Related:

• drum adj, n. Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media that were once state-of-the-art storage devices.
  Under BSD Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called /dev/drum...
• bare metal n. 1. [common] New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an operating system, an bit bashing needed to create these basic tools for a new machine.
  Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment....
• Stone Age: n., adj. 1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca.
  1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical {dinosaur}s....
• usty memory: n. Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic media (esp.
  ape and the pre-Winchester removable disk packs used in {washing machine}s)....
• crock: [from the American scatologism `crock of shit'] n.
  1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner....
• microtape: /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a {macrotape}.
  A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide....
• languages of choice: n. {C} and {LISP}. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both.
  Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities....
• core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory
  ow archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them....
• boot v.,n. [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To load and initialize the operating system on a machine.
  This usage is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still jargon....