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Comment by judofyr | Hacker News Reader

Can someone elaborate why this is being upvoted?

EDIT: Not sure why this comment is getting downvoted. I'm just interested in why people find the article interesting and/or if there was some recent news which made Norsk Data relevant again…

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I upvoted because silicon valley people (such as wozniak) are often almost-exclusively credited for the advancements of the history of the computer. I did not know about the Norwegians' role which is cool.

I upvoted because is a bit of history I did not known about, I like reading or watching videos about old computers or consoles.

I believe it is because NORD-5 appears to be the first 32-bit minicomputer, built by Norsk Data in 1972.

-They also have the dubious honor of making the first 28-bit minicomputer, if the story I was told over beers at a geekfest at my alma mater holds true.

Apparently, in an effort to gain market share in the Soviet block (Which cloned ND products like there was no tomorrow anyway) without falling foul of COCOM rules, they neutered a few 32-bit NORDs and duly exported them east.

Presumably the COCOM regulations of the time said 'No 32 bit exports!'...

I thought it was generally interesting history, and little known enough to merit posting. Was very pleased with the response by NORD hackers.

I came across it (again) reading some physics history.

Related: dang had a couple of answers a day or so that should clear ip a bunch of misunderstandings, see dangs answer here, SilasXs reply to dang and dangs reply to SilasX: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087284

Edit, TLDR style, here's part of what dang says:

> You're misinterpreting that guideline, and I'm afraid HN might be missing out on some great submissions as a result! It's not limited to what good hackers would find interesting for hacker-related reasons. It's simply: what good hackers would find interesting.

Because it’s interesting

One day, some hacker might want to write an emulator of this computer.

I already did.. one for the ND-100, and one for the ND-500(0). But they are not done yet, and not release ready. The ND-100 emulator can't run the operating system, it only executes ND-100 executables under *nix. And it can't run multi-segment programs like Notis WP. The ND-500 emulator doesn't have to worry about operating systems, but my emulator isn't complete because there are still a couple of undocumented corners I haven't figured out yet. But I can run compilers and tools on both of them. My Nokia N900 phone has been running the ND-100 emulator for a very long time.. PED editor, Fortran-77 compiler..

But not release ready still. I'm busy working on the FUSE filesystem implementation at the moment.

There's another very good ND-100 emulator out there (runs executables like mine), it's on Github.

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