map reader, banker, gamer and professional notification-clearer, there…
Retro reverse engineering for beginners: ROMs, hex editors, assembly, and emulators
There is a strange kind of magic in opening an old game file for the first…
Old IBM CRT monitor pushed to near-4K gaming in impressive YouTube test
There is something wonderfully absurd about watching a modern gaming PC get humbled by a dusty…
The lost freedom of personal computing: from Commodore and Atari to modern PCs
The old home machines were slower, louder, stranger, and infinitely less powerful than the devices we…