1990s Archives

Home » 1990s » Page 2

1981 Fleer baseball cards

Dave Farquhar Baseball July 20, 2017February 6, 20231950s, 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, 202, 216, 28, 29, 32, 41, 483, 5, 514, 547, 7, 79, AVG, baseball cards, cardinals, cardstock, Fleer, New Jersey, Topps, willie wilson

It’s just my opinion, but I think 1981 Fleer baseball cards get less respect than they deserve. It ended Topps’ 25-year monopoly on baseball cards and, frankly, I think it’s a nicer set than the Topps or Donruss sets from the same year.

Yes, compared to the smooth and polished Topps, the Fleer set at times looked like amateur work. But they didn’t make as many mistakes as fellow upstart Donruss did. And they tried some things with their set that Topps had been unwilling to do. The 1981 Fleer baseball cards got some critical accolades at the time, and frankly I think it’s an underrated ’80s set. It didn’t contribute a lot to the most valuable cards of the 1980s, but it certainly helped shape the decade.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

Most valuable baseball cards of the 1980s

Dave Farquhar Baseball July 10, 2017March 13, 20211980s, 1990s, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, baseball cards, billboard, Cal Ripken, cardstock, Fleer, Jose Canseco, New York, Star Wars, Topps

In the 1980s, almost everyone I knew collected baseball cards, at least briefly. When we think of the 1980s today, baseball cards aren’t what comes to mind but they probably deserve to be up there with video games, Rubik’s cubes, G.I. Joe, and Star Wars. With so many of us buying and preserving cards during that decade’s baseball card bubble, there aren’t a lot of super-valuable cards from the 1980s. But that doesn’t mean all 1980s baseball cards are worthless. So let’s take a look at the most valuable baseball cards of the 1980s.

If you’re like me and thought you’d fund your retirement with baseball cards someday, this could be depressing. More depressing than 1970s baseball card values. Possibly more depressing than 1990s baseball card values, even. But there’s a flip side too. If you didn’t have all of these cards back then, you probably can afford all of them now. None of the most valuable baseball cards of the 1980s are worth what we thought they’d someday be worth.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Using compact flash as a hard drive

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 5, 2017August 1, 20171990s, pentium ii

Old IDE hard drives are slow and unreliable, due to their age. What if I could tell you there’s a cheap, readily available substitute that’s both solid state and faster? There is. Let’s talk about using compact flash as a hard drive.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Why did IBM fail at PCs?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 3, 2017October 4, 20211980s, 1990s, acer, AIX, apple, compaq, datacenter, dell, hp, IBM, intel, lenovo, mainframe, Packard Bell, Personal Computer, proprietary unix, thinkpad, unix, VHS, XT

If you ask why did IBM fail, I assume you mean why did IBM ultimately fail in the personal computer market. IBM is still in business, after all. But its exit from the PC market after 24 years, including a period of dominance in the 1980s, does seem curious. And it raises another question: What does IBM do now?

I experienced IBM’s fall in this market firsthand. I sold computers at retail in 1994 and 1995. IBM’s computers at that time were no worse than anyone else’s, but I had an extremely difficult time selling them. Many consumers didn’t trust IBM and didn’t want to get somehow locked in. There was nothing wrong with those machines, but it sure was a lot easier to just sell them a Compaq.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

The IBM PS/1 (or IBM PS1)

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 27, 2017March 22, 20241990s, acer, amiga, apple, best buy, compaq, dell, IBM, Packard Bell, Personal Computer, playstation, sony, sony playstation, Tandy, tandy 1000, thinkpad, video game

The IBM PS/1, sometimes called the IBM PS1, was a line of 1990s personal computer systems, not to be confused with the Sony Playstation video game console that’s also often called the PS1. The PS/1 was IBM’s second attempt at a mass market consumer PC, after the ill-fated PCjr.

You can neatly divide the PS/1 into two generations. While they ran the same software, they had major philosophical differences. Perhaps more than any other computer line, they represent IBM’s change of heart in the early 1990s as it tried to survive in an extremely competitive and crowded market.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

What is a game cartridge?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 13, 2017April 30, 20241980s, 1990s, atari, atari 2600, cloak and dagger, colecovision, NES, nintendo, pennies on the dollar, radio shack, Top Secret, VCR, video game

What is a game cartridge? If you’re asking, you must not have grown up in the 1980s. But that’s OK. We’re happy to share our generation’s fun with you.

A game cartridge is a plastic case containing a circuit board, a connector, and a ROM chip. CDs and DVDs ultimately displaced them because they offered higher capacity at a lower cost. But in the 1970s and 1980s, the only lasers our game consoles had were the ones they drew on the screens in games about aliens. We liked our cartridges, even if we called them tapes sometimes.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

IBM PS/2 vs PC

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 9, 2017May 7, 20241980s, 1990s, apple, apple ii, asus, compaq, IBM, intel, VGA, x86, XT

The IBM PS/2 line was a fairly radical departure from the older IBM PC line. This was deliberate, as IBM wanted to disrupt the clone industry, which it saw as a threat to its business. Here’s a look back at the IBM PS/2 vs PC, the line it replaced.

IBM succeeded with the PC because it created an ecosystem, not just a PC. IBM’s misstep was creating an open architecture and then trying to close it back up after the fact with the PS/2. In IBM’s defense, it’s not clear whether they knew this at the time. If nothing else, in the case of the IBM PS/2 vs PC, IBM created a classic case study of open architecture vs closed.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

What is a 3D SSD?

Dave Farquhar Hardware June 8, 2017August 1, 20171990s, hp, intel, micron, toshiba, Western Digital

Some SSDs, particularly Western Digital and Sandisk-branded drives, have the words “3D SSD” on the label. This isn’t purely a marketing term. But what is a 3D SSD, exactly?

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Radio Shack computers

Dave Farquhar Retail, Retro Computing May 25, 2017February 5, 20251980s, 1990s, 6502, apple, apple ii, atari, Bill Gates, commodore, commodore 64, compaq, IBM, ibm pcjr, intel, Japan, Missouri, motorola, radio shack, Tandy, tandy 1000

Radio Shack released one of the first home computers, the TRS-80 Model I, in 1977. Between 1977 and 1979, it sold 100,000 units. Radio Shack sold them just as quickly as Tandy could make them. You can count Radio Shack and its parent company Tandy among computer companies that failed, but they enjoyed a good run. For a time, Radio Shack computers, later marketed as Tandy computers, were very popular.

Radio Shack and Tandy computers included the TRS-80 Model I from the inaugural class of 1977, the pioneering Model 100 portable, and the Tandy 1000 series, which helped bring PC clones into homes.

There were several reasons why Radio Shack computers were hard to compete with in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing May 18, 2017April 7, 20251990s, AIX, amiga, apple, best buy, DEC, hp, IBM, intel, linksys, motorola, Orange Book, proprietary unix, unix, windows nt, Windows XP, wrt54g, x86

I’ve talked a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of old milestone operating systems. But what were the advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1? That’s a fair question.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net