Retrocomputing
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
Stephen Kitt
  • Member for 7 years, 5 months
  • Last seen this week
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536 Answers

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179 votes
Accepted

It's now safe to turn off your computer

146 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?

132 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?

123 votes
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What character is the MS-DOS cursor?

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

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

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?

88 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"?

84 votes

Could you reverse engineer silicon just by looking at it?

84 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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Intel CPU bug in the 90s

83 votes
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Who set the 640K limit?

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

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

78 votes
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Why did Microsoft start Windows NT at all?

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

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

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

71 votes
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How does the CD audio connector work?

70 votes

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

68 votes
Accepted

Why are the symbols on the number keys of PC & Mac keyboards different to ASCII keyboards?

68 votes

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

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