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