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Happy 35th birthday, Atari 2600

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming October 15, 2012June 20, 20251980s, 1990s, amiga, atari, atari 2600, Big Lots, compaq, Jay Miner, nintendo, VCR, video game

The venerable Atari 2600 turned 35 this past weekend. People of a certain age remember it as the device that ushered in home video games. I know I spent a lot of afternoons after school playing blocky, chirpy video games on them in the early 1980s.

The 2600 wasn’t the first cartridge-based console, but it was the first widely successful one. It even spawned clones, the private-label Sears Video Arcade and the Coleco Gemini.

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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The CP/M-DOS forensics don’t prove much

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing August 7, 2012May 3, 2026atari, Bill Gates, Digital Research, Gary Kildall, Jerry Pournelle, john c dvorak, pc magazine, QDOS

I saw the headline on Slashdot: Forensic evidence trying to prove whether MS-DOS contained code lifted from CP/M. That got my attention, as the connection between MS-DOS and its predecessor, CP/M, is one of the great unsolved mysteries of computing.

Unfortunately, the forensic evidence doesn’t prove a lot.

Dave Farquhar

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Games would be just what Linux needed

Dave Farquhar Linux July 27, 2012Ad Lib, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, macintosh, Steve Wozniak, VGA, vista, windows 8

Valve is intending to develop for Linux, as an insurance policy against Windows 8. I think that will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If more games are available for Linux, demand for Linux will increase, along with market share.

There’s historical precedence for this. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The origins of Prince of Persia unearthed

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 23, 2012August 20, 20181980s, 6502, apple, apple ii, atari, commodore, commodore 64, USB flash drive, video game

Prince of Persia isn’t just a recent movie. It’s based on a video game series, the first of which was first released all the way back in 1989 for the venerable Apple II series of 8-bit computers. That original game, extremely simple by today’s standards, is a classic today.

The author, Jordan Mechner, had given up on looking for the 6502 assembly language source code behind the game until his dad found a box of disks buried in a closet. Among them were several hand-labeled disks claiming to contain the long-lost code. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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RIP, Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 9, 2012January 28, 20261980s, apple, atari, atari st, Chuck Peddle, commodore, commodore 64, dell, IBM, jack tramiel, Linus Torvalds, motorola, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Texas Instruments, TI

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, the orchestrator of the first line of affordable personal computers, died this weekend at the age of 83.

I don’t know exactly what to think about it, and I’m probably not alone, though it didn’t take long for tributes to pour in. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Was CP/M overrated?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing September 27, 2011October 1, 20181980s, atari, atari st, Bill Gates, commodore, commodore 128, DEC, Gary Kildall, IBM, PIP, unix, vector, windows nt

Veteran tech journalist Dan Tynan recently published a list of 10 overrated technology products, and CP/M was on his list. But was CP/M overrated? I want to dig into that question a bit.

I think everyone knows the story of how IBM almost used CP/M as the operating system for its PC, but ended up using an upstart product from a small company named Microsoft instead. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened, seeing as the author of CP/M is dead and his business partner is no longer able to recollect those events from the 1980 timeframe, and IBM and Bill Gates have no reason to embarrass themselves by revisiting the story.

But CP/M was the first and most popular operating system for early 8-bit computers, so people who used it remember it fondly, and the way Microsoft steamrolled it made Gary Kildall and his operating system folk heroes to underdog lovers everywhere. Even people who never used it and weren’t even born when Kildall’s company ceased to exist have at least a vague idea of what it was.
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Dave Farquhar

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So Amazon’s tablet is a go

Dave Farquhar Hardware September 5, 2011September 5, 2011android, apple, Apple Ipad, atari, christmas, commodore, hp, ipad, kindle, TSA

Reports of Amazon’s tablet plans are trickling out. Basically, it’s going to be a 7-inch tablet running a very customized version of Android, tweaked to play media purchased from Amazon, and priced at $250, half the price of an entry-level Apple Ipad. (In English, we capitalize the first letter of proper nouns, and my native language is English, not C++, if you’re wondering.) Techcrunch and The Register have some of the details. The name: Amazon Kindle. The release date: end of November.

I wouldn’t call it a can’t-miss, but it’s clear Amazon’s thought a lot of things through here.

Dave Farquhar

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Commodore 128, top-12 dud? By what measure?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing August 17, 2011September 15, 20251980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, Apple Macintosh, atari, atari 2600, atari st, commodore, commodore 128, commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, IBM, ibm pcjr, macintosh, motorola, NES, nintendo, nintendo nes, pc magazine, video game

PC Magazine presented a list of 12 computer duds, and while I agree with most of them, my old friend the Commodore 128 makes an appearance. Commodore released several duds over the years, but calling the 128 one of them doesn’t seem fair.
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Dave Farquhar

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Floppy disks for Commodore and other vintage computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 12, 2011September 9, 20181541, 1571, 1980s, apple, atari, commodore, IBM, vintage computer

It’s been many years since 5.25-inch floppy disks suitable for Commodore, Apple, Atari, and other vintage 8-bit computers (not to mention IBM PCs and PC/XTs) have been something you can buy at the store down the street. I found some 360K DS/DD disks on Amazon, but they aren’t available in huge quantities.

Dave Farquhar

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The many troubles with e-books

Dave Farquhar Copyright June 8, 2011October 11, 20191980s, apple, atari, best buy, Blade, computer software, kindle

A brief essay by free software pioneer Richard Stallman on the problems with e-books made the front page of Slashdot today. It’s everything I’ve come to expect from Stallman. I found myself vigorously agreeing with parts of it, and vigorously disagreeing with other parts of it.

But mainly I found myself disappointed that he didn’t really elaborate much. Maybe it’s because he covered similar ground once before in his 1997 dystopian 1984-ish short story, The Right to Read.

And, to me, that’s the problem. We’re on a slippery slope. Today it sounds ridiculous that it could be illegal to loan your laptop or your e-reader or your tablet to someone else. But prior to 2009, the idea that you could buy a book and then at some point the party that sold it to you could take it back from you without permission sounded ridiculous.
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Dave Farquhar

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