Retro Computing Archives

So just how dangerous is an old, out of date operating system anyway?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 18, 2014May 25, 2020antivirus, AV, Bitcoin, malware, malwarebytes, spyware, windows 2000, windows 7

Glaurung brought up a good point in a comment yesterday. If you never go online and/or you’re really careful, do you really need to update your OS to something new?

In my professional opinion, it depends. Didn’t you know that would be my answer? Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

The trade off of fidelity and convenience in marketing, and how it doomed my favorite company

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 5, 2014July 14, 20171980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, atari 2600, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, kindle, mac os x, macintosh, NES, nintendo, nintendo nes, os x, radio shack, Star Trek, unix

I’m reading a book called Trade-Off, by former USA Today technology columnist Kevin Maney. It’s primarily a marketing book.

Maney argues that all products are a balance of fidelity and convenience, and highly favor one or the other. He additionally argues that failed products fail because they attempted to achieve both, or failed to focus on either one.

An example of a convenient product is an economy car. They’re inexpensive to buy and inexpensive to keep fueled up, but don’t have much glitz and you probably won’t fall in love with it. A high-end sports car or luxury car is a lot less practical, but you’re a lot more likely to fall in love with it, and gain prestige by driving around town in it. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

The high-dollar cardboard box

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Toy trains February 7, 2014July 30, 20171950s, atari, collectibles, lionel, marx, New Jersey, video game, vintage computer

There was one other interesting quote in the Post-Dispatch’s Top 10 collectibles for value this week:

10. Boxes (yes, simple boxes!)
For a starter, wooden boxes of all types with and without locking mechanisms, souvenir boxes, tea boxes, cigar boxes, jewelry, knife boxes and the list goes on for value. If you can put something in it, somebody wants to give you money for it.

Don’t get too excited, but a box doesn’t have to be made of wood to be valuable. Even a cardboard box can have some value, depending on what came in it. But don’t get too excited. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

The Post-Dispatch may be giving the wrong idea about the dollar value of vintage computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 6, 2014September 15, 20251541, 1980s, 1990s, amiga, apple, apple ii, Apple Lisa, collectibles, commodore, commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, compaq, dell, hp, IBM, macintosh, radio shack, recycling, VGA, XT

Disclaimer: I wrote this article back in 2014. I leave it here as a snapshot of the state of how things were in 2014. The situation at the time you are reading this is likely different.

Articles like Top 10 collectibles for value, from the Post-Dispatch this week, frequently make me nervous, mostly because of statements like this one:

[D]id you know that computer parts can bring home cash, too?

Statements like that tend to get people’s hopes up way too high. I find the timing interesting though, seeing as a TRS-80 Model 1 sold at a St. Louis estate sale this past weekend. The estate seller’s reaction? “Normally you can’t give that stuff away.”

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing January 29, 2014September 26, 20221980s, apple, apple ii, christmas, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, ibm pcjr, lenovo, macintosh, mainframe, Personal Computer, radio shack, Tandy, tandy 1000, XT

On January 29, 1984, two computers hit the market. One was Apple’s Macintosh. It needs no introduction. The other was the IBM PCjr. It was a little less successful. We’ll talk about what this has to do with the Tandy 1000 in a minute.

The PCjr is one of the biggest flops in computing history. Few people know much more about it than that. It ended up being an important computer, but it certainly didn’t meet IBM’s expectations. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Hacker chasing, circa 1987

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, security December 12, 2013October 3, 20241980s, 1990s, android, computer security, IBM, irony, Nook Simple Touch, NSA, unix, vulnerability

I’m catching up on reading. Next on my reading list is The Cuckoo’s Egg, (Amazon link), Clifford Stoll’s memoir of chasing down a computer hacker in the late 1980s. In it, he describes a very different world, ruled by mainframes and minicomputers, where Unix was something special, IBM still made PCs, but desktop PCs and Macintoshes only received occasional mention, and academia and the military owned the Internet, almost literally. And, oh, by the way, the Cold War was still raging.

The remarkable thing about this book is that it’s an approachable spy thriller, written in 1989, that explains computer security to an audience that had never seen or heard of the Internet. You don’t have to be a security professional to appreciate it, though it’s a classic in the computer security world–many people read it in the late 1980s and early 1990s and decided to get into the field. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Ctrl-Alt-Del history: non revisionist edition

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, security September 30, 2013April 30, 2023

When it comes to Ctrl-Alt-Del history, there’s a lot of selective memory going on.

Bill Gates said in September 2013 that he regrets the use of Ctrl-Alt-Del as a logon sequence, while David Bradley, the IBM PC engineer who built that feature into the first IBM PC, says he doesn’t know why Microsoft chose to use that sequence for logon anyway.

Both of them, for whatever reason, are forgetting a few things.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Another perspective on Y2K

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing September 18, 2013January 19, 20261960s, 1990s, AOL, compaq, mainframe, pi, raspberry, Raspberry Pi, unix, windows nt

Rob O’Hara stumbled across a stash of Y2K survivalist magazines and wrote about it. I wasn’t going to be surprised if there were some minor glitches, but I wasn’t expecting the apocalypse. I withdrew a couple hundred bucks from the bank a few days in advance and filled my bathtub with water the night before, so I would have a supply of money and water to tide me over if some glitch interrupted either of them for a day or two.

In late 1999, a lot of people said I was being reckless. Today, people think I was being excessively paranoid. It’s funny how perspectives change. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Sculley on Jobs

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing September 11, 2013September 16, 20231980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, Apple Lisa, atari, commodore, IBM, Korea, macintosh, pixar, Steve Jobs, Toy Story

John Sculley famously fired Steve Jobs in September 1985, a move that’s pretty universally panned today. Nearly 28 years later, Forbes asked Sculley about it.

Here’s the money quote:

“He was not a great executive back in those early days. The great Steve Jobs that we know today as maybe the world’s greatest CEO, certainly of our era, he learned a lot in those years in the wilderness.”

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

LOAD “*”,8,1 – what it means

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing August 28, 2013September 27, 20181541, 1571, commodore, commodore 64, IEEE, nintendo, tape drive

The smartest guy in the room cited the Commodore command LOAD “*”,8,1 as something he used for years but never understood why it worked except it was the command he used to load games on his Commodore 64.

So I explained it. Now I can explain it to you too. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net