What originally started out as a nostalgia project has started to turn into a full-fledged educational app. I wanted to make something that resembled classic Microsoft Encarta, but with up-to-date information and functionality. All information is pulled from Wikipedia, and all of the built-in custom apps integrate with it. I'm not sure if this type of program has any widespread appeal in 2026, but I'm excited to improve it and expand it with new apps and functionally. I'm hoping to release it for free eventually. Would love some feedback or suggestions.

Edit: Since y'all have had positive responses, I'm going to try and release what I have so far later today! Stay tuned.

Edit 2: For everyone questioning in the comments, this was indeed made with AI. I just wanted to make a fun and free nostalgia project with no ulterior motives. If you don't support AI coding, then don't download it. :)

Edit 3: Download link for anyone interested: https://github.com/sburton0/encyclopedia-2000/releases/latest

Discord for feedback and discussion: https://discord.com/invite/Z4EJdKG39P

While I've had this question for several years, it has returned to the front of my mind upon listening to the Designed in California podcast series "Apple's MacOS Crisis" (first episode). And yes, I can and probably will ask a very similar question later about MS-DOS-based versions of Windows and their gutting and internal replacement in Windows NT.

It's especially bizarre to me that it took a Herculean, near-decade-long effort involving hundreds of people and multiple companies and development teams for Apple to modernize its cooperatively-multitasking 68k-originating operating system, involving its foundations being replaced and software only temporarily remaining compatible through a sandboxed environment, while for Atari to modernize (at least to some degree) its cooperatively-multitasking 68k-originating operating system (TOS), it took... one guy and a single year, seemingly with much more of the original OS intact† and with software compatibility largely maintained. Granted, Macintosh computers were broadly more popular than Atari ST-line computers with a larger software ecosystem, but the differences are still stark.

(I would post this to subreddits like r/AskComputerScience as well, but for hopefully understandable reasons, I'm quite afraid of the zeitgeist of the field right now...)

†Honestly not very knowledgeable about the architectural differences between TOS and MultiTOS/MiNT, so I could be wrong.

No ads, no tracking, no monetization.

I started saving MIDI files from my Microsoft FrontPage website in October 1996 and have maintained the collection ever since.

The archive currently contains 107 General (GM) MIDI (.mid) files dating from approximately 1994-1999, preserved in their original format with no conversions.

To make the archive more accessible, I recently added browser playback using html-midi-player. The player renders the actual MIDI files rather than MP3 conversions and displays playback duration and note counts.

The entire collection is approximately 2.5 MB in size, averaging about 23 KB per file. Thirty years of preservation fits in less space than a single modern smartphone photo.

The archive includes video game music, anime themes, new age tracks, and music commonly used as website background audio during the late 1990s.

Went to a local thrift shop today and they were selling this crt still in the box with all of its protective packaging. however theres no brand name with the only identifier being N7E7 and it allegedly being made by orion. I was curious if anyone knew more about this

Hi all,

I've been working on an Apple IIe emulator as a hobby project and it has reached the point where I'd like other people to try it and tell me what breaks. I used AI assistance (Claude) while building it.

What it does:

- Enhanced IIe: 65C02, 128K, 40/80 columns, lo-res, hi-res, double lo-res and double hi-res with NTSC artifact colour

- Apple Monitor II look: curved glass, scanlines and glow, in colour or green phosphor.
The curvature is adjustable, and you can switch the whole effect off

- Two Disk II drives with pictures, activity lights and recorded drive sounds (motor and head, each with its own volume). Click a drive to insert or eject, or drop a disk image on it. Reads and writes .dsk/.do/.po/.nib

- Microsoft SoftCard (Z80) in slot 5, so CP/M works

- AppleMouse card in slot 4 (works with Apple II DeskTop)

- Paddles/joystick through the mouse or a game controller

- Save states

On accuracy: the 65C02 passes Klaus Dormann's functional tests and the Z80 passes ZEXDOC and ZEXALL. The Disk II is emulated at the nibble level but it is not cycle-exact, so I expect copy-protected disks to fail. No .woz support yet.

