retrocomputing

ionpower-node: Node-compatible JS runtime for PowerPC OS X Tiger with JIT https://lobste.rs/s/imxtfo #mac #retrocomputing #vibecoding
https://github.com/cellularmitosis/ionpower-node

I'm looking to connect with the #retrocomputing community here in the fediverse because I'm restoring an #appleii and I really want to avoid things like youtube, reddit, etc.

I know this makes it hard, but frankly, those places suck and if I have to choose between going there and doing it all the hard way, fine.

But I really think there's a third way here in the fediverse, and I'd love to prove it 😁

If you're hacking on Apple II machines, I want to hang out.

Bring back amber screens, I say!
#retrocomputing #herculesgraphics #msdos

Thanks to a very kind soul over on the #68kMLA forums who was willing to mail a working #Macintosh LC sound chip across the proverbial pond to me, I'm very happy that the "sold as junk/broken" Mac LC is now fully operational!

To celebrate this, I decided to do a fresh installation of System 7.1 on it. I had up until now been using a modified 7.5.3 based off of the pre-installed images available on the #BlueSCSI website, the same one I had been using for testing and whatnot on my restored Color Classic, but I figured going slightly back in time would help these old machines perform a bit better.

Sadly I don't have an original boxed version of 7.1, those seem exceedingly difficult to come by, so I made some copies and installed it that way.

The difference in boot-up time is already incredible, though I do miss the expandable folders in the Apple menu. Perhaps there's an extension for that under 7.1, not sure.

Either way; everything seems to be running nicely, including the Presto 040 clone card, which really makes a noticeable difference in performance.

Now onto its companion CRT monitor. Recapping it wasn't enough, it seems like there's some more components inside that have gotten damaged by a leaky capacitor, so that journey continues. For now, though, I can at least use a VGA monitor thanks to one of those adapter thingamabobs.

Right after I had replaced the sound chip and had the Mac happily beeping and booping, I actually sat down and played SimAnt for the first time ever (!), and actually was able to complete a whole campaign. I had a blast!

#RetroComputing #ClassicMac #VintageMacintosh #Macintosh #System7 #68k #Apple

this is not well known, so i thought i'd share this -
way back in 2020, ars released a short interview with rand miller about myst and the challenges of the cd-rom format. it's mildly interesting, but obviously cut from a much larger tapestry.

they eventually released the full, 2h interview with rand, but very few people saw it. in the extended version, he talks about the very early days of working with HyperCard, from the Manhole to Cosmic Osmo to Spelunx. he goes into obscene amounts of detail with the constraints of working with HC and 80s/90s macs, writing custom XCMD and XFCNs, building in 3d with StrataVision, and using Debabelizer to build palettes.

he does an amazing job of explaining what the constraints were for computing in that era. for anyone curious about what it was like making games in the 80s/90s, i can think of few other interviews that express the realities and joys of working in confined space so well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qxg0ykOcgM

#retrocomputing #macintosh #vintageApple #hypercard #myst #riven

Exploring the Japanese XD FirstClass Network BBS https://lobste.rs/s/uroflh #historical #retrocomputing
https://cdrom.ca/games/2026/05/30/xd.html

Ctrl Alt Rees makes fun cheerful videos about retro computing and retro gaming. You can follow the account at:

➡️ @rees

They've already made almost 400 videos. If these haven't federated to your server yet, you can browse them all at https://makertube.net/a/rees/videos

#FeaturedPeerTube #RetroComputing #RetroGaming #ComputingHistory #PeerTube

Wizard Replay lets you play Wizardry 1-3 and several unauthorized third-party scenarios on your Apple ][, all from the comfort of your ProDOS hard drive. Version 2.3 fixes a crash with certain mass storage devices.

https://archive.org/details/WizardReplay

Wizard Replay ships with Snafaru's "Proving Grounds 3.2" game engine, reverse engineered from original Wizardry binaries with 100+ bug fixes and quality-of-life upgrades. https://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/proving-grounds-v3/

Thanks to @a2_qkumba for everything.

#AppleII #retrocomputing

Putting Graal Online Back Online

All of the talk over the last couple weeks about people starting up vintage World of Warcraft and Minecraft servers on #CGHMN made me start thinking about an experience from my youth: an old MMO called Graal Online. It started in 1998, originally as Zelda Online with assets ripped from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but quickly evolved beyond that. I played actively through most of 2000 into 2001 before calling it quits around the time the NewMain stuff got started. Technically it's still around, but now it's a freemium mobile game, a mockery of what it once was.

