Retrocomputing
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt
  • Member for 7 years, 7 months
  • Last seen this week
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539 Answers

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180 votes
Accepted

It's now safe to turn off your computer

148 votes
Accepted

Why does part of the Windows 98 Setup program look older than the rest?

138 votes
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Why did MS-DOS applications built using Turbo Pascal fail to start with a division by zero error on faster systems?

133 votes

Why did some old MS-DOS games lack the ability to exit them?

126 votes
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Why is Ctrl-V the Paste shortcut?

124 votes
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What character is the MS-DOS cursor?

117 votes
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How was copying prevented when the first CD-ROM games were introduced?

116 votes
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Why is Windows using CR+LF and Unix just LF when Unix is the older system?

105 votes
Accepted

On DOS computers, what would the PARK command do?

99 votes
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How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporaneous x86?

95 votes

What key factor led to the sudden commercial success of MS Windows with v3.0?

89 votes
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Exactly what color was the text on monochrome terminals with green-on-black and amber-on-black screens?

86 votes
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What's the story behind the name "X11"?

85 votes

Could you reverse engineer silicon just by looking at it?

85 votes
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Were any of the books mentioned in this scene from the movie Hackers real?

84 votes
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Is there any code in Firefox (as of 2020) that comes from Netscape Navigator?

84 votes
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Intel CPU bug in the 90s

83 votes
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Who set the 640K limit?

82 votes
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How exactly did Windows become the OS of the home PC?

82 votes
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Who is credited for the creation of Assembly Language?

80 votes

Why do keyboards have an asterisk key?

79 votes
Accepted

Were later MS-DOS versions still implemented in x86 assembly?

78 votes
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Why did Microsoft start Windows NT at all?

77 votes
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When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? Under what background? By whom?

77 votes
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Why did base64 win against uuencode?

73 votes
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Why did C have the return type before function names?

72 votes
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How does the CD audio connector work?

72 votes
Accepted

How do DOS games like DOOM benefit from a PCI graphics card?

70 votes

Dealing with oversized files decades ago? Data transfer in the age of floppy disks

69 votes

Which "very esoteric processor instructions" are used by OS/2?

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