Old Computers

The very first Commodore 1541 demo. Yes that's right, a demo on a floppy drive, no C= computer in use.

 
The A500 Mini ships in Europe this month and in the US&A next month.

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THEA500 Mini

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Redditor discovers legendary 1956 computer in grandparents’ basement​

The 1956 LGP-30 computer, subject of hacker lore, is one of only 45 made in Europe.​

The LGP-30 computer, from 1956, that c-wizz found in the basement.
 
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80 years later, GCHQ releases new images of Nazi code-breaking computer​

GCHQ unveils new docs on Colossus​

On Thursday, UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) announced the release of previously unseen images and documents related to Colossus, one of the first digital computers. The release marks the 80th anniversary of the code-breaking machines that significantly aided the Allied forces during World War II. While some in the public knew of the computers earlier, the UK did not formally acknowledge the project's existence until the 2000s.

Colossus was not one computer but a series of computers developed by British scientists between 1943 and 1945. These 2-meter-tall electronic beasts played an instrumental role in breaking the Lorenz cipher, a code used for communications between high-ranking German officials in occupied Europe. The computers were said to have allowed allies to "read Hitler's mind," according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

A photo of a surviving Colossus computer in 1963.A photo of a surviving Colossus computer in 1963.A diagram of some parts of the Colossus computer system.
The technology behind Colossus was highly innovative for its time. Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind its construction, used over 2,500 vacuum tubes to create logic gates, a precursor to the semiconductor-based electronic circuits found in modern computers. While 1945's ENIAC was long considered the clear front-runner in digital computing, the revelation of Colossus' earlier existence repositioned it in computing history. (However, it's important to note that ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, and Colossus was not.)
 
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ICYMI from Tom's Hardware:

Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate​


In conclusion, the researcher(s) asserts that the ‘Qommodore 64’ is “faster than the quantum device datapoint-for-datapoint… it is much more energy efficient… and it is decently accurate on this problem.” On the topic of how applicable this research is to other quantum problems, it is snarkily suggested that “it probably won’t work on almost any other problem (but then again, neither do quantum computers right now).” Overall, it is difficult to know whether the results are entirely genuine, though a lot of detail is provided and the linked research references in the paper seem genuine.
 
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