It's C++20 and SDL2, MIT licensed, and small enough to read in an evening if you're curious how any of it works.

Downloads for macOS (universal), Linux and Windows are on the releases page:

https://github.com/sscanf/apple2e-emulator

The Windows build is the least tested, so reports from there are especially welcome. Which software should I try next that is likely to break it?

Title: My 1995 AcerNote 760i with a Cyrillic keyboard still works (via VGA). Does anyone know this serial number format?

Hello everyone,

I'd like to show you my old veteran from the mid-90s: an AcerNote 760i. It's the 486-based "i" model, with a built-in trackball in the center (the modern generation doesn't always figure out how to use it right away). It wasn't a cheap machine back in the day.

The keyboard has Cyrillic legends printed directly on the keys in a second, lighter font, not stickers. We all remember the 90s stickers that wore off and peeled. These look like proper printing and are still perfectly readable. I'm not sure if it was done by Acer or by a local distributor.

I left the "Spider-Man 3" sticker on the case. It's part of the laptop's history now.

Unfortunately the built-in screen is dead after 30 years. But I connected the laptop to an external monitor through the VGA port on the back, and it came back to life: the motherboard, CPU and graphics work fine, and the picture is great. So the old flagship will keep fighting.

Now a question. Here's what the label on the bottom says:

Model No.: 760I

Ext. No.: B43

Serial No.: P002397

MFG. Date: 950512 (12 May 1995)

FCC ID: GQ8760I

HDD Type: 34

Made in Taiwan R.O.C.

Does anyone know what the "P" prefix in the serial number means (production line, factory, pilot batch, region)? Is this format normal for the 760i? Does yours start with P too? I also couldn't find any other 760i with a Russian keyboard online. Has anyone seen one?

Photos: keyboard, label, and the laptop connected to a monitor. Thanks!

Wishlist on Steam here via this link.

I’m learning an awful lot while making this game, and honestly, I’m very aware that I still have a long way to go. I’m sorry if some of the influences feel obvious at this stage, but I’m trying to absorb, learn from, and honour the things that first made me fall in love with this kind of work.

The story takes huge inspiration from the sparks of William Gibson’s 80s imagination, the social paranoia running through Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, the brilliant design thinking of Zachtronics, and old-school favourites like Uplink, alongside more recent games such as Grey Hack and Hacknet.

I’m trying to take those influences with humility, learn as much as I can, and slowly shape them into something that feels personal and new.

Some nice finds today! Didn’t expect to find anything lol

Not for sale copy of Star Trek 25th anniversary game not sure where it would’ve been in ?

Back in school, in my computer science class, I had an Iomega Zip 100 on parallel port. I used it to carry my own Delphi programs from home to show the others. That was a lot of fun, and I wish I still had that drive. I don't, so when I saw this one on Ebay for 10 euros plus shipping I bought it straight away. Mostly for the memories.

Current machines have no parallel port, so I built a small bridge for it. It is a Raspberry Pi Pico W with three SN74LVC4245A level shifters and a DB25 socket. The drive side was the hard part, since Iomega made up their own protocol there and it is not standard IEEE 1284.The Linux ppa driver turned out to be the best reference I could find, so I read it closely and tried to copy its handshake timing in PIO. Since my code follows that driver so closely, I plan to release the firmware under the GPL. The bridge then talks SCSI to the drive and USB mass storage to the PC, so the disk just shows up as a normal drive. No FAT parsing and no conversion, it is only a transport bridge.

The drive settled into PS/2 mode, which is the easy case. I get about 280 KB/s right now, and that is roughly what Iomega rated the parallel drive for. Their spec gave the number in megabytes per minute, which works out to about 250 KB/s. So the bridge is not the limit here, the drive is. I am fine with that.

TL;DR: DIY RP2040 parallel to USB bridge to get my old Zip 100 drive working on a modern PC.

Anyone else here still have a Zip drive somewhere?

