David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Swatch watches were a popular fad in the 1980s, a reaction against the growing popularity of digital watches. The company is still very much alive today, but Generation X will probably always associate the colorful watches with the 80s. But Swatch is more than just a retro icon. It’s also an excellent lesson in product marketing.
As expensive as CGA monitors are, EGA monitors or even more expensive and difficult to come by. But did you know you could do EGA on a CGA monitor, albeit with some caveats? In this blog post, I’ll explain what degree of interoperability CGA and EGA have.
A good question came up in response to my hard to flush toilet blog post. How do you find the overflow in a toilet?
Marx train set 9725, also known as Allstate train set 9725, was an unassuming low end electric train set Marx produced for Sears starting in 1967.
In the late 1980s, Orel Hershiser was one of the best pitchers in Major League baseball. People compared Greg Maddux to him, not the other way around. Nolan Ryan joked he was afraid of him. So why isn’t Orel Hershiser in the Hall of Fame?
’80s jam shorts, or jams, were what you got if you crossed a tropical-themed shirt with a baggy pair of shorts. They were hugely popular in the late 1980s. Originally designed to appeal to surfers, skaters, and punk rockers, they found a fourth niche in an unexpected place.
I was shopping for vinegar the other day and noticed a lot of unanswered questions regarding the difference between cleaning vinegar and distilled white vinegar. In this blog post, I will explain the difference between cleaning vinegar vs distilled vinegar and when it’s okay to substitute and when substitution is dangerous. I’ll also share a trick for saving money.
In both cases, the main ingredient in white vinegar is grain alcohol fermented a second time to form acetic acid.
Variously known as Tipton Electric Company, Tipton Appliances, Tipton Centers Inc., and Tipton Supercenters, Tipton was a St. Louis-based retail store specializing in home appliances and electronics. It had aspirations of going national the way Best Buy and Circuit City did in the late 1980s. But when its stock price faltered, it ended up merging with Silo, another now-defunct home appliance and electronics chain, on August 11, 1987.
Marx train set 9616 was an electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1953 and 1954. But you may also hear collectors refer to it as Happi-Time train set 9616, because that’s what Marx printed on the box.
The most common type of hard drive for most of the 1980s was called MFM. At least that’s what we commonly call them today. That was to distinguish them from a similar type we called RLL. How much difference there was between the two was always a bit controversial. But let’s look at MFM vs RLL hard drives.