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Cake day: September 23rd, 2023

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  • The HP 49g+/39g+ and their descendants the 50g/39gs run the same operating systems as the older 49g/39g except most of it runs in an emulator so they could replace the old Saturn CPUs with ARM ones. And it still runs way faster than the native version on the older devices somehow.

    Plus the entire operating system is written in Reverse Polish Lisp, one of the strangest languages I’ve ever seen. Very strange devices, but still leagues ahead of any calculator produced since (at least the 49/50, the 39 is very confusing)



  • OpenVMS is still semi-maintained. It’s DEC’s old operating system that Windows NT draws some inspiration from because Microsoft hired a bunch of ex-DEC engineers.

    There’s also 9front, a fork of Bell Labs’ Plan9.

    Wegmans’ checkout uses Toshiba 4690 OS, which I think is vaguely descended from CP/M.

    I think IBM still maintains their i operating system, which used to be called OS/400.

    Network equipment like enterprise routers and switches tend to run weird unique things, Cisco equipment runs IOS and Adtran equipment runs AOS.


  • I mean hierarchy is how we find any specific item in the real world though, so it seems like the best way to organize things on a computer. If I’m looking for a pair of scissors I know to go into my house, into my kitchen, into the drawer, and take the scissors. You can use tagging and things to search, but having that be the main way of accessing files will never be as reliable or repeatable as just looking where you know the file is.