David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
The Intel 8088 CPU made its debut June 1, 1978. It rose to fame as the CPU powering the IBM PC, PC/XT, and tens of millions of PC and XT clones from the 1980s. But did you know Intel wasn’t the only company that manufactured 8088 CPUs? No fewer than nine other companies produced exact copies of the Intel 8088, and they did it with Intel’s cooperation. In this blog post, I’ll explain why.
I keep hearing people say that CRTs don’t have pixels. That is incorrect. We talked about pixels all the time in the 1980s when CRTs were all we had. In this blog post, I will try to clear up the confusion around pixels and the difference in the way CRTs and LCDs handle them.
DR DOS was a third party clone of MS DOS that developed a well-deserved niche following in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even though it was first released May 28, 1988, its copyright date of 1976 suggests some historical significance. Indeed, it was more than just any clone of MS-DOS. Arguably it was both a clone and a predecessor. DR DOS was its own grandpa.
AMD launched its K6-2 microprocessor on May 28, 1998, a little over a year after its predecessor, the K6. The K6-2 built upon the K6, increasing performance to better compete with the Pentium II. Since it still used the Socket 7 architecture, a complete system based on the K6-2 could be quite a bit cheaper than an equivalent Pentium II system.
30 years ago today, on May 26, 1995, Bill Gates wrote a company memo to Microsoft. It was something he did every few years, outlining the company’s top priority. But this one was different. It was a five-alarm fire titled “The Internet Tidal Wave,” warning that the Internet was going to change everything and had the potential to disrupt the current order, displacing Microsoft and other titans of the computer industry.
What happened to Tandy computers? Tandy was a pioneer in the personal computer industry, one of three companies that introduced pre-built, ready to run computers in 1977. And for about 12 years, they were a force to be reckoned with. But depending on how you count it, it came to an end in 1993 or 1995. Here’s what happened to Tandy computers and why they fell so quickly.
In 1989, the Tandy 1000 was still the best selling computer in the world but it was no longer profitable and sales were fading fast. Turnaround efforts failed and on May 26, 1993, Tandy sold its manufacturing operations to AST, another maker of PC clones.
I used AOL before it was AOL. And if you had a Commodore and a modem in the 1980s, you may have too. On May 24, 1985, Control Video reorganized and became Quantumlink, or Q-Link for short, on its way to reinventing itself as an online service for home computers. It opened for business November 5 of the same year.
I hear the question from time to time what the advantages and disadvantages of Windows 3.0 were. Windows 3.0, released May 22, 1990, is generally considered the first usable version of Microsoft Windows. It was certainly the first one to see commercial success. The oft-repeated advice to always wait for Microsoft’s version 3 is a direct reference to Windows 3.0 that still gets repeated today.
Although Windows 3.0 is clumsy by today’s standards, in 1990 it had the right combination of everything to take the world by storm.
Before Microsoft was obsessed with Netscape, it was obsessed with another piece of software: Quicken. Unable to beat it in the marketplace with a clone called Microsoft Money, Microsoft tried to buy its publisher, Intuit, outright. On May 20, 1995, Microsoft and Intuit abandoned that merger over antitrust concerns.
On May 20, 1982, Kaypro shipped its very successful Kaypro II computer, a portable computer that ran CP/M and its associated software. Its main innovation was bundling a selection of popular software with the computer and selling the bundle for less than the combined suggested retail price of the software.