I was catching up on security podcasts this week, and a brief statement in one of them really grabbed me. The panel was talking about people who steal online gaming accounts, I think. The exact content isn’t terribly important–what’s very important is what this person found in the forums where the people who perform this [...]
All posts tagged commodore
“They were bored and wished they had a job.”
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 25, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/04/they-were-bored-and-wished-they-had-a-job/
Value Village and Affton could be very good for one another
There’s a Value Village thrift store in Shrewsbury that’s being displaced because the plaza it’s in–the same place I used to go to buy Commodore gear–is going to be demolished to make way for a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Whether Shrewsbury needs a Wal-Mart Supercenter when there’s one six miles away is another question for another day. [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 23, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/04/value-village-and-affton-could-be-very-good-for-one-another/
Collecting parameters
I missed this bit of collecting wisdom from Rob O’Hara when he first posted it last month, but Rob describes his concept of mini-collections to keep his hobbies from taking over his life.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 12, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/04/collecting-parameters/
My earliest memory of using a computer
Gizmodo asked this weekend about earliest computer memories, and illustrated it with a computer that sported a 3.5″ floppy drive. Young whippersnappers. My first memory was in 1981 or 1982. Dad went to see one of his coworkers in his home, and brought me along. He had a son a few years older than me, [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 1, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/04/my-earliest-memory-of-using-a-computer/
Commodore was more than a stock scam
From time to time, I see the phrase “Commodore stock scam” or something similar come up in my search engine logs. Commodore, in case you don’t know, was a high-flying computer company in the 1980s that was literally making computers as quickly as they could sell them while Apple struggled for its survival, and was [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 15, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/03/commodore-was-more-than-a-stock-scam/
Ode to…. the Spartan
The Spartan was an elusive bit of C-64 hardware that made it Apple II+ compatible. Its makers took out full-page ads in all of the Commodore magazines, starting in 1984, if not earlier. The biggest problem with it was that you couldn’t buy one. They finally appeared in 1986, and at that point, no one [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 3, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/03/ode-to-the-spartan/
How abandonware gets abandoned
From time to time on classic computing and/or videogaming forums, the question of how to track down the current copyright holder to a particular given title comes up. Sometimes someone knows the answer. Frequently they don’t. This week, when George Lucas announced he’d sold Lucasfilm to Disney, illustrated precisely how this kind of thing happens.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 1, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/11/how-abandonware-gets-abandoned/
The Byte digital archive
Here’s a treasure trove for retro computing enthusiasts: Archive.org has a collection of digitized issues of Byte magazine available online, free. Numerous archives of vintage computer magazines exist, many of which are of questionable legality so I’ll refrain from saying anything specific about that.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on September 23, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/09/the-byte-digital-archive/
The Rise of Commodore
I found an account of Commodore’s rise to prominence on a vintage computing forum. It’s interesting reading.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/12/the-rise-of-commodore/