commodore Archives

How thousands of Atari cartridges ended up in the desert

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming April 28, 2014January 19, 20251980s, 1990s, apple, atari, atari 2600, commodore, jack tramiel, New Mexico, nintendo, Tandy, VCR, video game

The famous story of Atari burying millions of dollars of unsold videogame cartridges, including the infamous E.T. cartridge, is no longer just a legend–it’s been confirmed.

How they got there was mostly a misunderstanding of the nascent business. Read more

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 Warhol Amiga discovery in context

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 25, 2014February 28, 20251980s, amiga, atari, commodore, macintosh

A team of digital archaeologists recovered a series of images off floppy disks from Andy Warhol’s estate, including a number of experimental images created by Warhol himself. Judging from the comments in the various places that covered the discovery, the Internet is unimpressed.

Yes, these images appear to be the result of Warhol messing around. In many ways, they’re not all that different from what anyone might produce today messing around with a digital camera and a simple paint program with a fill pattern.

I’m not sure how many of the critics realize Warhol created this stuff in 1985 or perhaps even late 1984, using preproduction, prerelease hardware and software. All of it was likely buggy. And, as much as I like the Amiga, none of it was anywhere near today’s standards at that point. The stuff he had to work with was nowhere near 1989 standards–the Amiga in its early days was notoriously finicky.

Dave Farquhar

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The trade off of fidelity and convenience in marketing, and how it doomed my favorite company

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 5, 2014July 14, 20171980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, atari, atari 2600, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, kindle, mac os x, macintosh, NES, nintendo, nintendo nes, os x, radio shack, Star Trek, unix

I’m reading a book called Trade-Off, by former USA Today technology columnist Kevin Maney. It’s primarily a marketing book.

Maney argues that all products are a balance of fidelity and convenience, and highly favor one or the other. He additionally argues that failed products fail because they attempted to achieve both, or failed to focus on either one.

An example of a convenient product is an economy car. They’re inexpensive to buy and inexpensive to keep fueled up, but don’t have much glitz and you probably won’t fall in love with it. A high-end sports car or luxury car is a lot less practical, but you’re a lot more likely to fall in love with it, and gain prestige by driving around town in it. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Getting past your own biases

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized February 13, 2014July 14, 20171990s, amiga, Andy Grove, apple, atari, Bill Gates, commodore, IBM, intel, macintosh, motorola, x86

I read Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive last week. I always figured it was an autobiography or memoir, not a business book. But it’s a business book. A very good one.

I avoided it because I didn’t like Andy Grove. I’ve never been a fan of Intel’s business practices during the 1990s and 2000s, including using payola to keep competitors’ chips out of large computer systems, but after reading this book, I’m more disappointed than anything. Whichever company had Andy Grove wins, period. No need to cheat. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The Post-Dispatch may be giving the wrong idea about the dollar value of vintage computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 6, 2014September 15, 20251541, 1980s, 1990s, amiga, apple, apple ii, Apple Lisa, collectibles, commodore, commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, compaq, dell, hp, IBM, macintosh, radio shack, recycling, VGA, XT

Disclaimer: I wrote this article back in 2014. I leave it here as a snapshot of the state of how things were in 2014. The situation at the time you are reading this is likely different.

Articles like Top 10 collectibles for value, from the Post-Dispatch this week, frequently make me nervous, mostly because of statements like this one:

[D]id you know that computer parts can bring home cash, too?

Statements like that tend to get people’s hopes up way too high. I find the timing interesting though, seeing as a TRS-80 Model 1 sold at a St. Louis estate sale this past weekend. The estate seller’s reaction? “Normally you can’t give that stuff away.”

Dave Farquhar

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IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing January 29, 2014September 26, 20221980s, apple, apple ii, christmas, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, ibm pcjr, lenovo, macintosh, mainframe, Personal Computer, radio shack, Tandy, tandy 1000, XT

On January 29, 1984, two computers hit the market. One was Apple’s Macintosh. It needs no introduction. The other was the IBM PCjr. It was a little less successful. We’ll talk about what this has to do with the Tandy 1000 in a minute.

The PCjr is one of the biggest flops in computing history. Few people know much more about it than that. It ended up being an important computer, but it certainly didn’t meet IBM’s expectations. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Sculley on Jobs

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing September 11, 2013September 16, 20231980s, amiga, apple, apple ii, Apple Lisa, atari, commodore, IBM, Korea, macintosh, pixar, Steve Jobs, Toy Story

John Sculley famously fired Steve Jobs in September 1985, a move that’s pretty universally panned today. Nearly 28 years later, Forbes asked Sculley about it.

Here’s the money quote:

“He was not a great executive back in those early days. The great Steve Jobs that we know today as maybe the world’s greatest CEO, certainly of our era, he learned a lot in those years in the wilderness.”

Dave Farquhar

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LOAD “*”,8,1 – what it means

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing August 28, 2013September 27, 20181541, 1571, commodore, commodore 64, IEEE, nintendo, tape drive

The smartest guy in the room cited the Commodore command LOAD “*”,8,1 as something he used for years but never understood why it worked except it was the command he used to load games on his Commodore 64.

So I explained it. Now I can explain it to you too. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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What I miss about the old days of computing

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 14, 2013May 16, 20171980s, 1990s, CISO, cloak and dagger, commodore, lifehacker, NES, New Wave

Lifehacker asked this week what graybeards like me (mine gets longer every week) miss about the old days of computing.

I don’t think it’s any single thing. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Rest in peace, PC World

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 12, 2013April 24, 20171990s, commodore, journalism, mizzou, Packard Bell, pc magazine, pc world

The print edition of PC World is no more, and its demise marks the end of the general-interest computer magazine. Former editor Harry McCracken wrote this tribute. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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