Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing
folklore/history.

I have already read Steven Levy's "Hackers" book, read through the
Jargon File, BOFH (if that counts), and other bits and pieces here and
there, always hungry to learn more as it always seems to be rife with
amusing details.

--wec

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On 26 Oct 2025 22:40:46 GMT, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Kidder's _Soul Of A New Machine_, perhaps?

In retrospect, how *not* to design a clever piece of hardware ...

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2025 19:22:35 -0300, cannonw wrote:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing folklore/history.

Here is a random selection from the urls.txt file in my ?vintage?
downloads directory. I haven?t checked that they all still work ...

----

Info on vintage computers including downloadable manuals etc <http://www.1000bit.it/>.

Old manuals for Apollo Domain, Be, Silicon Graphics, Convergent
Technology, screen captures etc <http://typewritten.org/>.

Apollo Archive, including MESS (68K Apollo emulator) sources <http://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/>, now archived at <https://archive.org/details/apollo-archive>.

Computer History Museum Software Preservation Group <http://www.softwarepreservation.org/>.

ICL 1900 Series Preservation, including old documents, emulation
software for Linux (including Raspberry ã) and Windows <http://www.icl1900.co.uk/preserve/index.html>.

Old Apple II stuff <ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/>.

NeXT file/document archive etc <http://www.nextcomputers.org/>.

Interesting MS-DOS programs (also work with FreeDOS): <http://www.opus.co.tt/dave/index.htm>

Links to docs and source code for Mesa, Smalltalk and other old Xerox
stuff: <http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/xerox_alto_file_system_archive.html>

Information on vintage Silicon Graphics machines, including
maintaining and using them <http://nekochan.net/>. Also <http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/vw/> (about SGI?s NT boxes), <http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/>, <http://sgistuff.net/>. There was an SGI
forum called nekochan.net, which disappeared abruptly <https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Nekochan.net>; preservation effort here <https://gainos.org/~elf/sgi/nekonomicon/>.

Homebrew Cray-1 implemented on a small Xilinx board: <https://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/>.

Mirrors of old FTP sites (e.g. ftp.cdrom.com): <https://www.mirrorservice.org/>.

Git repos of old Unix/Linux history, source, manpages, pre-Git
snapshots etc <https://github.com/dspinellis>.

Repository of abandonware for various platforms: <https://www.myabandonware.com/>.

History of PL/M and Gary Kildall?s promotion of it, with lots of links <https://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/dri_plm.html>.

Resources for the PICK OS and history: <https://dbpedia.org/page/Pick_operating_system>.

Information about Wang and its VS machines <https://tjunker.com/>.

Rob Pike responds to questions on Slashdot, from 2004 Oct 18 <https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pike-responds>. E.g. answer to question beginning ?Given the nature of current
operating systems and applications, do you think the idea of "one tool
doing one job well" has been abandoned?? was ?Those days are dead and
gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl.?

David Rosenthal?s blog on digital preservation
<https://blog.dshr.org/>. Interesting entries:
* History of window systems <https://blog.dshr.org/2021/03/history-of-window-systems.html>
* X Window System at 40 <https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/x-window-system-at-40.html>

Information about tne Canon Cat (the closest to a production
realization of Jef Raskin?s original concept for his ?Macintosh?
project) <http://www.canoncat.net/>, and its precursor, the SwyftCard
for the Apple II. Online emulator is also available, see article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/jef-raskins-cul-de-sac-and-the-quest-for-the-humane-computer/>.
Article also talks about his later (never completed) ?Humane Computer?
project.

The Dead Supercomputer Projects list -- past vendors of
high-performance computing
<https://www.paralogos.com/DeadSuper/Projects.html>.

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2025 19:22:35 -0300, cannonw wrote:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing folklore/history.

This <https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/> is
(depending on your tastes) possibly a bit of a gold mine.

The Lavington book is one that immediately jumped out at me, if only
because I still have my paper copy that I bought years ago. In it you
can read the story of the Lyons Teashops, and how they got into the
computer business (for a while) mainly because their chief
statistician wanted a better way of predicting stocking levels for
their highly perishable goods, and there was nothing already available
to do the job.

Bitsavers has other stuff of course; but it has more material on DEC
than on all other vendors put together. Even IBM comes a distant
second.

And here <https://www.youtube.com/@Dodoid/videos> is a guy who was
collecting SGI gear for a while. He has compiled a history of SGI, as
well as looking at some specific models.

Here <https://www.youtube.com/@jpkiwigeek/videos> are some rather
older videos, on SGI and other machines. Witness his epic, but
unfortunately failed, attempts to start up an absolutely massive
five-rack Onyx2 installation (5 compute nodes + 5 graphics nodes).

And a selection of very in-depth historical videos (e.g. the history
of the IBM PC, Sun Microsystems, the Unix wars) on the Asianometry
channel <https://www.youtube.com/c/Asianometry/videos>.

