Today is Retro Games Day! (03/08/2025)

March 8th is National Retro Video Game Day! Woo hoo! A holiday for fans of old cult games and retro consoles, in fact - all visitors to my site. Retro games that takes us on a journey back in time, reminding us of the pixelated wonders that laid the foundation for the gaming industry we know today. National Retro Video Game Day, celebrated annually on March 8th, is a tribute to the classic games that once captured our hearts and fueled our imaginations. Happy holiday, my friends, and so that you did not have a chance to meet either the Blue Screen of Death, nor Bad-blocks on your media!

The day when a robot killed a human for the first time in history

On January 25, 1979, a robot killed a human for the first time in history, Robert Williams of Michigan. The victim was 25 years old. The tragedy at Ford Motor Company resulted in a $10 million lawsuit. The court deliberated for two and a half hours before announcing its decision against Unit Handling Systems, a division of Litton Industries. It ordered the maker of the one-ton robot that killed Williams to pay the victim’s family $10 million. The robot was designed to retrieve parts from storage, but it was slow. Williams was retrieving a part from storage when the robot’s arm struck him in the head, killing him instantly. In the lawsuit, the family claimed the robot had no safety features or warning noise to let workers know the dangerous machine was approaching.

DOOM - great and terrible! (12/10/2024)

On December 10, 1993, id Software released a game that was destined to go down in history. Brutal and ironic Doom is rightfully considered one of the most influential titles that changed the idea of what shooters should be. Being one of the most significant and influential computer games in the history of the industry, its popularity largely determined the further development and spread of the first-person shooter genre. The action of the game Doom takes place in a sci-fi setting using horror movie techniques. The plot of the game is simple, it is revealed only in the user manual, in the game itself there are only short messages for the player between episodes, but this does not make it less interesting. Congratulations to everyone on the birthday of this wonderful game!

A long time ago... Microsoft released Windows XP (10/25/2024)

On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP.
Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems released by Microsoft for use on personal computers. The name "XP" comes from the word "eXPerience" ("experience"). It became the successor to Windows 2000 Professional and Windows ME. Windows XP was Microsoft's first consumer-oriented operating system, built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture. According to analyst International Data Corporation, more than 400 million copies had been used by January 2006. It was replaced by Windows Vista, which was released to the general public in January 2007, and later there were Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, but that's a whole other story...

Special US Stamp Commemorates ENIAC (10/08/2024)

In October 8, 1996 the US Postal Service issued a special "Computer Technology" stamp to mark the 50th anniversary of the ENIAC. In a ceremony at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, speakers paid tribute to computer pioneers with the image of a brain partially covered by small blocks that contain parts of circuit boards and binary language. The stamp was designed entirely on a computer. A Postal Service news release from October 8 introduced the stamp with a discussion of the ENIAC’s origins: "Long before PCs became standard office equipment and surfing on the information superhighway became a national obsession, calculations were done the ‘old-fashioned way’ by hand. And, as is often the case, it took a war to bring the world into the computer age specifically, the need for the United States Army to rapidly compute ballistic firing tables."

Hacker Mitnick has been charged (09/27/2024)

On September 27, 1996, 33-year-old Kevin Mitnick was charged with hacking. Police accused the hacker, who called himself "Condor," of stealing millions of dollars' worth of software from major computer corporations. His crimes could have carried a maximum sentence of 200 years. After serving his prison term, Kevin became a computer security consultant and writer. An iconic figure in the field of information security.

58 years ago, the first episode of Star Trek aired (09/08/2024)

On September 8, 1966, the first episode of the series aired. The science fiction television series Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry. Set in the 23rd century, the series follows the adventures of the starship Enterprise and its crew, led by Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner). The crew includes First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Star Trek was not an immediate hit upon its debut. Only three seasons were initially produced (with a total of 79 episodes). Many of the technologies featured in the series, including the Tricorder and the personal communicator, influenced a generation of technologists working in the fields of portable communications and computing. The final episode aired on September 2, 1969.

RS/6000 SP: the IBM supercomputer that beat Kasparov. What kind of system was it? (09/02/2024)

Exactly 27 years ago, on September 2, 1997, IBM announced the creation of an even faster version of the RS/6000 SP supercomputer. Yes, it was this supercomputer that managed to beat Garry Kasparov in the match on May 11, 1997. A great reason to remember what this supercomputer was and what it lived for besides chess.
Let's go! >>

Interesting use of retro equipment (07/14/2024)

The German Navy still uses floppy disks on a daily basis, but not the relatively modern 3.5-inch ones, but the very ancient 8-inch ones. They are part of the computer systems of German anti-submarine frigates. Only now the fleet leadership has decided to abandon the old carriers, but this will not be easy. details >>

HAPPY NATIONAL RETRO DAY (02/27/2024)

The Registrar at National Day Calendar® proclaimed the celebration in 2018 to be observed annually on February 27.
National Retro Day was created for us to look back on a time before the internet, smartphones, and social media—a simpler time without distractions that is sometimes called "the good ol' days." Besides being a day to celebrate all things retro, the overarching goal is to focus more on those we are with instead of on our phones. It is a day to create memories and live in the moment with them, instead of being distracted by notifications or using technology to share those moments with the rest of the world. Both those who want to relive a past era and those who want to know what that time was like take part in celebrating.
Participants can celebrate any retro time period they would like. There is no concrete definition as to what time is "retro," although it currently is commonly looked at as being between the 1950s and 1990s. When it comes to retro, the creators of the day encourage celebrants to wear it (retro clothes), play it (retro games), drive it (classic vehicles), and show it off (collections).
Happy National Retro Day, my friends!