I remembered seeing the leaked source code to the v1.3.1 server back in the day and I wondered if it was still out there. That set me off on a trip down a deep and twisted rabbit hole.

First Results

I started by heading to archive.org and searching for software tagged graal. That turned up a partial client collection taken from the remnants of an old fansite called Spider's Page of Stuff, as well as a collection of playerworld backups that included a few historic dumps of the original main world.

The v1.3.1 server source I was looking for wasn't in there, but I did see an "unlimited server" for v1.1. This was a Win32 server with a GUI, rather than Linux as the other one was. Some reading revealed that this server was included with the v1.1.9 release of "Graal Gold." The v1.1.9 client wasn't part of the set, but the v1.1 client was, and that seemed to be compatible. I fired up the server under WINE, connected to it with the v1.1 client, and tested things out.

I ran into two issues early on, both related to one another. First, the v1.1 client was hard-coded to connect to a server at www.graalonline.com, so a DNS override was needed in order to connect to my test server. Second, I was getting failures whenever I tried to leave the online start map. I suspected that it might be trying to pull map data from an HTTP server, so I started one up and watched the logs. Sure enough, I was seeing 404'd requests for files under /levels. A quick redirect to the levels directory in the game data was all it took to fix that; the game worked!

With that milestone cleared, I set up a Windows NT 4.0 VM on my vintage VMware GSX box and installed the Graal server on it, along with a web server for level data. I asked to have the CGHMN DNS server poisoned to direct www.graalonline.com to my VM. With that, CGHMN had its first Graal server!

Digging Deeper

I decided to take a closer look at the Wayback Machine archive of Spider's Page and see if there was anything else of potential use there. Sure enough, I pretty much immediately found the old GServer 1.3.1 source package I had been looking for earlier! I grabbed it and started combing through the code. Excitement turned to disappointment though when I realized that it was missing some needed data files. I would need a weapons.txt with info about available inventory items, and a directory of account data. I figured I could put together some account files by tracing through the parser functions, but I was at a loss for what to do with the weapon data. I set it aside.

I did more reading and found a mention that all Graal clients from v1.1.9 to v1.3 beta included a Win32-based server, like the one I had just set up. I grabbed the v1.3 one and gave the server a try. Much to my surprise, this one didn't seem to require a weapons.txt file, and it had a built-in graphical account manager! On shutdown, it saved the account data to a file called accounts.txt, which the v1.3.1 server source seemed to have an ability to import and convert to its own broken-out directory format. That seemed like it would make getting the v1.3.1 server going a bit easier, but I still didn't have any kind of lead on the weapons.txt file.

Continuing to dig, I came across a mention of NekoRoy's Graal Site, which was well-covered by the Wayback Machine and held a massive treasure trove of old Graal files, including a bunch of clients and servers that weren't on Spider's Page. That included the Graal Gold v1.1.9 client! I grabbed it and gave it a test. First revelation: unlike the v1.1 client, this one wasn't hard-coded to www.graalonline.com, so I could simply enter another domain or IP and connect. It did still seem to want to get levels from there though, so the DNS redirect was still needed to make it fully functional.

Fork Bomb

Among other things, the file collection on NekoRoy's site included several community-produced forks of the v1.3.9 server, which had apparently been leaked much like the v1.3.1 server. These mostly dated to 2002-2003, though following the breadcrumbs led me to the GServer-v2 GitHub project. It seems to have been active up until sometime in early 2025. That seemed focused on NewWorld-era stuff though, with support for pre-2001 clients and maps not being a priority.

One thing did catch my eye though: one of these packages, the one for Matriark's GServer 1.3.9 fork, included a weapons.txt file! That, combined with account data from the 1.3 beta server, would probably allow me to get the v1.3.1 server going. At this point, though, I no longer considered that a priority. Nice to have the option open at least.

Stepping into the New Millennium

With the v1.1.9 server going nicely with an early-mid 1999 world, I was still thinking of getting something from the 1.3 era going. I had a dump from early 2000, just before I originally started playing, and it'd be a big nostalgia hit to bring it back to life. I decided the easiest, lowest-friction approach would be to try out the v1.3 beta server and client. Despite being a beta, both seemed perfectly stable.

I transferred everything over to my NT4 VM and fired up the server. Using the GUI account manager I created a guest account, plus an admin account for myself. Because the server seems to only load account data at launch (unlike the Linux v1.3.1 server which used a broken-out format), there would likely be no way to add or edit accounts from an outside source (like a PHP or CGI script) aside from trying to implement the GServer Remote Control protocol. That'd probably be doable, but given the low level of expected demand I decided that just doing things manually was good enough. Aside from that, I suspect that this server was one of the LAN servers with an eight-player cap. I doubt there'd ever even be that many players active on CGHMN at one time, but if demand ever start growing I'll probably have to try something different.

