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An insider’s view of the Atari ST

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 16, 2008April 8, 20251950s, 1980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, atari st, commodore, electric trains, jack tramiel, Joe Posnanski, lionel, marx, marx trains

I’m sure pretty much everyone who cares has already seen this on Slashdot or wherever, but I found this blog entry from Landon Dyer, one of the designers of the Atari ST, fascinating.

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.

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Commodore’s founder comes out of hiding

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing December 12, 2007December 19, 20241990s, 6502, altair, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, atari st, Bil Herd, Bill Gates, commodore, dell, Digital Research, excel, irving gould, jack tramiel, Mehdi Ali, Microsoft Basic, Steve Wozniak, stock scam, Tandy, vic 20

It’s been said that Ed Roberts of Altair fame was the last person to get the better of Bill Gates in a business deal.

But I’ll say it was Jack Tramiel.

Dave Farquhar

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Why I generally buy AMD

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 24, 2007March 2, 20261980s, 1990s, amd, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, atari st, best buy, Bill Gates, boot disk, Circuit City, commodore, Commodore Amiga, dell, hp, IBM, intel, macintosh, Missouri, motorola, New York, New York City, Packard Bell, radio shack, Tandy, Texas Instruments, TI, unix, vista, windows 2000, windows 98, windows 9x, windows nt, Windows Vista, Windows XP

I was talking to a new coworker today and of course the topic of our first PCs came up. It was Cyrix-based. I didn’t mention my first PC (it seems I’m about four years older–it was an Am486SX2/66).

With only a couple of exceptions, I’ve always bought non-Intel PCs. Most of the Intel PCs I have bought have been used. One boss once went so far as to call me anti-corporate.

I’m not so much anti-corporate as I am pro-competition.

Dave Farquhar

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The almost-was Bill Gates

Dave Farquhar Software October 19, 2004October 3, 20181980s, atari, atari st, Bill Gates, Digital Research, dr dos, Gary Kildall, IBM, intel, pc magazine, QDOS, SCO, video game

Finally, a little bit more detail on the haziest (to me) story in my controversial Why I Dislike Microsoft has appeared: Gary Kildall’s side of the CP/M-QDOS-PC DOS 1.0 story.

The story corroborates what I said, but I wish the story answered more questions.

Dave Farquhar

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Open sourcing code doesn’t necessarily mean people will rush to it

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Software June 23, 2004January 21, 20201980s, amiga, atari, atari st, BSD, Digital Research, freebsd, Gary Kildall, macintosh, mysql

John C. Dvorak wrote a nice layman’s introduction to open source on PCMag.com. But he makes at least one big false assumption.

Dvorak says he’d love to see old code open sourced. Some examples he sought, such as CP/M, CP/M-86, and GEM, have already been open source for years. Caldera, after buying the intellectual property of the former Digital Research from Novell, released just about everything that wasn’t directly related to DR-DOS, some of it as GPL, and some under other licenses. The results have hardly been earth shattering.

Dave Farquhar

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How IBM and DOS came to dominate the industry

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 19, 2003May 30, 20251980s, 1990s, amiga, apple, Apple Computer, apple ii, atari, atari st, commodore, commodore 128, commodore 64, Consumer Reports, Crestwood Plaza, IBM, ibm pcjr, intel, macintosh, Personal Computer, radio shack, Tandy, tandy 1000, vector, XT

Revisionist historians talk about how MS-DOS standardized computer operating systems and changed the industry. That’s very true. But what they’re ignoring is that there were standards before 1981, and the standards established in 1981 took a number of years to take hold.

Dave Farquhar

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Old computer magazines

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing November 12, 2002November 11, 2024amiga, apple, Apple Lisa, atari, atari st, IBM, ibm pcjr

I guess I need a “retro” category here. Anyway, I found this on Slashdot this morning: The Computer Magazine Archive. Don’t let the URL fool you–it’s not just Atari stuff.

Dave Farquhar

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