Author: Dave Farquhar

On April 23, 1987, Thomas Rattigan drove to work just as he would any other day. But when he arrived at Commodore’s office building in suburban Philadelphia that morning, company guards informed him he’d been fired. They escorted him from the premises, not even giving him a chance to gather his family photos from his desk. It sounded like a cruel April Fool’s joke, but it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. That was the day Commodore promoted him, on April Fool’s Day 1986.

Rattigan ended up having the last laugh, although it took a few years.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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April 1, 1999 was no April Fool’s joke for Mark Cuban. On that day, he sold his company, broadcast.com, to Yahoo for $5.7 billion and became a billionaire. The deal doesn’t make a lot of sense today, but at the time, it was possible to see what Yahoo was thinking. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban did fine for himself, buying sports teams and starring on TV’s Shark Tank.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Quantum was one of several hard drive manufacturers who thrived in the shadow of Seagate and Western Digital in the late 1980s and through the 1990s. On March 31, 2001, Quantum merged with Maxtor, another smaller, independent drive manufacturer. The $1.3 billion acquisition made Maxtor larger than Seagate, however briefly. But the expected $6 billion in annual revenue for the combined company never panned out.

I made no secret about my high regard for Quantum hard drives back when they were new. But Quantum hard drives are notorious in the retro community today. I think I can explain what’s going on.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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The K5 is AMD’s first x86 processor to be developed entirely in-house. Introduced March 27, 1996, its primary competition was Intel’s Pentium microprocessor. The K5 was an ambitious design, closer to a Pentium Pro internally than a Pentium. However, the final product was closer to the Pentium regarding performance, although faster clock-for-clock compared to the Pentium. The “K” in the name K5 stood for Kryptonite. AMD, being an underdog compared to Intel, hoped the K5 be the undoing for the Superman-like Intel.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Steven Anthony Ballmer, born March 24, 1956, served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. Today he is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Steve Ballmer’s personal wealth is around $145 billion, making him the tenth-richest person in the world. Together with Gates, their personalities defined Microsoft’s public image for about 30 years.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

It’s a meme from the turn of the century, an irony to end all ironies. The cheapest computers on the market at the time, which were arguably obsolete the day before you bought them, had stickers on the front bragging they were never obsolete. Of course I’m talking about the eMachines Never Obsolete marketing campaign. Emachines was for a time a very popular line of inexpensive PCs, and the company held its initial public offering March 23, 2000, after selling 2 million PCs in 1999.

Now, what eMachines said and what they meant by never obsolete were two very different things, but if anything that just made the stickers more ludicrous.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

CPUs didn’t have brand names, besides the manufacturer, until the 1990s. They had part numbers and clock speeds. Frequently we shortened the part numbers. The 486’s full part number was 80486. The courts wouldn’t let Intel trademark a number, so the 486 was the last CPU of its kind, raising the question: What came after 486?

The follow-up for the 486 was the Pentium, at least in Intel’s case, and it was introduced March 22, 1993. But several companies made 486 CPUs, and several of those released their own follow-ups to the 486, including AMD and Cyrix.

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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net