Limitations like that aside, everything seemed to be going well. I did run into one oddity while testing: if you're logged in with the guest account, most of the treasure chests with equipment upgrades don't appear. They only show up if you're using a 'real' account. That one took me awhile to figure out.

Seek the Graal

If you're on CGHMN, give Graal a try sometime!
=> http://graal.n8fq.retro

If you're not on CGHMN, and retro stuff like this interests you, you should be!
=> https://cghmn.org

#RetroComputing #RetroGaming #blog

The BeBox: BeOS Hardware, Photos, and the Apple Deal That Wasn't https://lobste.rs/s/wqrcez #retrocomputing
https://www.jdhodges.com/blog/bebox-beautifully-overbuilt-computer/

Back on #MavericksForever. 😅 I just missed it. Getting #MacJournal and #Scrivener for free is a huge advantage of #retroComputing. 😊

Happy International Day for Biological Diversity! 🌱

A diverse ecosystem is a strong ecosystem. In the tech world, NetBSD brings vital diversity by proving that clean, portable, and secure code can run on virtually any architecture. This adaptability keeps computing open and accessible to everyone.

Let's keep the digital ecosystem diverse. Consider supporting the NetBSD Foundation today by contributing code, writing documentation, or making a donation! 💻🚩
#NetBSD #BiodiversityDay #OpenSource #TechDiversity #FOSS #RetroComputing #Sustainability #Linux #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD

AmigaOS 2: the greatest upgrade https://lobste.rs/s/ontg5a #retrocomputing
https://www.datagubbe.se/os20up/

More Fun Making It (aka More Fun Fixing it) does relaxed videos about retro computing and electronics, usually fixing old 8-bit computers that have stopped working. You can follow the account at:

➡️ @morefunmakingit

They've already published almost 300 videos. If these haven't federated to your server yet, you can browse them all at https://makertube.net/a/morefunmakingit/videos

#FeaturedPeerTube #RetroComputing #Electronics #ComputingHistory #Repairs #Commodore64 #ZXSpectrum #PeerTube

Dusklight • Restoring light to a classic adventure via @kngl https://lobste.rs/s/8wxnos #games #retrocomputing #reversing
https://twilitrealm.dev/

GentleOS: A Hobby Operating System for Vintage PCs

Relive the nostalgia or discover for the first time the joy of a vintage computing using GentleOS for 16-bit and 32-bit Personal Computers (PCs).

https://www.adamsdesk.com/posts/gentleos-vintage-pc-operating-system/

#blog #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #OpenSource #FOSS #tech

GNOME 2.20 but its Web Components https://lobste.rs/s/n2mhi4 #retrocomputing #web
https://bennypowers.dev/posts/GNOME-2-web/

Web Browsers on PDAs by @vale https://lobste.rs/s/kocnfd #browsers #retrocomputing #web
https://vale.rocks/posts/pda-browsers

Outstanding work! Hundreds of OSes across thousands of versions made accessible in a single application: https://virtualosmuseum.org/

I did something similar with my #PortaDOOM project, making hundreds of #DOOM WADs accessible across dozens of engines and versions. Making stuff accessible is hard, hard work, I can tell you and not enough work is being done in this area.

#retrocomputing #computerhistory

Decoding Magic School Lunar's Save Game Format via @noblenote https://lobste.rs/s/ygsics #games #retrocomputing
http://mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2026/08/01/decoding-magic-school-lunars-save-game-format

Can anyone recommend retro coding groups where AI / vibe coding is explicitly banned? The Speccy scene on arsebook is thoroughly compromised now :(

#retro #retrocomputing #retrogaming #coding

Which era of computing do you miss most?

If you were not alive for some of these, then pick the one that appeals most to you.

#tech #RetroComputing #analog #poll

Finally got this @paulrickards piece hung on the wall this evening.

#retrocomputing

Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time https://lobste.rs/s/3dusq0 #lisp #retrocomputing
https://www.patrickdomanico.com/bpm/2026/06/16/inventing-the-future-one-lisp-machine-at-a-time/

Visual Basic on the PC w/Windows 3.1 https://lobste.rs/s/xpdod3 #retrocomputing #windows
https://stonetools.ghost.io/visualbasic-win31/