Retrocomputing Beta

Good Answer

 Good Answer
Answer score of 25 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.

earned this badge 102 times.
Why were computer customers called “Users”?
Awarded Jul 20 at 9:21
Why is the keyboard and cellphone / telephone numbers in a different order?
Awarded Jul 14 at 9:46
Why is the clock frequency of the PS/2 keyboard protocol so high?
Awarded Jul 13 at 18:47
Why did SCSI require so many pins?
Awarded Jul 11 at 6:47
Could you reverse engineer silicon just by looking at it?
Awarded Jul 9 at 17:08
In the Intel 8080, where does the “Stack” start?
Awarded Jun 28 at 20:02
Did many programs really store years as two characters (Y2K bug)?
Awarded Jun 21 at 5:17
Why did many 9-pin printers use only 8 pins for graphics?
Awarded Jun 12 at 20:15
What were the HW specifications for the actual PC speakers, before they were replaced by buzzers?
Awarded Jun 8 at 17:42
History of non-American software/hardware/CS theory development, 1940s-1980s?
Awarded May 26 at 14:34
Why does the 80486 take longer to execute simple instructions than complex ones?
Awarded May 22 at 11:57
Why does the Cray 2 use 400 Hz power, and why generate that from motors?
Awarded May 17 at 0:49
Why did the original Apple //e have two sets of inverse video characters?
Awarded May 14 at 12:33
Why did the original design of COM on Windows rely on the registry?
Awarded May 7 at 14:08
Why did 8-bit computers choose BASIC dialects as “de facto” command-line interface, instead of contemporary Shell/Lisp dialects?
Awarded Apr 13 at 23:25
Why were most PC's and electronics beige back in the day?
Awarded Apr 7 at 23:40
How did old games from 8-bit era game consoles store music?
Awarded Apr 7 at 1:35
Why did early game consoles need the TV to be tuned to channel 3 or 4?
Awarded Apr 6 at 12:20
Why was the return key symbol ⏎ drawn differently from the motion of a CR-LF?
Awarded Mar 21 at 16:05
How did an IBM 5150 with 16KB RAM work?
Awarded Mar 13 at 1:05
Why did the MS-DOS API choose software interrupts for its interface?
Awarded Feb 26 at 14:10
What was the first computer malware that could infect Mac systems?
Awarded Feb 24 at 13:50
Is DOS being shipped with or as an installed OS?
Awarded Feb 16 at 16:35
Was it possible to listen to music and work on old PCs? When was it possible to for the first time?
Awarded Feb 15 at 22:45
How did humans interact with early computers without screens or sensors?
Awarded Feb 3 at 9:20
Which 8-bit computers were used in German schools in the 1980s?
Awarded Feb 2 at 14:45
What happened to the SEV instruction on the 6502?
Awarded Jan 21 at 7:20
8080 vs. 8086 - Are 16 Bit CPUs bloaty by nature?
Awarded Jan 8 at 11:40
Why did the ZX80 CPU run at only 3.25 MHz?
Awarded Dec 31 '19 at 0:10
First computer with LCD screen
Awarded Dec 26 '19 at 4:05
Were Mac systems faster than Windows in processing performance?
Awarded Dec 24 '19 at 6:05
Why are branches relative in many 8-bit CPUs?
Awarded Dec 11 '19 at 21:35
What does Windows' “Tuning up Application Start” do?
Awarded Dec 9 '19 at 8:55
What type of interpreter were most 8-bit BASIC implementations?
Awarded Nov 20 '19 at 3:40
What is a dropfile?
Awarded Nov 11 '19 at 16:00
Z80 CPU address lines not stable
Awarded Oct 25 '19 at 21:45
Why did 80x25 become the text monitor standard?
Awarded Oct 24 '19 at 13:45
Bit one of the Intel 8080's Flags register
Awarded Sep 14 '19 at 17:25
When did computers stop checking memory on boot?
Awarded Sep 9 '19 at 7:20
Why do old games use flashing as means of showing damage?
Awarded Sep 2 '19 at 21:20
Is it true that control+alt+delete only became a thing because IBM would not build Bill Gates a computer with a task manager button?
Awarded Aug 9 '19 at 23:05
What was the rationale behind 36 bit computer architectures?
Awarded Jul 24 '19 at 15:05
Why did modems have speakers?
Awarded Jul 23 '19 at 18:55
Locked-up DOS computer beeped on keypress. What mechanism caused that?
Awarded Jul 19 '19 at 11:40
What made Windows ME so crash-prone?
Awarded Jul 15 '19 at 3:20
Why did Super-VGA offer the 5:4 1280*1024 resolution?
Awarded Jul 9 '19 at 9:10
How did the IEC decide to create kibibytes?
Awarded Jul 4 '19 at 14:45
Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
Awarded Jul 2 '19 at 3:35
Why do the i8080 I/O instructions take a byte-sized operand to determine the port?
Awarded Jun 24 '19 at 11:20
Why does the 6502 have the BIT instruction?
Awarded May 27 '19 at 20:20
What does the “x” in “x86” represent?
Awarded Apr 16 '19 at 15:00
Where does the Z80 processor start executing from?
Awarded Mar 31 '19 at 20:25
Why did the Cray-1 have 8 parity bits per word?
Awarded Mar 10 '19 at 18:35
Why did some CPUs use two Read/Write lines, and others just one?
Awarded Feb 23 '19 at 2:20
Why didn't the 8086 use linear addressing?
Awarded Feb 13 '19 at 9:10
Which was the first programming language that had data types?
Awarded Feb 7 '19 at 14:55
Will PC-DOS run faster on 4 or 8 core modern machines?
Awarded Feb 5 '19 at 23:25
How big is a mainframe?
Awarded Jan 28 '19 at 16:50
Why not constant linear velocity floppies?
Awarded Jan 24 '19 at 22:05
Have programming languages driven hardware development?
Awarded Jan 22 '19 at 20:00
1
2

Others with this badge