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The Digital Antiquarian
filfre.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2011
Jimmy Maher writes long histories of computing and video games, covering the IBM PC, Windows, SimCity and text adventures.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it as a top blog for game history, and note it is a frequently upvoted domain.
280HN people shared it
174linked it in comments
578stories submitted
19Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Digital Antiquarian26 people · 5 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Sitemap12 people · first shared 2015
- 3Doing Windows, Part 1: MS-DOS and Its Discontents11 people · 137 points · first shared 2018 · 117 comments on HN
- 4SimCity: Will Wright's City in a Box8 people · 235 points · first shared 2016 · 31 comments on HN
- 5The IBM PC, Part 1 (2012)7 people · 116 points · first shared 2017 · 43 comments on HN
- 6Tales of the Mirror World, Part 1: Calculators and Cybernetics7 people · 27 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 7The Hobbit by Melbourne House7 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · 3 comments on HN
- 8Controlling the Spice, Part 1: Dune on Page and Screen6 people · 82 points · first shared 2018 · 44 comments on HN
- 9Doing Windows, Part 6: Look and Feel6 people · 20 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Tie Fighter: The Second Coming of Star Wars6 people · 19 points · first shared 2021 · 3 comments on HN
- 11ZIL and the Z-Machine6 people · 11 points · first shared 2014 · 2 comments on HN
- 12The Digital Antiquarian – Elite, or the Universe on 32 K per Day (2013)6 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 13The 640 K Barrier5 people · 244 points · first shared 2017 · 143 comments on HN
- 14Choose Your Own Adventure5 people · 177 points · first shared 2025 · 87 comments on HN
- 15Ken and Roberta (2011)5 people · 105 points · first shared 2014 · 48 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
torh · 2026-08-20
I can recommend "The Digital Antiquarian" for games (https://www.filfre.net/) and "Abort Retry Fail" for hardware companies (https://www.abortretry.fail/)
crtasm · 2025-02-04
If they're somehow not already in touch I'm sure the authors of https://if50.textories.com/ and https://www.filfre.net/ would give some great input.
warrenm · 2023-05-05
Here are a couple I follow over on datente.com, or that I check on a periodic basis:
- https://www.filfre.net <- the Digital Antiquarian
- https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com <- Restricted Data
- https://www.c82.net <- C82, the works of Nicholas Rougeux
- https://history.stackexchange.com/questions <- History.SE ... as with any SE site, there are pros and cons - but a lot more "pros" than "cons", imo
stevekemp · 2022-07-27
Honestly random discovery, sometimes sites that appear here, sometimes things that I come across on other sites.
I remember a while back I searched google for "int03", "cp/m retro bdos" and found a bunch of old-school low-level blogs, to which I subscribed.
But other sites seem to be very well-known and get presented on a few different sites. For example this one is an absolute gem, even though I'm not a gamer:
https://www.filfre.net/
danso · 2021-05-27
Great thread, found lots of people to add to my feedly.
Surprised to see no one has yet mentioned https://filfre.net — The Digital Antiquarian — a frequently upvoted domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=filfre.net
autarch · 2020-10-31
This is a great article, except for the parts where it intimates that Sierra games were good. While their games _were_ beautiful technological marvels, the design of most of the games (especially Roberta's) was just so incredibly bad. The games are some of the worst I've ever played in terms of actual gameplay.
Jimmy Maher at The Digital Antiquarian (https://www.filfre.net/) has written a fair bit about their games and the design issues with them, as well as their place in gaming history.
_bxg1 · 2020-05-25
This is a great one: https://www.filfre.net
He did an incredibly thorough nine-part series on the history of Windows from DOS through 3.1 and the antitrust cases. It was fascinating. There's tons of other stuff here too.
mannycalavera · 2020-01-01
https://www.filfre.net/ for an amazing trip trough the history of gaming!
jweather · 2018-08-17
The Digital Antiquarian: https://www.filfre.net/ Starts out focused on text-based games, but branches out to a history of computing in general. My favorite thing is that Kindle-formatted archives are available.
microtherion · 2015-12-07
On similar topics, but with even more detail, there is "The Digital Antiquarian" (Ostensibly mostly about the history of adventure games, but with some amazing articles about the home computer revolution thrown in): http://www.filfre.net
jostylr · 2015-09-15
If you find this interesting, I recommend the digital antiquarian: http://www.filfre.net/
I look forward to his post each week. They are detailed, conversational, historical, and insightful. His series on Trinity was simply fantastic, a beautiful blend of game and actual history.
He covers more than just infocom games of the era, but one can tell he has a great deal of fondness for their games. He has recently begun detailing the end of infocom.
dyates · 2015-07-07
I highly recommend Jimmy Maher's Digital Antiquarian blog at http://www.filfre.net/
The focus is mainly on computer games from the late 70s (and currently up to the late 80s), but that includes general posts about personal computers like the Apple ][, TRS-80, Commodore 64 and Amiga and the personalities behind them, on programming languages like Forth and the various tricks and inventions required to get complex games to run on very restrained hardware. It's all very readable, meticulously researched and quite in-depth.
rasz · 2026-03-10
The Digital Antiquarian covered Voyager Company on his excellent blog:
https://www.filfre.net/2021/06/bob-stein-and-voyager/
https://www.filfre.net/2021/06/the-best-of-voyager-part-1/
Eric_WVGG · 2026-01-15
and "the Digital Antiquarian" just did a great, deep two-parter on the history of Looking Glass last autumn. (covers Thief, Thief 2, System Shock, and some forgotten oddities)
https://www.filfre.net/2025/10/a-looking-glass-half-empty-part-1-just-…
Kurtz79 · 2025-09-23
Since he might not be known to most (especially a younger audience), the author is a writer best known for many of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were hugely successful in the 80s.