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.27.0

# one-time configuration 
brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer 

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

or if already installed manually
brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

To upgrade to a new release: 
brew update 
brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

New Features

• Compact Window adds a free-floating mini player — the Windows menu and main-window context menu now include Compact Window, which uses the same compact Library Browser mini-player as Compact Mode but keeps NullPlayer as a regular Dock/menu-bar app. It hides only the main window, leaves Playlist/EQ/Spectrum/Library/visualization windows where they are, uses normal window level unless Always on Top is enabled, can be dragged from both the player bar and browser area, remembers its frame, and restores across launches.
• Balance control added to Playback menu — the Playback options now include a Balance submenu with a slider and common left/center/right presets, giving modern UI and menu-only workflows access to stereo balance without adding more controls to the player face.

Improvements

• Modern and Metal UI now use a modern system font — the retro low-fi bitmap font (Departure Mono) has been replaced throughout the Modern and Metal windows — Library tabs and headers, the main window, playlist, EQ, and spectrum — with the crisp macOS system font. Time and track digits stay monospaced so they don't jitter. Skins that ship their own custom font still render it as before.
• License and branding terms clarified — the project license notice and README now state GPL-3.0-only distribution terms and clarify that modified distributions must not reuse the NullPlayer name, icon, logo, bundle identity, or other branding without permission.
• Compact Mode player bar reads like the main window — in Modern and Metal, the Compact Mode display now splits into two distinct LCD "windows" with a padded gap: a single elapsed/remaining time counter on the left and the scrolling track title on the right (previously the title sat left with a cramped "elapsed / total" reading pinned to the right). The counter matches the title's size and weight, and the transport buttons are slightly larger.
• Larger Library tab and control fonts — the Library Browser's tab labels and control text render at a slightly larger size in non-compact mode for better legibility. Compact Mode is unchanged.

Changes

• Window shade mode removed — double-clicking a window's title bar no longer collapses it to a title-bar-only strip ("windowshade"). This legacy Winamp feature was the source of recurring layout glitches when combined with Large UI, Compact Mode, and live UI-mode switching; removing it makes window sizing and position memory behave consistently across every window in Classic, Modern, and Metal.
• Library source menu lists only sources — the Library Browser's source picker no longer injects local-library settings ("Manage Folders…" and the "Clear Local Library" submenu) when the local source is active. Those are settings, not sources, and already live in the Library menu-bar item, so the source menu now lists sources only.

Bug Fixes

• Metal skin transport icons are now fully filled — the previous/next (and eject) icons in the Metal finishes no longer show a stray light vertical line: the icon bars now draw in the same transport-button color as the rest of the glyph instead of the skin's light primary color.
• Plex Artists no longer show duplicate same-name rows — the Library Browser now groups Plex artist records with the same display name into one visible artist row in both classic and modern UI. Expanding, playing, or queueing that row still fans out across every underlying Plex ratingKey, so albums and tracks attached to duplicate server-side artist records remain accessible instead of being hidden.
• Compact Mode art ratings fit the small UI — the modern Library Browser's art-view rating stars now shrink in Compact Mode, preventing them from crowding or overlapping the source/library picker row.
• Compact Window no longer reopens the main window after Space switches — returning from another desktop or fullscreen app now focuses the floating compact mini-player instead of treating the hidden main window as something to restore, so Compact Window stays a one-window main-player replacement until you exit it.
• Library window remembers where you put it — after unlocking the connected windows and moving the Library/browser window, it now reopens at the exact position and size you left it — across closing and reopening it (via the menu or the red close button) and across full app restarts, even when it was closed at quit. First-ever opens still dock to the right of the window stack, and the position survives Compact Mode. Playlist, EQ, and Spectrum still intentionally snap back into the column below the main window.
• Classic Large UI toggles instantly — no restart — turning Large UI on or off in the classic skin now resizes the windows in place, matching the modern UI, instead of asking you to relaunch. The player, EQ, playlist, and other windows redraw crisply at the new size (no leftover "ghost" of the old size), and switching between Classic, Modern, and Metal while Large UI is on no longer distorts the new look.
• ProjectM visualizer recovers from a preset that crashes mid-playback — a rare bug inside the MilkDrop preset engine could crash the app while a preset was on screen — including minutes into a track, not just when the preset first appeared. The crash-guard now watches a preset for its entire time on screen (previously only its first frame), so the offending preset is automatically skipped on the next launch and the crash never recurs. Normal quits never flag a good preset.
• Metal playlist and Library highlights are now clearly visible — in Metal skins, the playlist's now-playing track and the Library Browser's selected/expanded row were indicated by text color alone, which several metal finishes render nearly identical to normal rows, so the active row was easy to miss. Both now draw a translucent green backlit-LCD highlight bar (matching the hi-fi display panels) as the cue. The metal playlist's row text is also unified at the Library window's brightness — previously it was dimmer — and the current track no longer recolors to the accent tone that clashed with the new highlight.

