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Computer Ads From The Past
computeradsfromthepast.substack.com · Group blog · on HN since 2022
Computer Ads From The Past is a Substack that shares vintage computer advertisements and old magazine interviews from the 1980s and 1990s.
What HN saysHN links it for retro ads such as Connectix RAM Doubler and Coherent, and commenters respond with their own memories of those machines.
23HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
106stories submitted
985story points
3 months agolast shared
2022people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Connectix RAM Doubler (2022)4 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 2Connectix QuickCam: The First Webcam2 people · 72 points · first shared 2022 · 36 comments on HN
- 3Interactive Unix – So Powerful It Can't Be a PC2 people · 51 points · first shared 2022 · 12 comments on HN
- 4Chris Curry interviewed by Your Computer magazine (1981)2 people · 28 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 5Interview with Steve Jobs from MicroTime (1992)2 people · 6 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6Microsoft's Xenix – Microsoft tries their hand at Unix2 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · 3 comments on HN
- 7Alan Sugar of Amstrad Speaks to Practical Computing (1985)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 8MicroTimes' Interview with Doug and Larry Michels from Santa Cruz Operation (1987)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 9NeXTWorld Interviews Bud Tribble (1994)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10Interview with Programming Visionaries Donald Knuth and Niklaus Wirth from 19852 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 11Mark williams coherent operating2 people · first shared 2022
- 12Byte Interviews the Apple Lisa Dev Team (1983)1 people · 155 points · first shared 2024 · 44 comments on HN
- 13Dr. Dobb's Journal interviews Jef Raskin (1986)1 people · 91 points · first shared 2025 · 79 comments on HN
- 14Ampere WS-1 Japanese APL Clamtop1 people · 71 points · first shared 2024 · 6 comments on HN
- 15Phar Lap FrontRunner – The Winning DOS Desktop for Windows1 people · 71 points · first shared 2022 · 21 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Projectiboga · 2026-04-14
I had one, I believe they never delivered on the color compatibility. Mine came with an easy on the eyes amber crt.
Here it is the Ace 1000 was greyscale only but was 80 column.
Wohlscheid - Computer Ads from the Past
Unfortunately, the Franklin didn't copy the Apple's ability to display color graphics. It was limited to “shades of grey and black and white”.
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/franklins-ace-1000
mrcwinn · 2026-02-17
Relief for you is available: https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/connectix-ram-doubler
lysace · 2025-07-09
PFS:First Publisher was my fav for a while in the 80s on a clone 8086 PC with CGA (running in mono 640x200). Very impressive performance for the time.
It supported loading MacPaint bitmaps (.mac on the PC) and with the “cheap” PC compatibles it made for a poor man’s Mac-workalike DTP tool.
Here’s an 1988 article on the T/Maker company that built it, founded by Heidi Roizen and her brother Peter Roizen:
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/tmaker-tiny-software-com…
icedchai · 2024-04-17
Coherent was my first PC Unix-clone, before moving to Linux. It was incredible for the time. The documentation was bar none... I still remember the 500+ page book with the shell on it. (Coherent ad here: https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/mark-williams-coherent-o… ... not my blog.)
simonblack · 2022-11-14
Strangely enough, I did learn Unix by reading the man pages.
Way back around 1990, I came across a low-cost Version 7 clone of Unix called 'Coherent'. Along with several floppies containing the software came a large 400-500 page book that was mostly a reprint of the Coherent man-pages.
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/mark-williams-coherent-o…
Coming from MSDOS, I had to learn Unix from the ground up.* That 'manual' was a godsend in telling me what CLI commands existed and what they did.
* I especially discovered very rapidly why you should run your computer as a 'normal user' rather than as 'root' by running the simple command 'rm -fr .*' while in the /tmp directory while doing some 'tidying up'