Jimmy Maher wrote about them recently https://www.filfre.net/2025/09/choose-your-own-adventure/
maheart · 2025-07-08
>I found it very noticeable how similar the text of actions was between MUDs and EverQuest
This was discussed in the recently posted Everquest article: https://www.filfre.net/2025/07/everquest/
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest#History):
>The design and concept of EverQuest is heavily indebted to text-based MUDs, in particular DikuMUD ... John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Bill Trost, who jointly are credited with creating the world of EverQuest, have repeatedly pointed to their shared experiences playing MUDs such as Sojourn and TorilMUD as the inspiration for the game
gommm · 2025-05-31
It still sees active development, they keep adding new engines regularly. One of the engine I'm excited about is Macromedia Director [1] which they added initial support for in 2.5.0. That's a big endeavour though so will take time until they add everything needed for full compatibilities with a lot of games.
They've also just added support for some of the Dynamix games like Willy Beamish and Heart of China[2] which I absolutely loved as a kid (despite their rather rough edges)
[1] https://obscuritory.com/essay/macromedia-director-in-scummvm/ [2] https://www.filfre.net/2018/05/the-dynamic-interactive-narratives-of-d…
tmsbrg · 2025-04-04
Jimmy Maher is really a great history writer. The way he writes is very compelling. He made a whole history of windows which I somehow read through completely[0].
I can also recommend his other site, Analog Antiquarian[1] where he writes more about the larger history. His Magellan series that's going on now is really amazing, makes you feel like you're really experiencing the epic voyage through South America and South East Asia.
[0] https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows-part-1-ms-dos-and-its-dis…
[1] https://analog-antiquarian.net/
wazoox · 2025-02-06
Other related reading, the excellent piece from the Digital Antiquarian :
https://www.filfre.net/2024/07/the-later-years-of-douglas-adams/
gwern · 2024-09-17
Digital Antiquarian has a few posts up recently about Douglas Adams, and it all sounds like it was a great deal more painful than I had ever realized as a kid reading _Hitchhiker's_: https://www.filfre.net/2024/07/the-later-years-of-douglas-adams/
Considering how much he loved everything else and how well he was able to do things like radio shows or video or inspire text adventures, I do have to wonder if forcing him to write books was pounding a square peg into a round hole.
homarp · 2024-07-20
self-host gives you flavor though (your own domain, absolute choice in what you can use, and of course 'meta content' (this is how i host this blog, vs github pages, vs medium
as for the quality of the content, it is usually a mix of personal experience (e.g. https://jvns.ca/blog/, https://folklore.org/0-index.html, https://www.filfre.net/ ) and number of hours to write.it
mwigdahl · 2024-06-21
According to Jimmy Maher (who would likely know best) the term was coined in 1979. https://www.filfre.net/2011/09/robert-lafores-interactive-fiction/
DylanSp · 2024-01-06
There's also followup articles on all the subsequent Ultima games (except IX), the Worlds of Ultima games, and Ultima Underworld on the same site - search https://www.filfre.net/sitemap/ for "Ultima". Garriot and Origin in general also come up in some of the other posts, mainly in the posts on Wing Commander.
djur · 2023-11-21
The database product came later in Infocom's life. The Z-machine was designed specifically to port Zork. Jimmy Maher covers the birth, life, and death of Infocom in great detail:
https://www.filfre.net/2012/01/the-birth-of-infocom/
jbattle · 2023-11-15
There's an old video game called Seven Cities of Gold wherein you play a european explorer poking about the new world. It has procedurally generated game worlds, and claims to use some plate techtonics. I don't remember if you could actually circumnavigate the world, but it gave a great experience of gradually uncovering an absolutely massive map, packed with things to see. Designed for platforms with SERIOUS technology constraints, the author packed a LOT of game play. Given the historical subject, it also offers up some serious topics for thought / conversation.
As always, the Digital Antiquarian has a great article about this game:
https://www.filfre.net/2013/08/seven-cities-of-gold/
pavlov · 2023-10-21
The 7th Guest was a hit puzzle game in the early days of PC CD-ROM entertainment. It wasn’t the gameplay that made it so popular, but the unprecedented experience of seeing real video on a computer.
The Digital Antiquarian has an excellent article (as always):
https://www.filfre.net/2020/04/the-7th-guests-new-clothes/
MrRadar · 2023-10-21
Do not miss his 9-part series on the history of Windows through the 16-bit era: https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows-part-1-ms-dos-and-its-dis… It's one of the best pieces of technology history writing I've ever read.
customizable · 2023-09-17
Bill Williams [1], perhaps best known for his 1983 game Alley Cat had CF, and suffered greatly because of the disease. He was 37 when he died. His book "Naked Before God: The Return of a Broken Disciple" is about his experience with CF and his faith.
The Digital Antiquarian has a well written article about Bill Williams' life [2].
1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Williams_(game_designer)
2- https://www.filfre.net/2016/01/bill-williams-the-story-of-a-life/
ddalcino · 2023-06-02
I spotted this while reading a wonderful account of the history of 3d graphics in games at https://www.filfre.net/2023/05/the-next-generation-in-graphics-part-3-… ; I thought it was worth sharing!
EvanAnderson · 2023-05-05
It's worth search-engining the author of "Castle Wolfenstein" and "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein", Silas Warner (of MUSE Software).
Coverage from The Digital Antiquarian: https://www.filfre.net/2012/01/silas-warner-and-muse-software/
Interview with Silas Warner from Kansas Fest 1992: https://www.kansasfest.org/wp-content/uploads/Silas-Warner.html