Eagle Computer: The rise and fall of an early PC clone

Eagle Computer: The rise and fall of an early PC clone

When it comes to 80s computer brands, few flew as high as Eagle Computer flew in 1983. The aptly named company was selling 12,000 computers a month and had been doubling sales every quarter under the leadership of a talented CEO. Then Eagle lost its CEO, Dennis Barnhart, in a crashed Ferrari on the day of its IPO. In this blog post, we’ll explore the reasons Eagle Computer fell, because there was more to it than just the sad story involving its CEO.

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Store controllers and cables safely without damaging them

Store controllers and cables safely without damaging them

It’s something I think we’ve all done before. You get done playing video games and you don’t want to just leave the controllers plugged into the console and laying around somewhere. So you pick up the controller, unplug it, wrap the cable around the controller, then set it aside or even put it in a box. Maybe you even disconnect the console and wrap the video cable around the console. But did you know that doing that can damage the plastics? In this blog post, I’ll show you a better way to store game controllers and consoles neatly without the risk of damage.

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Hash collisions in computer security

Hash collisions in computer security

Last week, Robin of the YouTube channel 8-bit Show and Tell wondered out loud on Twitter why Chrome flags Netracer 1.1, a modern indie Commodore 64 game, as malware. I think this is a classic case of hashing algorithms having gone wrong. In this blog post, I’ll explain what a hash collision is, using this collision of my hobby of retro computing and my day job of information security as an example.

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80s computer brands

80s computer brands

A small number of 80s computer brands are the same as today, but a lot more companies played in the field than now. Profit margins were higher then, so industry consolidation wasn’t the matter of survival that it is now. You might be surprised to see all of the most popular computer brands of today were around in the 80s. But many popular 1980s computers no longer exist in any form.

There’s a human element to 80s computing that the 90s erased. In this list, besides the familiar stories, you’ll find a computer designed by an engineer who grew up in public housing, computers designed by two women, and a company that didn’t survive its CEO dying in a car crash celebrating its IPO. While some survived the 80s and into the 90s or even today, others only lasted a few years. The 1980s were a make or break time, and many broke.

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