Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 226 posts

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#2

Post by vardump »

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like.

We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation?

One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#7

Post by myself248 »

vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

And imagine if telecom had topped out around ISDN somewhere, with perhaps OC-3 (155Mbps) for the bleeding-fastest network core links.

We'd probably get MP3 but not video to any great or compelling degree. Mostly-text web, perhaps more gopher-like. Client-side stuff would have to be very compact, I wonder if NAPLPS would've taken off.

Screen reader software would probably love that timeline.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#8

Post by JdeBP »

vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

Transputers. Lots and lots and lots of transputers. (-:
Post reply on HN