About Stone Tools

Stone Tools is a blog about the productivity software of the 8/16-bit home computing era, written by a human, Christopher Drum. If you want a blog about retro-gaming, you'll need to look elsewhere. If you want to read about someone examining the Y2K bug in database software of the 80s, you've come to the right place.

This blog is free

All blog posts are free to everyone; there is no difference in content between those who pay and those who don't. That said, paid subscriptions to support my research are gratefully, humbly accepted; there are fees associated with running the blog, afer all. Maybe you'd like to reward someone who fights hard against the onslaught of AI-generated historical slop and lies? Maybe that's worth a few dollars in these frustrating times?

I wish you'd cover...

I work many posts in advance, but am always interested to know what readers would like to see covered. I follow a <software title> on the <hardware type> format.

Some titles are not full-featured enough to warrant entire posts (like VIC Mail for the Commodore VIC-20). I give special consideration to titles that try to do something a little different in their genres, were trailblazers, or otherwise have interesting stories attached to their histories.

You can send suggestions to stonetools @ christopherdrum.com

Who is Christopher Drum

I started in journalism, transitioned into graphic arts, and finally turned software engineer. I guess I can add "blogger" to the list now?

I've published a number of projects over the years that have delighted a small handful of very specific nerds, with a focus on the deconstruction and resurrection of historically signifcant software. Everything is free, open-source, and available on GitHub.

Software of note

Other projects