Retro Computing

Laser 128 computer

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Laser 128 computer

The Laser 128 computer was an Apple II-compatible home computer manufactured by Video Technologies Ltd in Hong Kong and sold in the 1980s. It was available via mail order and in some retail stores like Sears. In spite of the name, there wasn’t anything optical about it. The name “laser” just sounded like high technology in the 1980s.

The Laser 128 was an Apple II clone most noteworthy for not violating any of Apple’s copyrights. It blended some of the features of both the Apple IIe and IIc computers, improving significantly on the IIc in the process.

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RAM Doubler remembered

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Software
RAM Doubler remembered

RAM Doubler was a fairly popular product for Macintosh computers in the 1990s. But you can’t buy it today, and if it seems like it’s been a while since you’ve seen or heard of it, there’s a reason for it. Ironically, it was a competing product that didn’t work that brought it down. Here’s what happened to RAM Doubler.

RAM Doubling products worked by setting aside an area of memory and compressing it, then decompressing it when you needed it. It was a form of virtual memory, theoretically faster than traditional virtual memory that used disk space, but less stable.

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Tales of computer retail past

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Tales of computer retail past

Somehow I escaped doing helpdesk or phone support early in my career. But I didn’t escape selling computers at retail at Best Buy. And since this was the 90s, I have some good stories. Some of them happened to me. Some happened to coworkers. None of them should be true.

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Timex Sinclair 2068: the ZX Spectrum’s ill-fated twin

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Timex Sinclair 2068: the ZX Spectrum’s ill-fated twin

The Timex Sinclair 2068 was the US version of the much more popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the most successful home computers of the 1980s in the UK. The 2068 unfortunately didn’t match its British brother’s success.

Timex withrew from the US computer market in February 1984, soon after the release of the Timex Sinclair 2068, one of the early casualties of the home computer wars. The 2068 proved to be the last of Timex’s home computers.

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What is a phreaker in hacking or IT terms?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, security
What is a phreaker in hacking or IT terms?

What is a phreaker in hacking or IT terms? Phreaking is largely obsolete and doesn’t happen much anymore, but it’s an important historical concept in computer security. While phreaking wasn’t the first form of hacking, it’s probably the first example of hacking in a modern sense.

Phreaking was hacking the phone system, usually to make long distance calls for free. Some people phreaked for the thrill of it, but many of them did it because they made more long distance calls than they could afford. Two famous phreakers from the 1970s were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the co-founders of Apple.

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Bobson Dugnutt: The man, the meme, the legend

Dave Farquhar Baseball, Retro Computing
Bobson Dugnutt: The man, the meme, the legend

Bobson Dugnutt was a fictional baseball player in the 1994 console game Fighting Baseball, the Japanese version of MLBPA baseball published by EA. He was a bench player for the Milwaukee franchise, a backup outfielder and pinch hitter.

Lack of a license to use the real names of baseball players led to a Japanese baseball game where they made up American names, with uneven results. Bobson Dugnutt was the most absurd name in the meme inspired by the game Fighting Baseball.

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Repair damaged PCB traces with wire

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing
Repair damaged PCB traces with wire

I had a 286 motherboard from the late 1980s with battery damage. A leaky battery corroded two traces completely through, severing them and rendering the board inoperable. Here’s how I repaired the damaged PCB traces with wire.

Fixing broken traces is a bit of a lost art, because it’s easier to just swap the board. But when the board is rare and/or expensive, it makes sense to repair the broken traces instead. These types of repairs can be a bit intimidating, but they’re easier than replacing a chip. And then you’ve saved a scarce board from oblivion.

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Monitor for Commodore 64

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Monitor for Commodore 64

What was the most popular Commodore 64 monitor? What’s the best one today? Those aren’t quite as straightforward questions as they might seem. While there are a small number of clear-cut favorites, the truth is there were lots of different monitors C-64 users used in the 80s. And there are lots of options today too.

The “proper,” period-correct monitor for a Commodore 64 is the brown 1701 or 1702 for the breadbin-style C-64, or the beige 1802 for the streamlined C-64C. But there were lots of other third-party monitors, and many people used television sets.

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How to pronounce GIF: JIF or GIF?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
How to pronounce GIF: JIF or GIF?

I thought the debate ended when the file format went obsolete, but then GIF came back as an animated file format. And with it came the argument of how to pronounce GIF. Is it JIF or GIF?

Steve Wilhite, the inventor of the file format, pronounced it JIF, and in the 80s, so did just about everyone else. In the mid 90s, pronouncing it like GIFT without the “T” became common, the logic being that the “G” stands for “Graphics,” not “Jraphics.”

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Extend case panel connectors easily and cheaply

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing
Extend case panel connectors easily and cheaply

Sometimes when you’re fitting a motherboard into a case, especially an aftermarket board into a name-brand case, the connectors for the panel LEDs and switches don’t match up with the board. You can usually rewire it fairly easily, but extending them means splicing the wires. But there’s an easier solution, and it’s cheap. Here’s how to rewire or extend case front panel connectors with plug-in connectors.

I ran into this on my IBM PC/AT. Its HDD connector wasn’t long enough to reach an ISA IDE card because it was designed for a full-length card. And the LED for the power light didn’t reach either. The problem is less rare with recent hardware, but not non-existent.

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