retrocomputing

/ret'rohk@mpyooting/ , n. Refers to emulations of
way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or software, or implementations of
never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such implementations are elaborate
practical jokes and/or parodies, written mostly for hack value , of more
serious designs. Perhaps the most widely distributed retrocomputing utility
was the pnch (6) or bcd (6) program on V7 and other early Unix versions,
which would accept up to 80 characters of text argument and display the
corresponding pattern in punched card code. Other well-known retrocomputing
hacks have included the programming language INTERCAL , a JCL -emulating
shell for Unix, the card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various
elaborate PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to
keep an old, sourceless Zork binary running. A tasty selection of
retrocomputing programs are made available at the Retrocomputing Museum,
http://www.catb.org/retro/.

