E-books that might be of interest to others

[Té Rowan]

"The Art of Travel" by Sir Francis Galton (Fifth edition, anno 1872)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14681 (HTML)
https://archive.org/details/art_of_travel_1108_librivox (audio book)
https://archive.org/details/The_Art_of_Travel_Francis_Galtonl (PDF, DJVU)

Tourism and travel in the nineteenth century was nothing like contemporary mass tourism.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66011 — "Devil's Tower National Monument: A History"
It's not "Hogwarts: A History" but it still has a tale to tell.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66049 — "Pictorial Beauty on the Screen" by Victor Oscar Freeburg (pub. 1923).
I doubt this guy would have loved the smell of napalm in the morning.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66069 — "Choice Recipes and Menus using Canned Foods" by the American Can Company.
If nothing else, you might finally find a use for the tinned shoe sole meat you bought on sale yesteryear.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/computers-that-made-britain — "The Computers That Made Britain — The Home Computer Revolution of the 1980s".
It was more than Sinclair and Amstrad, that's for sure. And I still want an Acorn Archimedes.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I was buying a computer back then - two writers in the family, you know - and while I was in the USA, I'm surprised how many of these machines we owned. When we started looking, there really were only three choices - Commodore, Tandy Radio Shack (TRS), and Apple. But hooking up extras to a Commodore required some very strange adapters, you had to pay through the nose to be able to use CAP/small letters on the Apple, and the TRS III was all in one unit. True, it used a tape cassette for storage (what a pain!) but we could use a fairly standard printer. Eventually we got a TRS 4, with floppies, then found out the tapes were only semi-interoperable between the machines. With cursing and difficulty, we got the files over to the floppies.

Having two people using one computer was a pain. So I got a VIC-20, shortly followed by a C-64 and eventually a C-128. The latter was really two computers in one case, a Commodore machine settled in with a CP/M machine. With the help of some translation programs, we eventually got the TRSDOS files into a commodore format, then translated them to CP/M, which we eventually got onto an IBM PC. We went through translations from one WordPerfect version to another, then several WORD versions.

The damn things are wonderful word processors, but they evolve more rapidly than I do. At least RTF files have behaved for a decade or so.

[Té Rowan]

https://info-coach.fr/atari/ — A French Atari ST site.
Never owned an Atari. Any Atari. Still, looks neat.

https://info-coach.fr/atari/documents/_mydoc/Hitchhikers-Guide-V1.1.pdf — "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the {Atari ST} BIOS" (1990-03-05)
Don't panic. There are Douglas Adams references in there.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66160 — "The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards" by prof. William Ridgeway (1892)
That guy must have been highly educated. He even knows words like 'primitive' and 'barbarous'.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66206 — "Frank Reade, Jr., With His New Steam Man in Central America"

[Té Rowan]

Textfiles.com has a few interesting PDF books.

http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/magickingdom-doctorow.pdf — "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom"
http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/hackdiet.pdf — "The Hacker's Diet: How to Lose Weight and Hair through Stress and Poor Nutrition"
http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/triggerhappy.pdf — "Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames"

[Spica75]

I was buying a computer back then - two writers in the family, you know - and while I was in the USA, I'm surprised how many of these machines we owned. When we started looking, there really were only three choices - Commodore, Tandy Radio Shack (TRS), and Apple. But hooking up extras to a Commodore required some very strange adapters, you had to pay through the nose to be able to use CAP/small letters on the Apple, and the TRS III was all in one unit. True, it used a tape cassette for storage (what a pain!) but we could use a fairly standard printer. Eventually we got a TRS 4, with floppies, then found out the tapes were only semi-interoperable between the machines. With cursing and difficulty, we got the files over to the floppies.

Yeah, but darned were they flexible! I remember the weird expansion stuff my brother built to plug into his Acorn Atom, but then when middle brother got a Vic-20, eldest modded the stuff almost over night to suddenly work with the -20 with just a few switches thrown and a connector mod added.

And well, it is outright amazing how much the Amiga series systems are still not only used, but USEFUL, thanks to being able to accept all kinds of expansion cards and plugins. Accelerator cards adding anything from 50Mhz processors and up, and not replacing the original 8Mhz, no, the hardware and software is flexible enough to use all of them, and the advanced graphics available, used by some people doing advanced professional graphics and video editing, damn, a single Amiga 500 driving half a dozen hi-res TVs, somehow... Similar stuff available for music and sound but no longer used as much as there the several generations of replacements can actually compete, mostly.

There's SOME similar stuff available for Atari as well, but compared to the Amiga stuff, it's like comparing a drop and an ocean.

And there's also people still using C64s and 128s for their SID-chips to do sound effects and music. Modern PCs have no trouble replicating the sounds, but creating them from scratch, even with perfect emulators now available, lots of people agree that it still ends up better via the original chips(probably because the -64s and -128s are pretty much never perfectly according to specs, ironically).

Having two people using one computer was a pain. So I got a VIC-20, shortly followed by a C-64 and eventually a C-128. The latter was really two computers in one case, a Commodore machine settled in with a CP/M machine. With the help of some translation programs, we eventually got the TRSDOS files into a commodore format, then translated them to CP/M, which we eventually got onto an IBM PC. We went through translations from one WordPerfect version to another, then several WORD versions.

Another real gem of the C128 was the machinecode monitor included. I actually learned to do some small things with it, and had i had the need or more interest, it was good enough to let you learn everything needed. First computer i personally bought, and a darn good one.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66316 — "Fish Cooking"
Nice to know how the other guy cooks his fish.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66583 — "The Magic of Jeels and Charms" by George Frederick Kunz.
Something for those that fancy gems.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66616 "Elementary Course in Woodwork" by George Alexander Ross.
I don't remember my woodwork teacher mentioning tool maintenance, probably because they were mostly stationary power tools by then.

[Té Rowan]

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA168085 — "Orwellian Programming in Safety-Critical Systems" by Ian F. Currie at the RSRE (Royal Signals and Radar Establishment) in the UK.

I'll just drop the abstract as well:

Computers are being used increasingly in situations where lives will be at hazard if they fail. Failures resulting from software errors are both avoidable and unforgivable. This paper is concerned with the final refinement in the production of a critical program from an elementary language via a compiler to bits in some rom in the critical system. It argues that existing languages are inherently unsuitable for this purpose since they allow freedoms of expression and thought which, although convenient in some applications, lead to misconceptions and obscurities. Orwellian programming should limit one's freedom of expression so that these heretical tendencies are unthinkable by using a NewSpeak which permits only Good Thoughts.

This, incidentally, is the only time I will favour a NewSpeak.