[HN Gopher] How the RESISTORS put computing into 1960s counter-c...
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How the RESISTORS put computing into 1960s counter-culture
Author : rbanffy
Score : 13 points
Date : 2025-12-17 19:19 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| anthk wrote:
| Trac64 implementation:
|
| https://git.luxferre.top/nntrac/
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Web site is still up, resistors.org . It looks like John and
| Margy Levine (first generation Resistors) are running it now. I
| think Dave Fox (2nd generation I guess) took care of it before.
| The linked article looks pretty good. There were a bunch of paper
| archives kept around that are probably still interesting. I don't
| know who has them now or if they still exist.
|
| I didn't know about Trac64 or that Trac even really had the
| concept of bits. It was all string operations, including string
| arithmetic in arbitrary precision, I thought. But I never used it
| much. It could be seen as a weird take on both Forth and Lisp.
|
| #(ps,#(rs))
| kmoser wrote:
| > They borrowed an acoustic coupler--a forerunner of the computer
| modem--and connected it to a nearby pay phone
|
| The acoustic coupler is mounted on a modem, and is just the
| cradle where you rest a handset. The device is not a forerunner
| of a modem, it _is_ a modem.
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