Retro Computing Archives

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

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.

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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

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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

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Cringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, Retro Computing August 25, 2013July 17, 20171990s, apple, Apple Lisa, capitalization, IOS, os x, Steve Jobs, unix, windows nt

Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, wrote last week about his disappointment in Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder and CEO.

Here’s the most important part of his quasi-review:

[S]omething happened during Steve’s NeXT years (which occupy less than a 60 seconds of this 122 minute film) that turned Jobs from a brat into a leader, but they don’t bother to cover that. In his later years Steve still wasn’t an easy guy to know but he was an easier guy to know. His gut for product was still good but his positions were more considered and thought out. He inspired workers without trying so much to dominate or hypnotize them.

Indeed. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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What I miss about the old days of computing

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 14, 2013May 16, 20171980s, 1990s, CISO, cloak and dagger, commodore, lifehacker, NES, New Wave

Lifehacker asked this week what graybeards like me (mine gets longer every week) miss about the old days of computing.

I don’t think it’s any single thing. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Rest in peace, PC World

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 12, 2013April 24, 20171990s, commodore, journalism, mizzou, Packard Bell, pc magazine, pc world

The print edition of PC World is no more, and its demise marks the end of the general-interest computer magazine. Former editor Harry McCracken wrote this tribute. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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You can’t collect everything

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Toy trains July 9, 2013November 21, 2018atari, lionel, Lionel Postwar, marx, nintendo, o gauge, postwar lionel, tin, video game, yahoo

There’s been a fairly spirited discussion lately in the always excellent Yahoo Marx Train group about the merits of Marx tin trains versus plastic ones. Some people like them all, some people prefer one or the other, and almost everyone with a preference is apologizing to the people who prefer the other.

That’s part of what makes that group great–the lack of elitism and looking down on others whose preferences differ–but in my mind, there’s no apology necessary because very few hobbyists have the time, space, or budget to collect everything. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Something that shouldn’t be there

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Saving money, security, Toy trains July 7, 2013April 15, 2017amiga, cardinals, computer security, garage sale, garage sales, marx, OPSEC

I was standing in line to get a number for an estate sale this weekend–they’re what I do–and found myself standing a couple of people behind someone who talks too much.

I think some people talk because they want affirmation, and telling tales of what they’ve found is the way they get it. I’m very careful what I talk about, because I frequently see new people who look for exactly the same thing I look for, and if I just give away the knowledge I’ve spent years learning, it literally costs me money. But that’s not how a lot of people think, so if you keep your ears open, you can hear some good information.

Dave Farquhar

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How to build Lifehacker’s retro coffee table on the cheap

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Saving money June 28, 2013December 2, 2015estate sales, lifehacker, pi, playstation, raspberry, Raspberry Pi, SNES

Lifehacker posted a nice weekend project this week, a retro coffee table, but the price tag seems steeper than it needs to be. If you’re craving some retro goodness but think $300 is a bit much to spend to play old video games, I have some ideas for you.

Dave Farquhar

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“Why do we have a server named ‘Vicious?'”

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, War Stories June 10, 2013November 29, 2018IBM, journalism, Missouri, university of missouri, windows nt

My first non-food service, non-retail job was working desktop support for my college, the University of Missouri-Columbia. They were doing a massive computer upgrade and needed some part-time help. When they realized they’d found a journalism student who knew PC hardware and already knew OS/2, they cut the interview short and showed me around. I started work the next day.

My job was, initially, to unbox a few hundred IBM PC 330s and 350s, install network cards and memory, then install OS/2 on them. We had room for me to set up about 10 of them at a time, on long folding tables on opposite sides of a long room. It was lonely work at times, but I got to work with computers, and they were paying me $8 an hour. I liked it better than retail.

After a few days I had enough time to watch the boot process. OS/2 had a facility called Configuruation, Installation and Distribution (CID), similar to Microsoft’s unattended installation that appeared in later versions of Windows NT, that automated much of the process. An administrator configured machines in advance, and then when build time came, I booted off a floppy, entered a computer name, and the process pulled down what it needed from the network. After 30 minutes or so, we had a functional machine. CID probably saved a couple of hours of repetitive work. On this particular day, after I got nine machines going, I watched the 10th go through its the CID process. I noticed the machine kept addressing a server named \\VICIOUS.

Dave Farquhar

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