The Silicon Underground

How the Vectrex game console sunk a 124-year-old company

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 04 May 2026 11:00:08 +0000

On May 4, 1984, Milton Bradley, a leading producer of board games for 124 years, agreed to sell itself to Hasbro. Changes in the way people played games in the 80s, especially kids, put pressure on the company. In this

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Microsoft’s open sourcing of 86-DOS and what it means

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 03 May 2026 17:20:17 +0000

On April 28, 2026, Microsoft unexpectedly open sourced 86-DOS. This is the direct ancestor to PC DOS 1.0. I’ve written a number of things about the controversies around PC DOS 1.0 and early versions of MS-DOS, so of course I

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Ad Lib bankruptcy: May 1, 1992

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 01 May 2026 11:00:55 +0000

Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval in Quebec City. Ad Lib’s best known product was an eponymously

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Why Commodore went bankrupt in 1994

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:52 +0000

On April 29, 1994, Commodore announced it was bankrupt and was going out of business. Its demise was a long time coming. Arguably it had been inevitable for 10 years. But the reasons Commodore went bankrupt are often oversimplified and

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What happened to Palm Pilots?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:00:46 +0000

Palm was a high-flying brand in the late 1990s, creating the first really popular personal data assistant. Then it seemed to vanish almost as quickly as it came. What happened to Palm Pilots, and the company who made them? On

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TRS-80 Model 100

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:03:48 +0000

The TRS-80 Model 100 was an early laptop computer manufactured by Kyocera in Japan and marketed in North America by Radio Shack. Kyocera’s own version, the Kyotronic-85, didn’t set any sales records. But the TRS-80 Model 100 and the line

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How Xerox invented the GUI and lost it

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:00:32 +0000

Xerox is a company that people who want to sound smart or to sound visionary should be familiar with. In the 1960s, Xerox was a company that seemed to own the future, in a position similar to the position Apple

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Apple IIc: A smaller, sleeker Apple II from 1984

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The Apple IIc was the 4th computer in the Apple II line, introduced April 24, 1984. It was a bit of a departure from the earlier Apple II machines. The Apple II, II+, and IIe were strictly desktop computers. The

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The first Youtube video

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:00:39 +0000

The first Youtube video went live April 23, 2005. Titled “Me at the zoo,” it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. You can still view it on the site. The same day, Youtube launched a public beta.

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When Escom bought Commodore

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:00:02 +0000

Escom acquired Commodore on April 22, 1995 for $14 million. At the time, it seemed like Commodore’s long nightmare might be over. The Amiga had a new owner. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way. Escom: Well known in Europe,

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