Retro Computing
195 sites
https://jcs.org/
Joshua Stein's personal tech blog is a deep dive into retro computing projects, with a strong focus on vintage Macs, classic system software, and hardware tinkering like fitting an M4 Mac Mini inside an iMac G4. He also develops and releases his own retro software including a classic Mac IRC client and BlueSCSI utilities, making this a genuinely creative corner of the old-school Mac enthusiast world.
https://blog.geocities.institute/archives/498
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is a research blog by despens dedicated to digging through the archived GeoCities torrent, documenting and exploring the old web's cultural artifacts. This post offers practical Unix-based tips for downloading, decrunching, and self-hosting the massive GeoCities torrent archive, making it a useful technical resource for digital preservationists.
https://blog.geocities.institute/archives/3808
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is a research blog by Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied digging through the archived Geocities torrent, surfacing and analyzing old-web artifacts like GIFs, MIDI files, and defunct personal pages. This particular post explains the automated process behind their companion Tumblr blog that screenshots and posts rescued Geocities pages, offering a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at digital archaeology.
https://catwormdog.net/
23Sonics shares their passion for older computers including a Packard Bell EasyNote, Asus Eee PC 701, and HP OmniBook XE3, alongside a custom Fedora Linux setup and a self-hosted Windows documentation tool called Windows MAN. The site also touches on retro-friendly software advocacy, personal online services, and a love of games like Tetris and Sonic the Hedgehog.
https://engineering-sample.com/
Run by Sam 'Doc TB' Demeulemeester, this vault is a deep-dive resource dedicated to engineering sample CPUs, the pre-production processors issued by manufacturers during chip development that often expose cancelled features, transitional steppings, and unreleased configurations. A labor of love since 2002, the site chronicles the history and variations of ES CPUs alongside broader vintage computing restoration and experimentation.
https://s546.remotes.club/
S546's homepage on remotes.club is a minimalist ASCII-art personal page hosted on a retro-styled community server. The site features a striking text-based banner in the old-web Unix tradition, evoking the aesthetics of bulletin board systems and early terminal culture.
https://textfiles.vistech.net/
Textfiles.com is a massive archive dedicated to preserving the text files, culture, and history of the mid-1980s BBS scene, curated by Jason Scott over nearly 25 years. Visitors can explore ASCII art, BBS documentation, historical timelines, and thousands of files that capture the early digital underground in its raw, unfiltered form.
https://blog.geocities.institute/
Run by researcher Olia Lialina, this blog digs through the massive GeoCities torrent archive to surface, analyze, and celebrate the visual and cultural artifacts of early web culture. Expect screenshot showcases, interviews with creators, and thoughtful commentary on GIFs, MIDI, blingee stamps, and the forgotten aesthetics of the 1990s and 2000s web.
https://restorativland.org/
Restorativland is an ambitious preservation project dedicated to excavating and restoring shut-down web ruins like GeoCities, MySpace Music, and AOL Hometown into searchable, visitable, and remixable archives. Positioned somewhere between a library and a living museum, the project works to close the gap between archival and public visibility of the lost early web.
http://cd.textfiles.com/
CD.TEXTFILES.COM is a digital archive preserving data from 'shovelware' CDs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which inadvertently captured a wealth of BBS-era content. A treasure trove for retro computing enthusiasts, it offers a rare window into early online culture through the very discs that tried to cash in on it.