David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
The Vortex86 is a system on a chip or system on module that is starting to gain popularity in retro computing circles. It powers the ITX Llama, Tiny Llama, and Pixel x86 retro revival projects. I’ve seen it described as a Pentium Pro-like CPU that can run DOS and Windows software at the kinds of speeds we would have expected in the late 1990s. So what is this system on a chip, and where did it come from? I found out.
Approximately 45 years ago, one of my favorite computer magazines of all time, Compute!, was born. Its first issue was dated Fall 1979, was printed in October, and reached reader’s hands in late October or early November.
I saw some discussion about the Asus SP97-V motherboard recently. This happens to be one of my favorite socket 7 motherboards, and I used it in a good number of builds in 1997 and 1998. Initially, I was nervous about this board and the SIS 5598 chipset, but in the long run, it didn’t give me any problems. I share the opinion that it is a very underrated board.
30 years ago today, on November 1, 1994, AOL pulled the plug on Quantum Link. Quantum Link was a Commodore-oriented online service that was the direct ancestor of AOL. That makes today as good of a time as any to explore a tantalizing historical missed opportunity. Commodore could have owned AOL, a company that at its peak had a $200 billion valuation. Commodore, meanwhile, famously never reached its stated goal of $1 billion in annual sales.
In October 2024, Jay Dyer appeared on a podcast called Attwood Unleashed, in episode 178. He made some serious allegations tying Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, and potentially even Sean Combs, back to the dotcom boom. Perhaps back to the very beginning of the dotcom boom. But some of his statements are problematic.
A few years back, an acquaintance asked me if I could recommend a VPN. And I’m afraid I didn’t give the best advice, so I want to recant and remedy that now. I think there are some misconceptions about what a VPN can and can’t do for you, so you may decide you don’t actually need one. But if you do need one, there is one and only one specific VPN I recommend. In this blog post, I’ll tell you how I came to choose this specific VPN service.
David Bunnell was the founder of three of the most successful computer magazines of all time. He even edited two of them simultaneously, straddling two very different worlds.
He was not only a pioneer of tech journalism, he is one of the all-time greats. Bunnell wasn’t just a great tech journalist. He would have been great in any specialty. I am sad to say they don’t make them like him anymore.
Released October 6, 1988, MS-DOS 4.0 is the forgotten DOS. As such, modern hobbyists are often curious about it. Why did so few people use it?
It was eagerly anticipated and was years in the making, so it’s fair to say DOS 4 was a letdown. It’s a misnomer to say no one shipped PCs with it and no one used it, just like it’s a misnomer to say no one used Windows Vista. But it’s very apt to compare DOS 4.0 with Windows Vista and there were very valid reasons to avoid it in the 1988-90 timeframe. It’s also fair to be curious about it.
Today I want to talk about a concept called learned helplessness, something that was widely studied and taught in the 1980s, but seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit today, although I certainly see it happening today. Computer security, especially the fields of vulnerability management and patch management, are very prone to learned helplessness. The good news is, it’s possible to overcome.