The Silicon Underground

MSD Super Disk drive for the Commodore 64 and PET

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 01 May 2024 11:00:08 +0000

I saw a YouTube video last week about the MSD super disk drive, and the creator of the video said he couldn’t find any information about the drive. So I figured I would write something about it, since I kind

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Fairchild Channel F: First of its kind

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 11:00:36 +0000

Fairchild isn’t the first name that comes to mind when it comes to video games. Consumer electronics wasn’t really their thing, and that might explain why they lost interest after only 3 years. But it’s easy to forget just how

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Why not use MS-DOS 4.0?

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 11:00:29 +0000

On April 25, 2024, Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 4.0 under an open source license. But it raised an old question. Why do so few people talk about DOS 4.0? Why did so many people skip from DOS

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Marx 55950 train set

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:00:33 +0000

Marx train set 55950 was an electric train set from Marx that W.T. Grant and Spiegel, two large retailers, sold in 1955. It featured Marx’s best locomotive pulling 8-wheel plastic cars. Marx train set 55950 Set #55950 was a higher-end

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FSD-2 Excelerator Plus disk drive

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 11:00:50 +0000

The FSD-2 Excelerator Plus, also known as the Oceanic OC-118, was one of the more successful third party Commodore 1541 clone disk drives. Reviewers at the time liked its compact size, easy ability to change device numbers, external power supply,

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Third generation video game consoles

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 11:00:14 +0000

The third generation of video game consoles was less numerous than the second, with Nintendo and Sega asserting their dominance. But there was more to this generation than Nintendo, Sega, and Atari. After the game console market came back from

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Atari Portfolio: Pioneering palmtop PC

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 11:00:22 +0000

In a 1989 television episode of Computer Chronicles, Stewart Cheifet drove into the camera frame in an MG to start up the episode and said, “A small car and a small computer,” and held up an Atari Portfolio. In this

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Marx train set 3994: A classic combination

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 11:00:43 +0000

The Marx train set 3994 is an early postwar set, dating to 1948-49. A number of retailers sold it, including Sears, Montgomery Ward, and others. It was a mid-priced electric train set, O gauge, headed by a Commodore Vanderbilt Art

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First CD-ROM drive: Philips CM-100

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 11:00:33 +0000

The first CD-ROM drive is generally credited as the Philips CM-100, a product announced in 1985 for the IBM PC/XT. It cost $1,495 when it was new and its requirements were straightforward: An IBM PC/XT with 256K of RAM and

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How to use Commodore disk drives

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:00:54 +0000

If you’ve used other types of computers, Commodore disk drives can be a bit confusing. In this blog post, I will give an overview of the essential commands concepts you will need in order to use Commodore disk drives. All

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