Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever
1948 was an interesting time for computing. For decades, businesses had used punch card equipment that added and sorted electromechanically. Now these electromechanical relays and counting wheels
In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point chip, a co-processor that made floating-point operations up to 100 times faster. This chip was highly influential, and today most processors use the
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, providing lab space for astronauts and experiments. Spacelab was controlled by a French-built
Before GPS, how did aircraft navigate? One important technique was celestial navigation: navigating from the positions of the stars, planets, or the sun. While celestial navigation is accurate,
The morning of April 12, 1981, 20 years to the day after Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, the Space Shuttle thundered into the Florida sky. Commander Young and Pilot Crippen were at the
pre {border:none;} In the 1980s, if you wanted your IBM PC to run faster, you could buy the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. With this chip, CAD software, spreadsheets, flight simulators,
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason. Two examples are in the
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line. The Pentium had many improvements over the previous processor, the Intel 486, including a
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of high-performance processors.1 (#fn:lineage) The Pentium includes a floating-point unit that can rapidly
The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a vivid description of South Seas cargo cults. However, this
Addition is harder than you'd expect, at least for a computer. Computers use multiple types of adder circuits with different tradeoffs of size versus speed. In this article, I reverse-engineer an
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of processors. Earlier, I wrote (https://www.righto.com/2025/01/pentium-floating-point-ROM.html) about the ROM
What is the origin of the word "mainframe", referring to a large, complex computer? Most sources agree that the term is related to the frames that held early computers, but the details are vague.1
This article is available in German at Heise Online (https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Zahlen-bitte-Verrueckt-Fuer-X3-brauchte-der-Pentium-einen-eigenen-Schaltkreis-10323633.html). In 1993, Intel
In the early 1960s, Douglas Engelbart started investigating how computers could augment human intelligence: "If, in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display
Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of software underneath: microcode. With microcode, instead of
code {font-size: 100%; font-family: courier, fixed;} mult3 In 1977, Commodore released the PET computer, a quirky home computer that combined the processor, a tiny keyboard, a cassette drive for
The groundbreaking Intel 386 processor (1985) was the first 32-bit processor in the x86 architecture. Like most processors, the 386 contains numerous registers; registers are a key part of a
In 1985, Intel introduced the groundbreaking 386 processor, the first 32-bit processor in the x86 architecture. To improve performance, the 386 has a 16-byte instruction prefetch queue. The purpose
During the Apollo flights to the Moon, the astronauts observed the spacecraft's orientation on a special instrument called the FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator). This instrument showed the