Nostalgia articles

Four decades ago, the CPU market was far more diverse than it is today. One company called NexGen had backing from big PC names, plenty of capital, and a team of great engineers. But what happened?

#TBT Computers had finally made the jump from taking up a full room to something that could fit on a desk. In 1982, three entrepreneurs founded Compaq to make a portable IBM-compatible PC, they succeeded.

AMD is one of the world's oldest CPU makers and the subject of polarizing debate among tech enthusiasts for nearly 50 years. Its story makes for a thrilling tale of twists and turns that we examine today from past to present.

#ThrowbackThursday Enthusiasts have been pushing the limits of silicon for as long as microprocessors have existed. These are but a few of the landmark processors revered for their overclocking prowess.

Today we're dusting off our old Radeon Vega 64 to compare against its old rival, the GeForce GTX 1080. Here's what's going to be our last big revisit to the Radeon Vega GPU on a 51 game benchmark.

Did you know that a floppy disk is more than just a save icon? Can you understand how a pencil and a cassette tape are related? Does the term 'VHS tracking' fill you with dread? What seemed like magic tech at the time, is now a distant memory that those under 20 can't believe was actually real.

#ThrowBackThursday Many have tried to follow Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) in bringing their tech predictions into the public eye... with varying degrees of success. Every year for nearly a decade, we've revisited this TechSpot original feature to bring new quotes to your attention. Here's a taste of those now infamous quotes.

#TBT Launched in 1997, Winamp is a media player that supports a wide array of audio formats and was an iconic application in the heyday of MP3 music. Winamp was nearly ubiquitous, used by millions in the early 2000s.

Launched in 1970, Xerox's PARC has played an instrumental role in the engineering of many of the technologies that compose the personal computer – most famously the graphical user interface (GUI), ethernet, laser printing, the mouse, among others. We'd like to take a few and give credit where credit's due.

Mattel developed a gaming system called Intellivision in the late 1970s, around the same time that the Atari 2600 launched. However, it made such an impression that the iconic console was never forgotten and is, in fact, making a comeback.

For many, the 1980s was the golden era in home computing. Fighting among new companies was Sinclair who made cheap and basic computers, but helped give rise to the world of bedroom programming and game developers like Rare, Codemasters and Rockstar North.

#ThrowBackThursday The PC business as we know it owes itself to an environment of enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and happenstance. The invention of the microprocessor, DRAM, and EPROM integrated circuits would help bring computing to the mainstream. This 5-part series explores the history of personal computing, from the invention of the transistor to modern day chips powering our connected devices.