The History of Computing Project is a collaborative effort to record and publish the history of the computer and its roots. The site includes a chronological timeline, biographies of computing pioneers, a look at computing hardware through the years, as well as software and games. [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 9, 2008 - 11 comments

Mainframe - The Art of the Sale. Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3. Brought to you by 360comedy. It helps to know what a mainframe is, but is not absolutely essential. Enjoy! (Post contains YouTube links)
posted by purephase on Sep 11, 2006 - 5 comments

Hercules! Not the shiny muscle man from the past, but a handy emulator for IBM S/360, S/370, S/390, and z/Arch mainframes. Unfortunately, because of IBM's bullheadedness, you can only run operating systems released when the world was young, unless, for whatever reason, you decide to run something released after the Reagan Administration. You, too, can learn how easy we young whippersnappers have it now, but beware: to effectively use most of these systems, you will need to descend into Hell.
posted by Captain_Tenille on Nov 24, 2004 - 10 comments

Electronic music buffs cite Radiohead's Kid A as their best work. How many know that Idioteque, arguably the stand-out track owes a debt to Paul Lansky, sampling as it does Lansky's Mild Und Leise [mp3 file], a track composed in 1973 on an IBM 360/91 mainframe. I didn't. Should you find your interest piqued, you might want to read an interview with Lansky. If that was then, this is now: The excellent music video to Zeal [Quicktime] by Plaid, which, although a very different beast, is an excellent indicator of how far electronic music has come. [Probably NSFW].
posted by nthdegx on Feb 9, 2004 - 42 comments

Multics, Requiescat in Pace. Wow. What does one say.
posted by baylink on Nov 12, 2000 - 3 comments

I know you're all probably missing that old mini-mainframe you used to program on as a kid, right? Ok, maybe that's just me... But darn it, I can do it again using this PDP-8/E simulator for the Mac. You can even write your own simulated DEC I/O devices like paper tape readers via a plug-in API. And for the techno-frankenstein in me, it'll run using SheepShaver on my BeBox too.
posted by grant on Nov 30, 1999 - 0 comments