Tomb Raider trilogy remasters - 79 points out of 100 on Metacritic (02/14/2024)

Almost thirty years ago, the first game of the magnificent Tomb Raider series was released, the remaster of which we meet today. Compared to the original, the game has received many improvements, both graphically and functionally. The game, which has an army of fans, was on the waiting list and today we can already take a look at the first ratings from game critics. Responsibly improving the classic Lara Croft adventures, Aspyr Media can be pleased with itself. The game received decent marks in the main gaming ratings. details >>

FrogFind! a new name in search engines for retro enthusiasts (11/22/2023)

Well-known to many, Sean, A.K.A Action Retro on YouTube, created a search engine that can work on retro machines. FrogFind's search functionality is essentially a custom wrapper around DuckDuckGo's search, converting results into extremely simple HTML that older browsers can read. When you navigate to pages from search results, those pages are processed through the PHP version of Mozilla's Readability, which provides Firefox's reading experience. The results are then reduced to the maximum possible HTML level. FrogFind should also work great in any text-based web browser! We wish success to Action Retro and its search engine. go to >>

The legendary NES game console is 40 years old (07/15/2023)

Today, July 15, 2023, the game console known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) around the world and as the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan is 40 years old. Entering the market in the 1980s, the Nintendo Famicom dominated the market, leaving a family legacy that is still felt today.
It was created by Nintendo employee Masayuki Uemura. In 1981, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi (who led the company from 1949 to 2002) received a phone call from Uemura to suggest creating a video game system that used cartridges. After 2 years (a contract for the supply of chips from Ricoh), the first eight-bit Family Computer was revealed. Uemura died in 2021. Interestingly, he continued to work with Nintendo until his death, though since 2004 already as an advisor.
The big break came with the release of Super Mario Bros in 1985, which went on to sell over 40 million copies, partly as a result of being bundled with the console. The following year saw the release of The Legend of Zelda, also designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, as well as the Nintendo classics Metroid and Kid Icarus.
Congratulations to Nintendo on the 40th anniversary of its great brainchild, well, to all of us on this event!

Enthusiasts have released updates for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me (07/12/2023)

Windows Update Restored, founded by enthusiasts and fans of older versions of Windows, has released updates for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me. This project, which aims to support legacy versions of Microsoft operating systems, was announced on July 5, 2023.

The Windows Update Restored site allows you to update some older versions of Windows, and the team hopes to help those who continue to use PCs running Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP. The project site mentions Windows Server 2003 as well as Windows "Vista and later", indicating that support for these operating systems is likely to appear in the near future.

Windows XP activation algorithm hacked after 21 years (05/26/2023)

Disconnected Microsoft servers are no longer a problem - now the OS can be activated offline.
The fact that retro enthusiasts were able to hack the Windows XP activation algorithm and change it so that it works without an Internet connection was reported by the authors of the Tinyapps blog. Among other things, major technology publications such as Ars Technica and Tom's Hardware drew attention to this.
The authors of the created xp_activate32.exe utility emphasized that this is not a "crack". The program allows you to activate Windows XP using a license key. The utility allows Windows XP users to activate the OS in an official way. Previously, this was difficult, since Microsoft turned off the operating system activation servers a few years ago.

New issue of Downgrade magazine #42 (04/08/2023)

I am proud to be able to share another good news with you. In the new issue of the magazine you can read my article "SoftMPU - solving sound problems in a non-standard way" (page 32). True, for this you need to know Russian. If you do not know Russian, you can read the article on this site by clicking on the link. I hope you will not judge me harshly and will not regret the time spent reading it. You can also download issue 42 of "Downgrade magazine" in Russian. It is very pleasant that such literature continues to live, that the topics covered in the magazine find their readers and continue to be interesting and relevant.

Today is a significant date! (02/26/2023)

On February 26, 1991, the world's first browser was demonstrated - a program using the HTTP protocol. It was developed as part of a project by the European Organization for Nuclear Research in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee and ran on the NeXTSTEP platform and was developed with Interface Builder. The browser interface was very simple, most of the information was displayed in text format, with a few images. In addition to the standard FTP protocol, he used the HTTP protocol, which was new for that time. This browser was simply called WorldWideWeb, but was later renamed Nexus. to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web. The software code was released into the public domain in 1993. With what I congratulate you!

Happy birthday, dear Thomas Kurtz! (02/22/2023)

On this day, 95 years ago (in 1928), Thomas Kurtz, one of the creators of the BASIC programming language, was born in Illinois! He received his Ph.D. in 1956 from Princeton University under the supervision of John Tukey, and in the same year he moved to work at the Mathematics Department of Dartmouth College. In the early to mid-1960s, with John Kemeny, he developed the BASIC programming language and DTTS (Dartmouth Time Sharing System) for the PDP-1, celebrated as the first successful large-scale implementation of the concept of time sharing. In 1991 he was awarded the medal "Pioneer of Computer Engineering", since 1994 he has been a full member of the Association for Computing Machinery. We sincerely congratulate the magnificent mathematician and scientist!

The ENIAC day! (02/14/2023)

This day is considered the birth of ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was the first general purpose electronic digital computer that could be reprogrammed for a wide range of tasks. Computer architecture began to be developed in 1943 by John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchley, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania (Moore Electrical School), commissioned by the US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory to calculate firing tables. The computer was completely ready only in the autumn of 1945. Since the war was already over by that time and there was no longer an urgent need for a quick calculation of firing tables, the US military decided to use ENIAC in calculations for the development of thermonuclear weapons.
Being a top-secret project of the US Army, the computer was not presented to the public and press until many months after the end of the war, on February 14, 1946.