The Silicon Underground

Spyglass: A web browsing pioneer’s IPO

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 11:00:08 +0000

Quick: Who was the first browser manufacturer to hold an IPO in the dotcom era? Netscape? WRONG! Its competitor Spyglass beat it out, holding its IPO June 27, 1995. Its IPO did rather well too, issuing two million shares at

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VA Linux’s transformation after leaving the hardware business

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:00:22 +0000

In the wake of the dotcom bubble bursting, the record-setting startup VA Linux made a difficult decision. On June 26, 2001, it exited the hardware business. It was a curious decision but probably the right decision, because it survived nearly

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Windows 98 shipped June 25, 1998

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:00:44 +0000

It was late and it was overhyped. But it was better than Windows 95. On June 25, 1998, Microsoft shipped Windows 98, and while it didn’t get the fanfare Windows 95 did, it was better than Windows 95. And if

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What went wrong with 3DO

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 11:00:40 +0000

3DO sounded like a great premise. Several great minds came together to design a game console that they could license to any consumer electronics manufacturer who wanted to make it. It could have been the VHS or the IBM PC clone

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AMD Athlon: AMD’s game changing CPU from 1999

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:00:54 +0000

On June 23, 1999, AMD announced its much anticipated Athlon CPU, the successor to its very successful K6. It launched less than two months later, on August 9, 1999. The Athlon proved to be the CPU that separated AMD from

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Jay Miner, Atari and Amiga computer designer

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:00:34 +0000

I’m just going to put this out there. Jay Miner is my hero. He designed the Atari 2600 game console, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the Amiga computer. But he made contributions to humanity outside of that, working on medical

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Windows ME released June 19, 2000

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:34 +0000

Windows Millenium Edition, or Windows Me or Windows ME, was released June 19, 2000. It was the successor to Windows 98 SE and Microsoft’s least successful operating system since the late 1980s. It was Microsoft’s last operating system based on

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How a Microsoft product from June 1979 led to the IBM PC

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:00:33 +0000

June 1979 is a significant month in history for Microsoft for two reasons. That month, they crossed the threshold of an installed base of 200,000 on its flagship 8080 Basic. And on June 18, 1979, Microsoft released a version of

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Apple Disk II launched June 1978

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:00:37 +0000

The Apple Disk II, first released in June 1978 about a year after the Apple II computer, is a great story of a genius inventor outsmarting The Man to deliver affordable disk-based storage to the masses, liberating them from the

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GIF’s June 1987 debut

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:00:09 +0000

On June 16, 1987, the GIF file format made its debut. That’s right, GIF predates the modern Internet. The first web browsers supported GIF because it was already very popular in the early 1990s and well supported. The problem GIF

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