Retro Computing Roundtable

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, Earl Evans, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Fortran, for better or for worse

The year 1954 brought us Fortran (not named after the year though) to help us with our math, and development of SAGE to scan the skies for threats...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Prebricked drives

Episode 253 relates to 1953. Core memory begins its long dominance of the RAM space, the IBM 701 is introduced. A year that was kind of between things, so as one might expect the discussion keeps sliding into a discussion of beverages...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: UNIVAC liked Ike

Episode 252 relates to 1952. The year when UNIVAC correctly called the election early and nobody believed it. The year the paper introducing the Huffman code compression algorithm was published. And the 50th anniversary of all the things that happened in 1902...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Charles Mangin, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Memories of Whirlwind I

It’s been 71 years since 1951. So, we talk about some things kind of loosely related to 1951, including computer music, the Whirlwind I, and memory technology...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Computing Machinery and Intelligence

It’s been 72 years since the year Turing published the paper that outlined the Turing test. So: Let’s talk about interactions we’ve had relating to artificial intelligence in some form or another...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, Michael Mulhern, and Blake Patterson

Topic: 2020 also

We enter the third year of 2020. Yet another New Year's, yet another opportunity to make the New Year's resolution joke...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: So long, 2021

At the tail end of 2021, we talk about our retrocomputing-based adventures during the year, with a little bit of a look ahead at what might come after...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, and Blake Patterson

Topic: Computing 24/7

In honor of episode 247, we talk about stuff vaguely related to "all the time." Mostly we wound up talking about whether we turned our computers off or not...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Jack Nutting, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: Data hoards and privacy

Retrocomputing collectors often collect retrocomputers, which often have disks or hard drives, which might contain private data. Particularly as computers get recent enough to have hard drives. Particularly particularly in the future when retrocomputers might contain SSD drives...

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, Michael Mulhern, Blake Patterson, and Carrington Vanston

Topic: End of line

To the extent that you have physical objects, intellectual properties, accounts that host archives, what kind of plans do you have for when you are (possibly unexpectedly) no longer around? Or, what kind of plans do you plan to have? What kind of considerations are there? Does anyone but you in your local real-life circle know what the...