The Silicon Underground

Jay Miner, Atari and Amiga computer designer

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:00:34 +0000

I’m just going to put this out there. Jay Miner is my hero. He designed the Atari 2600 game console, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the Amiga computer. But he made contributions to humanity outside of that, working on medical

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Windows ME released June 19, 2000

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:34 +0000

Windows Millenium Edition, or Windows Me or Windows ME, was released June 19, 2000. It was the successor to Windows 98 SE and Microsoft’s least successful operating system since the late 1980s. It was Microsoft’s last operating system based on

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How a Microsoft product from June 1979 led to the IBM PC

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:00:33 +0000

June 1979 is a significant month in history for Microsoft for two reasons. That month, they crossed the threshold of an installed base of 200,000 on its flagship 8080 Basic. And on June 18, 1979, Microsoft released a version of

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Apple Disk II launched June 1978

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:00:37 +0000

The Apple Disk II, first released in June 1978 about a year after the Apple II computer, is a great story of a genius inventor outsmarting The Man to deliver affordable disk-based storage to the masses, liberating them from the

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GIF’s June 1987 debut

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:00:09 +0000

On June 16, 1987, the GIF file format made its debut. That’s right, GIF predates the modern Internet. The first web browsers supported GIF because it was already very popular in the early 1990s and well supported. The problem GIF

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Intel’s Pentium FDIV bug and recall

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:00:57 +0000

On June 13, 1994, a mathematics professor discovered a bug in Intel’s then-new Pentium CPU. Intel’s new CPU was fast, but it couldn’t divide correctly. The bug became known as the Pentium FDIV bug. It resulted in Intel recalling 60

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The failed 3Com and US Robotics merger

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:00:56 +0000

On June 12, 1997, 3Com and US Robotics merged at a cost of $8.5 billion. At the time, it was the merger of the two biggest names in their respective fields, and it seemed poised to become a telecommunications giant.

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Texas Instruments Speak and Spell

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:00:54 +0000

My first experience with a computer wasn’t with a desktop machine or a game console. It was with an orange handheld device called a Texas Instruments Speak and Spell. Many Gen Xers born in the early 70s can probably say

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Apple II: Launched June 10, 1977

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:00:19 +0000

On June 10, 1977, Apple launched the Apple II, one of the first pre-built desktop computers. It went on to sell about 6 million units over the course of the next 17 years, making it the longest lived and most

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Eagle Computer: The rise and fall of an early PC clone

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:00:01 +0000

When it comes to 80s computer brands, few flew as high as Eagle Computer flew in 1983. The aptly named company was selling 12,000 computers a month and had been doubling sales every quarter under the leadership of a talented

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