Retro Computing Archives - The Silicon Underground

Apple II: Launched June 10, 1977

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:00:19 +0000

On June 10, 1977, Apple launched the Apple II, one of the first pre-built desktop computers. It went on to sell about 6 million units over the course of the next 17 years, making it the longest lived and most

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

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:00:01 +0000

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

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First Commodore PET sold, June 5, 1977

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:00:36 +0000

On June 5, 1977, at the summer Consumer Electronics Show, Commodore had its PET 2001 personal computer on display after showing a prototype at the January 1977 show. Chuck Peddle said Commodore took its first distributor order on that day,

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AMD 486DX4 released June 4, 1995

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:00:58 +0000

On June 4, 1995, AMD released its DX4 CPU, about six months after Intel released its DX4 CPUs. The AMD CPUs weren’t quite as fast as Intel’s DX4s, but they proved very popular because of their value for money. While

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Cyrix 486DLC CPU: Introduced June 1992

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:00:09 +0000

In the first week of June 1992, Cyrix debuted its 486DLC CPU. Cyrix didn’t have its own fabrication plants so they made arrangements with Texas Instruments to manufacture the chips in May 1992. Part of the agreement allowed TI to

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Intel 8088s and non-Intel non-clones

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:00:13 +0000

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

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Why people say CRTs don’t have pixels

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:00:59 +0000

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

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DR DOS: Revenge of CP/M

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:00:33 +0000

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

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AMD K6-2 released May 28, 1998

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:00:16 +0000

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

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Bill Gates’ Internet Tidal Wave Microsoft memo

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:00:05 +0000

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

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