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On 2025-10-26, cannonw wrote:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing folklore/history.

I have already read Steven Levy's "Hackers" book, read through the
Jargon File, BOFH (if that counts), and other bits and pieces here and

(Re: BOFH, have you read the one from last Friday too?)

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/headlines.atom

there, always hungry to learn more as it always seems to be rife with
amusing details.

--wec

Would /Coders at Work/ qualify?

--
Nuno Silva

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Anything by Robert L. Glass (if you can find it). I'm still looking for
a copy of _Computing Catastrophes_.

On 10/26/25 15:22, cannonw wrote:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/ documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing folklore/history.

I have already read Steven Levy's "Hackers" book, read through the
Jargon File, BOFH (if that counts), and other bits and pieces here and there, always hungry to learn more as it always seems to be rife with amusing details.

--wec

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
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In article <10dm6vb$9prs$1@dont-email.me>,
cannonw <williamcannon1996@gmail.com> wrote:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for >books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing >folklore/history.

I have already read Steven Levy's "Hackers" book, read through the
Jargon File, BOFH (if that counts), and other bits and pieces here and >there, always hungry to learn more as it always seems to be rife with >amusing details.

"Computing in the Middle Ages" (Severo Ornstein) is interesting.

"A New History of Modern Computing" (Haigh and Ceruzzi) is
highly recommended by some folks that I hold in high regard.

"A Few Good Men From Univac" (David Lundstrom) is really
interesting.

"My Adventures with Drawves" (Russell McGee) has some really
neat stories from the mainframe perspective.

"DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" (Schein, DeLisi, and Kampas) is a
good history of DEC, and in particular, how the VAX 9000 killed
the company.

"The Ultimate Entrepreneur" (Glenn Rifkin) is a great exposition
on how not to run a company.

"Life Under the Sun" (David Yen) is a good exposition of the
history of Sun Microsystems.

"What the Dormouse Said" (John Markoff) is a fascinating history
of Silicon Valley and its ties to the 1960s counterculture.

"The Idea Factory" (Jon Gertner) discusses Bell Labs, which gave
rise to most of the innovations that led to the modern computing
world.

"A Quarter Century of Unix" (Peter Salus) talks about the early
to mid history of Unix, interviewing many of the primary
players.

"Where Wizards Stay Up Late" (Katie Hafner) might be the best
account of the history of the ARPANET and early Internet.

"Dealers of Lightning" (Michael Hiltzik) talks about Xerox PARC
and its many contributes to computing.

"VM and the VM Community" (Lee and Melinda Varian) talks starts
with some fascinating historical tidbits leading to the
development of CP/67 and eventually VM/CMS.

"Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing" (Randall Stross) discusses how
Steve Jobs couldn't make the Apple Magic work a second time (at
least as far as building and selling computers is concerned).

If I think of more, I'll post later.

- Dan C.


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cannonw <williamcannon1996@gmail.com> writes:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for >books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing >folklore/history.

_Atanasoff_, by Clark. R. Mollenhoff


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cannonw <williamcannon1996@gmail.com> writes:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for >books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing >folklore/history.

_The Adolescence of P-1_, by Thomas J. Ryan.

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cannonw <williamcannon1996@gmail.com> writes:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing folklore/history.

In addition to those people have already recommended, I'd recommend
Hamish Carmichael's two ICL Anthology books, which are a great
collection of folklore from the UK computing industry:

http://www.bitsandbytes.shedlandz.co.uk/hc_books.htm

Along similar lines, the Computer Conservation Society's journal
Resurrection has plenty of interesting UK articles:

https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/resurrection.htm

And the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has been publishing
since 1979, with articles covering the history of computing from all
over the world:

https://dl.acm.org/journal/anhc

--
Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org> <http://offog.org/>

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On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:53:12 +0000, Adam Sampson wrote:

Hi, Adam!

In addition to those people have already recommended, I'd recommend
Hamish Carmichael's two ICL Anthology books, which are a great
collection of folklore from the UK computing industry:

http://www.bitsandbytes.shedlandz.co.uk/hc_books.htm

These are very good; I have both in hardcopy. Material was being collected
for a third (after Hamish's death) and I contributed a couple of things.

Along similar lines, the Computer Conservation Society's journal
Resurrection has plenty of interesting UK articles:

https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/resurrection.htm

Again excellent. I have many of these in hardcopy too.

It's not much, but a few people might be interested in someanecdotes of
mine:

https://www.bobeager.uk/anecdotes.html

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

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It appears that cannonw <williamcannon1996@gmail.com> said:

Just wondering if anybody here has any good recommendations for >books/documentaries/etc on any subject relevant to computing >folklore/history.

There's always Ted Nelson's Computer Lib. Internet Archive has a scan of
the later 1974 edition:

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4972656W/Computer_Lib_Dream_Machines?edition=key:/books/OL2390405M

The kid facing the terminal in the picture at the bottom of page 116 is me.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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