Intel Pentium Pro: How it could succeed and fail simultaneously

Intel Pentium Pro: How it could succeed and fail simultaneously

Intel’s Pentium Pro was the successor to the very successful Pentium. It was the direct ancestor of the much more successful Pentium II. But you’ll find mixed opinions of the chip. In this blog post, I will cover how the Pentium Pro could be both a failure and a triumph simultaneously.

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CMD FD-2000 and 4000: High density and beyond for the C-64

CMD FD-2000 and 4000: High density and beyond for the C-64

In 1992, the Commodore 64 was fading. You may be surprised to hear it was still the number three gaming computer in terms of market share in the United States, but its growth years were in the distant past. That year, a new third party disk drive appeared or the C-64. Sometimes when you do something for the last time, you don’t realize it will be the last. In this case, I think everyone knew these drives were the end of the line. But what a finale they were.

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Franklin Computer: Rise and fall and reinvention

Franklin Computer: Rise and fall and reinvention

In 1981, a Philadelphia-area company called Franklin Computer had a good idea that didn’t work out so well for them. They decided to clone Apple computers. They ended up on the wrong end of a landmark lawsuit and yet they succeeded at reinventing themselves. In this blog post, I will go through the rise and fall and rebirth of Franklin Computer Corporation.

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Commodore 1670 modem 1200

Commodore 1670 modem 1200

It was 1985. Just 3 years before, Commodore had made telecommunications affordable, releasing the first modem on the market that retailed for $100. They weren’t just making it possible to live in the future, they were making it affordable. But the industry was passing them by. Commodore needed to catch up, and the 1670 modem 1200 was what they came up with.

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UMC Green CPU: The forbidden 486

UMC Green CPU: The forbidden 486

Clock for clock, the best 486 was a CPU you might not have been able to buy and may very well have never heard of. Aside from Intel, AMD, and Cyrix, there was a fourth 486 family that didn’t get very far due to legal issues: the UMC Green 486 CPU. In this blog post, we will cover what made this 486 so special and what made this forbidden 486 illegal.

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Maverick: Final-generation C-64 copier

Maverick: Final-generation C-64 copier

When I wrote my blog post about Fast Hack’em, a fair number of C-64 fans said they preferred Maverick. I seem to recall a lot of those kinds of conversations in the ’80s as well.

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Why SID chips go bad sitting on a shelf

Why SID chips go bad sitting on a shelf

The distinctive thing about the Commodore 64 was its custom chips. And while the VIC-II chip provided competitive graphics, the 64’s secret weapon was the sound interface device, also known as the SID. The Mastermind behind the SID was a young chip designer named Robert Yannes, who went on to found the synthesizer company Ensoniq. But the chips frequently fail today and the problem is getting worse. Here’s why 6581 SID chips can go bad just sitting on a shelf.

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First CD burner: Sony, Yamaha, or Philips?

First CD burner: Sony, Yamaha, or Philips?

What was the first CD burner? It seems like a straightforward question, but I had a hard time finding a straight answer. The first CD burner in the modern sense was released in 1991. And I think it was either Yamaha or Sony.

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CD-ROM drives in 286 and 386 PCs

CD-ROM drives in 286 and 386 PCs

I’ve seen a few YouTube videos where people mentioned installing CD-ROM drives in 386 or even 286 computers and getting comments about it. In this blog post, I’ll talk about whether CD ROM drives are an anachronism in a system that old.

And if you’re wondering whether a CD-ROM drive will work in a 286 or 386 PC, I can verify they absolutely do. Just load the same DOS drivers you would on a 486.

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Commodore PLA: The breadbin killer

Commodore PLA: The breadbin killer

The Commodore PLA is one of the most problematic ICs in the Commodore 64. Even in the early 1990s, Commodore parts dealer The Grapevine Group estimated 50% of dead C-64s were due to a bad PLA. In this blog post, we will explore what the PLA was, and we’ll investigate the gremlin that lurks inside some PLAs but not others.

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