How It Works
How the Computer Works: selected scans of the 1979 book.
NB: don’t trust everything you read.
Gopher Brains
In the library of nearly-dead-protocols, we come across the dimly remembered tome of Gopher. Developed at the University of Minneasota in the early 1990s, “Gopher was at its height of popularity during a time when there were still many equally competing computer architectures and operating systems. As such, there are several Gopher Clients available for Acorn RISC OS, AmigaOS, Atari MiNT, CMS, DOS, MacOS 7x, MVS, NeXT, OS/2 Warp, most UNIX-like operating systems, VMS, Windows 3x, and Windows 9x. GopherVR was a client designed for 3D visualization, and there is even a Gopher Client MOO object. [emphasis added]”
Sadly, I don’t see back-ports for the Timex-Sinclair or Commodore Pet in there. However, Hyperlink 2.5e is a gopher-supporting C64 web-browser. But the Atari 2600 implementation misses a few critical features.
A Pictorial History of PC Hardware
The boffins down at Royal Pingdom have done it again: a History of PC Hardware in Pictures.
I’m particularly fond of the bowling-ball trackball, and the first laptop - a GRiD Compass, shown on the Space Shuttle (?).