York Minster from Lop Lane

Whilst poking around on Getty.edu’s art search site I managed to stumble on this fascinating but sadly poor photograph of what is now the junction between Museum Street, St Leonard’s Place, Duncombe Place, and Blake Street. The photos current location can be seen on the StreetView below.

Continue reading “York Minster from Lop Lane”

The Worst-selling Microsoft Software Product of All Time: OS/2 for the Mach 20

Raymond Chen at ‘The Old New Thing’ has a lovely tale about what could be Microsoft’s worst selling product ever – OS/2 for the Mach 20.


According to that person’s memory (which given the amount time that has elapsed, means that we should basically be saying “according to legend” at this point), a total of eleven copies of “OS/2 for Mach 20” were ever sold, and eight of them were returned.

Raymond Chen, The Old New Thing.

I’ve seen a few expansion cards as part of choosing images for ‘Retro Computer Adverts‘, but the Mach 10| 20 is not one I’ve yet stumbled across. And as for ads for ‘OS/2 for Mach 20’? Not a sausage!

York Minster, West Front / James Valentine (between 1860 and 1879)

An old photo of what was, back then, a rather new view.

Continue reading “York Minster, West Front / James Valentine (between 1860 and 1879)”

The cost of a PDP-11 circa 1971

Whilst trying to track down the cost of memory for a PDP-11 I stumbled across The PDP-11 FAQ and it’s rather excellent collection of early 70s PDP-11 price lists. It’s a fun little list, rammed through of interesting little nuggets – today it’s hard to imaging it but in 1972 a line printer would have set you back at least 12,000 USD. That’s almost 92,000 USD in 2025 prices!

Continue reading “The cost of a PDP-11 circa 1971”