Retro Edition

We’ve had the retro edition of Hackaday up for about a week now, and already a few people have sent in a few neat builds that use an ancient computer to pull this page up. The latest comes from [RetroAppleFanToday] who used an Apple IIc to browse the Internet.

To load our humble retro edition, [RetroAppleFan] used a serial connection between the Apple and a Mac Mini to get a terminal running on the 30-year-old computer. From there, it was a simple matter of running lynx to browse the Internet.

There are a few more retro submissions cataloged on our retro successes page including a NEXT cube. If you have an old computer lying around that can pull up our retro site, don’t feel shy about sending it in; it’s pretty much guaranteed to get a mention.

As far as the development of the retro site is going, we’re posting 5 random stories every day. There’s a script to generate the front page every day, but if we get enough complaints or compliments we may just generate a new front page for every visitor.

Hack a Day hasn’t change its format since 2004. Even though MAKE has gone Web 2.0 with buttons using mouseover, and Instructables has fancy drop-down menus, Hack a Day has been a constant black background, green text child of the web circa 2004. A while ago, we decided it was time for an update to our layout. Today we’re pleased to announce an open beta test for our upcoming update – Hack a Day: the retro edition.

In case you’re wondering, yes, this is a joke, and no, we’re not going all Web 0.1a on you.

The retro edition is a little side project to our upcoming update where we’ll be rolling out a new template for Hack a Day. We’re going to fix a lot of the problems with the current template – searching, and an admittedly terrible commenting system design – and generally ‘cleaning up’ the design. We already have the store up and running, so progress on the update is slowly being made.

As far as the retro edition goes, we’re keeping that. We’ve had a few nerd-offs trying to load Hack a Day on the oldest computer possible, so a version of Hack a Day built for computers from 1983 seemed like a worthwhile goal. Think of it as a challenge: if you can send in a picture of your Commodore PET loading up the retro edition, we’ll add you to the retro successes page.

There’s a bit more we’d like to do with the retro edition, namely guides to getting your old computers up on the Internet. As a little bonus (and in keeping with the retro theme), we’re putting up a few classic Hack a Day posts from the days of yore.

So, there you go. We’ve tested the retro edition on a Mac PowerBook 170 and a Quadra 700, but feel free to dig out your old hardware and give this a spin.

EDIT: As far as the ‘retro competition’ goes, [Jaromir] wrote in and brought up an interesting point: Loading that .GIF logo would be really hard on computers with kilobytes of ram, so I’m changing that to a .BMP. Just so we’re all clear, there are no official rules, you’re competing against yourself, and if you can get a picture of an old computer loading this site, you’re going to be listed on the ‘successes’ page.