I remember Computer Chronicles from some older ATi CD-s, that had some shorter and longer video clips.

FullYes wrote on 2026-01-02, 10:41:

Just found out Stewart Cheifet, main host of the Computer Chronicles has passed away aged 87 […]
Show full quote

Just found out Stewart Cheifet, main host of the Computer Chronicles has passed away aged 87

Anyone who is into retro hardware, those old episodes he helped get onto archive.org are well worth a look.

I discovered them about 15 years ago. Not being from the USA, I was not aware of this program as a kid, but spent a lot of time watching them as an adult. They are a great resource of computing history, and I know Stewart was part of getting them online.

A lot of them are now on a dedicated YouTube channel

https://youtube.com/@computerchroniclesyt?si= … wMm_P1tpTG30fYM

You can also leave a comment for his family in the link below

https://obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-cheifet

I’m in no way affiliated with the family, I just know that, as a group of retro computer enthusiasts, this news may be of interest to a lot of you.

Im not english native, and Computer Chronicles is some of this TV shows i enjoy TOO MUCH even without subtitles, the quality lf every episode is amazing

Gary Kildall did amazing work too and every guest

thanks stewart and all people that make other people times better, in a world is not always easy

Computer Chronicles was an interesting resource when it was on YouTube. I wasn't around when this originally aired but watching various episodes where a demo of Diablo was being showcased, a glimpse of Quake's competitive multiplayer scene and even the mentioning of multiplayer services like Mplayer.com and TEN were nice.

I recall Alienware during it's early days were featured on an episode covering PC Gaming (in 2001)

Some of the stuff I've learned was all thanks to his show and it always had me wondering what it would've been like had the show continued to run after 2002. Rest in peace Stewart.

I've been going through a lot of Computer Chronicles by grabbing the mpeg2video files from The Internet Archive and also been watching the spin-off Net Cafe.

87 years is a long time to live and I feel he lived a really good life, wasn't he also running journalism classes for the time after the end of Computer Chronicles as a series itself? I wonder if he used his times spent working on both shows as material for those classes he taught.

I'm not from the US, so I didn't watch Computer Chronicles when it originally aired. But I do like checking some of those episodes on YouTube nowadays. They offer an interesting window into the past, showing how rapidly tech had advanced back in the day.

This YouTube channel hosts their episodes, which makes for easy viewing. Always fun to go back in time with one of those.

What a weird feeling, i watched quite a few episodes in the 26th and 27th of December.

Thanks, Stewart RIP.

I loved to watch computer chronicles TV’s show.
Thats what helped get me into computers back in 1980s.
Also it informed everyone about what was going in the tech world
Also used Mr Professor VHS tapes to help learn computers.
CBT courses and Books.

But computers chronicles was great.
Love that into music.

I would like to use the computer chronicles intro music
As a startup sound on my retro computer.
Anyone have a link to audio file ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on Yesterday, 16:58:

I would like to use the computer chronicles intro music
As a startup sound on my retro computer.
Anyone have a link to audio file ?

If you have yt-dlp:
$ yt-dlp -f 140 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y_Kf8rolT8'

will save out the m4a audio stream direct from YouTube.

DracoNihil wrote on Today, 00:15:

If you have yt-dlp: $ yt-dlp -f 140 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y_Kf8rolT8' […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on Yesterday, 16:58:

I would like to use the computer chronicles intro music
As a startup sound on my retro computer.
Anyone have a link to audio file ?

If you have yt-dlp:
$ yt-dlp -f 140 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y_Kf8rolT8'

will save out the m4a audio stream direct from YouTube.

Since the original mpeg2 broadcasts of the episodes from the TV studio were uploaded to the Internet Archive, downloading an episode from there and extracting the audio from the mpeg2 file using ffmpeg should yield an audio stream that has been through at least one less lossy transcoding step than a stream ripped from YouTube, and should therefore have at least slightly better quality.

The creation and preservation of a TV show that indeed literally "chronicled" the history of the personal/home computer is of immense historical value, and we owe Stewart Cheifet, Gary Kildall and everyone else who contributed to this series a great deal of gratitude for the Computer Chronicles.

And like others here have said: it continues to be incredibly entertaining to watch as well, even for younger generations and those who didn't have access to American television back in the day.

Thank you Stewart Cheifet, and rest in peace.

digger wrote on Today, 02:40:

Since the original mpeg2 broadcasts of the episodes from the TV studio were uploaded to the Internet Archive, downloading an episode from there and extracting the audio from the mpeg2 file using ffmpeg should yield an audio stream that has been through at least one less lossy transcoding step than a stream ripped from YouTube, and should therefore have at least slightly better quality.

Yeah but that URL is just the music "Byte By Byte" that was used as the show's theme song for several years. Without any of the show's audio or background noise going through, because it's just the song.

Unfortunately that's probably the only "feasible" source of getting that song with minimal hassle, I have no clue where to even acquire a lossless copy of it let alone a physical copy.

I happen to be on vacation right now and have only a phone and no laptop with me, but this feels like a fun challenge to figure out a one-line shell command using both ffmpeg and curl to extract (only) the intro music from one of the mpeg2 episode files hosted on the Internet Archive, including start and stop timestamps, etc. I'll give it a go when I get back, unless somebody here beats me to it. 😜

But this is definitely doable, and extracting it from the mpeg2 files (which are most likely the same files that were uploaded to and transcoded by YouTube in the first place) is as close to the original lossless source as you're going to get. Closer than going via YouTube, which would add a lossy transcoding step. That was my point.

Never heard anything about it R.I.P.