David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Commodore went through a revolving door of executives after Jack Tramiel resigned due to conflicts with Irving Gould. On October 6, 1987, it was Max Toy’s turn. On that day, Commodore hired him. And for a while, it seemed like Max Toy might be the one to turn the company around. In this blog post, we’ll explore what was different, and what wasn’t so different about him.
It was 50 years ago this month, in October 1974, that Creative Computing, one of the greatest computer magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, made its debut.
It was 44 years ago this week that the Ethernet standard was first proposed. That makes today a good day to talk about what I do to bring mystery jumperless plug and play ISA Ethernet cards back from the dead.
What do you do if you are an Intel competitor in 1995, facing an aggressive marketing campaign spinning 5th generation CPUs as a necessity, and your own 5th generation CPU is 18 months away from delivery? You hot rod a 486 CPU core, call it 5th generation, and hope for the best. That is what the AMD 5×86 CPU, announced in late September 1995, was. AMD released it in November of that year.
The number of Amigas Commodore sold has always been controversial. There is no question it was less successful than the Commodore 64, no question it was less successful than the PC clone ecosystem, and every possibility it sold fewer units than IBM sold on its own. But the number Commodore sold has always been a mystery, and it turns out I’ve been telling people the wrong number.
On September 24, 2001, Napster settled a lawsuit with the RIAA for $26 million. This effectively ended Napster as an MP3 file sharing service but other similar services soon appeared in its place. Attempts to turn itself into a subscription-based service failed and it liquidated less than a year later.
It’s September, and that means Septandy. That makes today as good of a day as any to talk about 80 Microcomputing (later shortened to 80 Micro), one of the most successful of the early computer magazines. It also featured an innovation that changed the direction of the industry for good.
41 years ago today, on September 13, 1983, Osborne Computer Corporation, one of the early makers of CP/M computers and a pioneer in portable computing, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Although it was able to secure funding and emerge from bankruptcy in January 1985, Osborne never fully recovered and was out of business by early 1986.
Jerry Sanders was a cofounder and the longtime CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, one of the longest running manufacturers of CPUs. He and eight other former Fairchild employees founded AMD in 1969. Sanders was born September 12, 1936, making this is as good of a day as any to look back on his career.
We’ll pause my regular content for a moment to take a look back at an old R.E.M. song, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth,” that saw its release 30 years ago today. I still remember the first time I heard it. And the third or fourth. It was an event.