Author: Dave Farquhar

Intel Pentium II introduced May 7, 1997

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing 8 Comments
Intel Pentium II introduced May 7, 1997

29 years ago, on May 7, 1997, Intel introduced its Pentium II processor. It wasn’t the first followup to the very successful Pentium. But the Pentium II overcame problems with the Pentium Pro that kept it from gaining more widespread mainstream acceptance.

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Adobe’s subscription model

Dave Farquhar Software 10 Comments
Adobe’s subscription model

Before May 2013 there was always question about whether you actually owned software after you paid for it. But before May 6, 2013, you certainly had more control. That was the day Adobe switched to a subscription-only model for its creative software. Other companies followed suit, notably Microsoft with its office suite.

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First desktop computer: Datapoint 2200

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing 1 Comment
First desktop computer: Datapoint 2200

The first desktop computer dates to earlier than you probably think. And officially at least, it was an accident. Great inventions often are. But it was surprisingly similar to desktop computers that followed it.

Design work on the first desktop computer commenced in 1969, and it hit the market in May 1970. Yes, you read that right. It predated the Apple II  and even the Altair 8800 by several years, and the IBM Personal Computer and IBM compatibles by more than a decade. And it wasn’t built in Silicon Valley either. But this ahead-of-its-time oddball is the direct ancestor of your modern desktop or laptop computer, right down to the Intel processor design.

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How the Vectrex game console sunk a 124-year-old company

Dave Farquhar 1980s, Retro Gaming
How the Vectrex game console sunk a 124-year-old company

On May 4, 1984, Milton Bradley, a leading producer of board games for 124 years, agreed to sell itself to Hasbro. Changes in the way people played games in the 80s, especially kids, put pressure on the company. In this blog post, I’ll explain how changing times led Milton Bradley to make a transformational bet at the worst possible time that ultimately sunk the maker of the game Battleship, and what happened to what was left of Milton Bradley.

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Microsoft’s open sourcing of 86-DOS and what it means

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Microsoft’s open sourcing of 86-DOS and what it means

On April 28, 2026, Microsoft unexpectedly open sourced 86-DOS. This is the direct ancestor to PC DOS 1.0. I’ve written a number of things about the controversies around PC DOS 1.0 and early versions of MS-DOS, so of course I need to say something about this, even if I’m a few days late.

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Ad Lib bankruptcy: May 1, 1992

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Ad Lib bankruptcy: May 1, 1992

Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval in Quebec City. Ad Lib’s best known product was an eponymously named sound card, the first add-on sound card for the IBM PC and compatibles to achieve widespread acceptance. It became a de facto standard.

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Why Commodore went bankrupt in 1994

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Why Commodore went bankrupt in 1994

On April 29, 1994, Commodore announced it was bankrupt and was going out of business. Its demise was a long time coming. Arguably it had been inevitable for 10 years. But the reasons Commodore went bankrupt are often oversimplified and misunderstood.

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What happened to Palm Pilots?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
What happened to Palm Pilots?

Palm was a high-flying brand in the late 1990s, creating the first really popular personal data assistant. Then it seemed to vanish almost as quickly as it came. What happened to Palm Pilots, and the company who made them? On April 28, 2010, HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion, with big plans to use its tech to compete directly with Apple. That didn’t go to plan, so you’re not reading this on a Palm-based phone or tablet. But the tech may be hiding in plain sight elsewhere in your home.

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TRS-80 Model 100

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
TRS-80 Model 100

The TRS-80 Model 100 was an early laptop computer manufactured by Kyocera in Japan and marketed in North America by Radio Shack. Kyocera’s own version, the Kyotronic-85, didn’t set any sales records. But the TRS-80 Model 100 and the line it spawned proved widely successful in the United States.

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How Xerox invented the GUI and lost it

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
How Xerox invented the GUI and lost it

Xerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple or Nvidia are in today. The Xerox name was synonymous with photocopying. In the days before digital document retrieval, every office had at least one photocopy machine. Xerox was in the enviable position of its trademark being a verb. If I said I was xeroxing, people knew exactly what I was doing. But Xerox famously invented the GUI and got very little for its invention.

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