retro computers

A new project called Thoreau BASIC presents itself as an answer to the question of what programming would look like if BASIC had stayed in mainstream use. Launched on Hacker News, it invites developers to revisit the once-ubiquitous teaching language. The launch drew strong engagement, with commenters debating BASIC's legacy and whether simplicity-first languages deserve a comeback.

A nostalgic website called 56k.rip lets visitors relive what using the internet felt like in 1996, recreating the dial-up era. The project drew attention on Hacker News, where users have been discussing the recreation and sharing memories of slow connections, modem sounds and the early web.

A new blog post on pipetogrep.org details an effort to resurrect iChat, Apple's discontinued audio and video conferencing application. The write-up, shared on Hacker News, describes bringing the classic Mac messaging and video chat software back to life. Discussion so far is limited, with only a small number of points and one comment, but it taps into ongoing nostalgia for older Apple software and simpler chat tools.

A developer writing about retro PC graphics says affine texture mapping alone was not enough to reach acceptable framerates on an Intel 386. The original affine renderer had to be written in very tight x86 assembly because it ran thousands of times per second just to render a single frame, highlighting how limited early 90s hardware was for 3D games.