# Ancient Web: The Wondersmith Reviewed the Internet While It Was Happening Blake Linton Wilfong's 1999–2003 essays preserve first-hand observations of DOOM mods, PC upgrades, Morpheus, Roger Wilco and everyday dial-up-era computing. 2026-10-17 :: Switchboard Tech Services ![Ancient Web: The Wondersmith Reviewed the Internet While It Was Happening](https://switchboardtechservices.com/static/images/defaults/articles.webp) Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). The problem with retrospective computer history is that it already knows which technologies won. The Wondersmith's old reviews were written before anyone had that advantage. [Read Rants, Raves, and Reviews](https://wondersmith.com/rants/). Blake Linton Wilfong maintained a chronological collection of essays under the name The Wondersmith. The surviving index runs from September 1999 to March 2003, with a mixture of hardware reviews, software experiments, and personal commentary. It includes the Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card, a Pentium MMX upgrade, Roger Wilco voice chat, DOOM source ports, the Morpheus file-sharing service, and consumer complaints against online retailers. The pages retain their dates and their immediate, unvarnished excitement. That makes them useful historical evidence even where a particular technical recommendation has long since expired. ## A random DOOM level, with the randomness restrained The [December 1999 SLIGE article](https://wondersmith.com/rants/slige.htm) is the kind of practical experiment that specialist personal sites once excelled at. Wilfong describes using Dave Chess's automatic DOOM-level generator with Randy Heit's ZDoom and a ZCajun cooperative bot. Instead of just reviewing the resulting levels, he shows how command-line seed values can reproduce a particular generated map. The trick is more than entertainment. Reproducible seed values let players report bugs with an exact example rather than vaguely describing a bizarre room encountered once. The page includes sample command lines and a transcript of the generator's output, giving readers something concrete to investigate. Another essay, [Easy as Pi](https://wondersmith.com/rants/pi.htm), takes a 1978 Apple II Integer BASIC program that calculated one thousand digits of pi and tries it on a 633 MHz Celeron. Wilfong reports dramatic speed improvements in both interpreted and compiled modes, while explaining why direct comparisons across languages and hardware need care. He gives the equipment, the program's origin, and the measured times rather than treating progress as an advertising slogan. The [index](https://wondersmith.com/rants/) also points to a review of Connectix Virtual PC, a critique of advertised CRT monitor sizes, and commentary on music-file sharing. None is a neutral product laboratory. They are contemporaneous reactions by one interested computer user. That personal perspective is the attraction. The essays show what it felt like to buy, configure, benchmark, complain about, and enjoy software and hardware when the outcomes were still unknown. [Explore the complete dated review archive](https://wondersmith.com/rants/). Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). - Categories: [Ancient Web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/categories/ancient-web/) - Tags: [#gaming](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/gaming/), [#ancientweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/ancientweb/), [#webhistory](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/webhistory/), [#computing](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/computing/), [#doom](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/doom/) [Articles RSS](https://switchboardtechservices.com/feeds/articles.xml "Subscribe using an RSS reader") --- Canonical URL: https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-wondersmiths-rants-reviewed-the-internet-as-it-happened/ Language: en-us Content type: article Author: Switchboard Tech Services Published: 2026-10-17T23:59:41+00:00 Modified: 2026-10-18T21:05:05.812258+00:00 Description: The Wondersmith's archived reviews and technical experiments capture late-1990s personal computing as a living hobby rather than a polished retrospective.