IF SOMEONE CAN GIVE ANY VALUATION FOR PRICE I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR. AI GAVE ME VALUATION OF 5000-7000 DOLLARS.

• Canon AS-300II Central Unit. Includes all four (4) original cardboard drive protectors/shipping cards inserted in the floppy drives for safe storage and transport.

• Original Canon Monitor & Mechanical Keyboard.

• Original Canon Mouse

• Canon A302 EXHD (External Hard Disk): A massive external enterprise hard drive with its original proprietary interface/connection cable. Since this was a working system, the drive likely contains period-correct software or data.

• Canon PJ-300S Inkjet Printer: An early, high-end professional color inkjet printer.

2. Software & Media (3.5" DD Floppy Disks):

This is a fully localized Finnish corporate ecosystem from 1985. The magnetic media includes:

• Canon MS-DOS 2.11 System Boot Disks (including the official system disk and handwritten period-correct backup disks used by the original owner).

• Canobrain / Super-Canonbrain System & Graphwriter Disks: Canon's legendary, mythical early GUI that attempted to compete with Apple Macintosh.

• CanoWriter II+ SF Software Suite: Official Finnish localized word processor and Spell Cor (spell checker/vocabulary) disks.

• Micro Focus Level II COBOL V-1.1 & CICS 86 V-2.2: Heavy-duty corporate programming languages and database tools for this specific architecture.

• Bonus/Supplies: A box of ten (10) brand new, unused official vintage Canon MF2-51200 branded blank floppy disks.

3. Complete Documentation & Printed Manuals:

• Canon AS-300II Owner's Manual.

• Canon MS-DOS User Manual.

• Micro Focus Level II COBOL User Manual

• Canobrain User Manual (2 Volumes): Extremely rare documentation for Canon's lost graphical operating environment.

• Canon A302 EXHD Hard Disk Documentation: Original multi-page A4 installation/user guide leaflets.

• Bonus/Supplies: One box of four (4) original Canon JP-216 Roll Paper packs for the printer, still factory-sealed in their thick, black light-protective plastic sleeves.

Good morning, afternoon, or evening!

Greetings! My name is Parrasi (I’m from Colombia—which explains why my OS is in Spanish). I am currently working on a fantasy console project running on Windows XP via a virtual machine. Since the OS is obsolete, I had to manually install the Code::Blocks code editor and a few other tools; there are still a few more things left to set up.

I am just getting started on the CPSCD_DeParrasi project (a temporary name). It is being programmed in C and C++ to ensure better performance, optimization, portability across systems, and—crucially—compression. The project aims to bring Niklas Jansson’s "Famicube" artistic concept to life as a fantasy console; while it adheres to the original's limitations, I am also tweaking certain aspects and adding new features!

I’ve decided to share regular updates on the development of this fantasy console. I’d love to hear your opinions, recommendations, and feedback—whether it’s support, constructive criticism, or pointing out what works and what doesn’t. I hope you’re all doing well, and thanks for reading!

Laptop from 1996.

I had to replace the HDD because the original has so many bad sectors that I can't even install anything.

I got the original HDD working good enough to extract the original Wallpaper, OEM-FILE and drivers (a part inside of the HDD fell off, i just removed it).

The CMOS Battery placement is super annoying, you need to completely disassemble the Laptop to get to it, this includes getting the thermal pads underneath the CPU socket to unstuck, they were so strong that the glue that holds the metal plate gave up before the thermal pads did.

Works fine now except for the main battery and external floppy drive.

I kinda like the design of the main Battery, lol.

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