Retro Computing

Floppy cable doesn’t fit? Here’s the fix.

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Floppy cable doesn’t fit? Here’s the fix.

If you go to change or add drives in a vintage PC and your floppy cable doesn’t fit, there could be several reasons for it. Here’s what to do about it when this happens.

PC floppy cables are all 34 pins, but they can have several different ways of keying so you don’t plug them in wrong. This can cause physical compatibility issues that may require modifying the cable so it will plug into your motherboard.

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Which Commodore power supplies are safe to use

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Which Commodore power supplies are safe to use

The stock Commodore 64 power supply was notorious. I can’t overstate how big of a piece of junk it was. It was terrible in Commodore’s heyday and it’s no better now. If you have a Commodore 64 and want to keep it working, you need to consider which Commodore power supplies are safe to use, and make sure you have a good one. Otherwise, at the very least, you need to consider repair and protection for your vintage supply to prevent damage to your 64.

If your Commodore-branded power supply doesn’t have the Commodore logo in the corner of the unit, like part number 390205-01 for the 64 or part number 310416-06 for the 128, you have to assume it’s unsafe to use. Other Commodore power supplies for the C-64 fail in such a way that they deliver unsafe voltages that cause serious damage to a C-64 motherboard.

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Computerland: Pioneering national computer store

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing

Computerland was perhaps the first big computer store to go national. It played an important role in the growth of the computer industry in the 1980s. It faded toward the end of the decade but hung on longer than you might think.

The company’s slogan in the 1980s was “Make friends with the future.”

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What is Lotus Notes? How IT becomes legacy

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
What is Lotus Notes? How IT becomes legacy

Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino were a juggernaut in mid-1990s IT. Some people loved it. Most people put up with it. And then people quit talking about it and thinking about it, even though almost every large organization still has Notes running somewhere. But what is Lotus Notes, and why did it fade from consciousness?

Lotus Notes was a popular software platform for e-mail, calendaring and collaboration in the 1990s. It was programmable and extensible, so many Notes shops created custom applications with it that became business critical. IBM bought it in 1995 for $3.5 billion, but couldn’t keep up with Microsoft’s marketing and the ecosystem that built up around it so it lost market share to Exchange. IBM sold Notes and Domino, its server component, in 2018 to Indian firm HCL for $1.8 billion.

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OS/2 Warp: A tribute

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
OS/2 Warp: A tribute

OS/2 Warp was my operating system of choice for most of the 1990s. It never achieved mass appeal, and I think I know why. But I still liked it anyway. Here’s a look at its advantages and disadvantages.

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Commodore 64 clones

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Commodore 64 clones

The subject of clones was always controversial in Commodore circles, even during Commodore’s heyday. There were no true Commodore 64 clones in the 1980s and 1990s. Why? And would it have made a difference?

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Texas Instruments Home Computer: TI-99/4A

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Texas Instruments Home Computer: TI-99/4A

Texas Instruments was supposed to dominate the home computer market in the 1980s. And on paper they had a good product. But things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to for the Texas Instruments home computer, the TI-99/4A. And that’s why you probably don’t hear as much about it as you’d think you would.

TI entered the personal computer market in 1979 and had some success in the early 1980s. But Apple’s former management literally doesn’t remember competing with it. Yet for a couple million people in the late 70s and early 80s, the TI provided their first experience with a home computer, and any home computer, however flawed, was something special then. So it provided some fond memories for people of a certain age.

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Super Mario Bros Commodore 64 version

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Super Mario Bros Commodore 64 version

For years in the 1980s, there were rumors of a Super Mario Bros Commodore 64 port. Those rumors have persisted to the present day. Not one but two versions of the Nintendo franchise title do indeed exist on the C-64, but both are bootleg in every possible sense of the word.

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Commodore 64 motherboard revisions

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Commodore 64 motherboard revisions

Commodore made the C-64 for about 11 years, so it’s probably no surprise they went through several Commodore 64 motherboard revisions during that time. Collectors enjoy the challenge of trying to get a machine with each type and revision of board, and knowing the characteristics of each board can help someone puzzle out the history of a machine, such as whether it had been repaired in the past.

Commodore made a lot of changes to the 64’s outward appearance over the years, but they made a lot of changes internally as well. This helped them drive the price down from $595 to $149 over the course of about three years.

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Abit BP6: In memoriam

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Abit BP6: In memoriam

Somewhere around here I still have my old Abit BP6 motherboard. Abit is a long-dead manufacturer of enthusiast motherboards, and the BP6 was one of its landmark achievements. It was the first cheap dual-CPU board.

The Abit BP6 is a bit obscure today, but hardware enthusiast sites like Tom’s Hardware Guide were pretty excited about it in 1999.

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