Comments for The Silicon Underground

Comment on Weekend content through the end of 2026 by Tom

Tom — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:26:56 +0000

I didn’t realize you were posting as often as you are. For whatever reason, not all of your RSS feed is showing up in Feedly.

Comment on Weekend content through the end of 2026 by Gary Osborne

Gary Osborne — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 13:35:00 +0000

Viva Dave! Keep on keeping on !

Comment on When Internet Explorer passed Netscape for the first time by Luyd Freitas

Luyd Freitas — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:36:58 +0000

It shocks me how inert people were in continuing to adopt Internet Explorer back then; it was clearly an outdated browser and a cesspool of spyware, clearly designed to have zero security and deviate from web standards.

As soon as Firefox came out, I tested it on my old Pentium 2 with Windows 98, and it ran perfectly. When I upgraded to Windows 2000, I noticed that it improved performance even on an older system, so I’ve abandoned IE forever since then.

Comment on First DVD player announced Sept 26, 1996 by Frank

Frank — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:16:03 +0000

I am not a hunter and gatherer, so hording videos was not my thing. Regardless which media.
I was waiting for the first HDD recorder and jumped the moment the first one poped up in a shop.
Was roling my eyes when sales guys tried to sell DVD recorders while HDD recorders stood side by side. ?

Comment on Microsoft 6502 Basic released as open source Sept 3, 2025 by Steve Aubrey

Steve Aubrey — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:13:56 +0000

I didn’t grow up with Ohio Scientific, but I had one in college. C1P, and I convinced my parents to splurge and get it with 8k memory, instead of the default 4. Simple Basic programming, and using the question mark instead of spelling out “PRINT” (saves memory). Finally sold it to another student. The good old days – much better in the rear-view mirror than they were at the time.

Comment on First DVD player announced Sept 26, 1996 by Luyd Freitas

Luyd Freitas — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:38:29 +0000

In reply to Jon. Looking back, I see that if the industry had adopted HD DVD, we might have extended the lifespan of physical media; it was cheaper to implement and cheaper to manufacture—both the players and the discs. Of course, Blu-ray came along to revolutionize the market and seemed like alien technology when it first appeared, but from an economic standpoint, HD DVD might have been the better long-term option.

Comment on First DVD player announced Sept 26, 1996 by Luyd Freitas

Luyd Freitas — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:36:38 +0000

The funniest thing is the variation in bitrate a DVD can have from one video to another, not to mention the diversity of audio codecs.

I have DVDs with bitrates under 4500 kbps, while others almost hit the 10 Mbps limit; regarding audio codecs, I have live concert DVDs with a mix of AC3 and DTS, and others that even include uncompressed PCM tracks.

Nowadays, I have all my DVDs digitized on my PC and converted to H.264/AAC (using AC3 for 5.1 tracks).

Comment on IBM PS/2 series by JD Mathewson

JD Mathewson — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 01:35:45 +0000

I remember those Model 50s were everywhere for a time

Comment on First DVD player announced Sept 26, 1996 by Jon

Jon — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 20:41:03 +0000

The YouTuber Asianiometry has just published a fascinating video about the advent of DVD. I never realised a format war was narrowly averted between Sony & Philips backing one standard versus Toshiba & Time Warner with a competitor. Apparently IBM was instrumental in brokering an agreement between the two.

Comment on Computer Reset, Dallas by Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:35:32 +0000

In reply to Mayhaym. That's good to hear. Processor Magazine was always as niche as you could get, but if you need the kind of ephemeral information it contained, it's a gold mine.