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What happened to Altavista

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing July 2, 2013November 4, 20171990s, altavista, commodore, compaq, DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation, intel, Intel Core, IPO, yahoo

For as long as I can remember, my home page has been about:blank. But for a good chunk of the 1990s, I would have done well to set it to altavista.digital.com. Here’s what happened to Altavista.

Most people remember Altavista as the thing people used before Google, if they remember it at all. But I remember it as the first great search engine, because I’ve done my best to forget what search was like before Altavista came along. So I was a little sad to see Yahoo shut down what was left of the first great search engine in the summer of 2013. 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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No, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Software June 1, 2013January 6, 20251980s, amd, amiga, android, apple, atari, commodore, compaq, IBM, intel, ipad, Libre Office, macintosh, Microsoft Office, motorola, Packard Bell, red hat, ubuntu, unix, windows 8, XT

This week, Mark Shuttleworth closed the longstanding Ubuntu bug #1, which simply read, “Microsoft has majority market share.” Because Microsoft didn’t lose its market share lead to Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or some other conventional Linux distribution, some people, including John C. Dvorak, are interpreting this as some kind of surrender.

I don’t see it as surrender at all. Microsoft’s dominant position, which seemed invincible in 2004 when Shuttleworth opened that bug, is slipping away. They still dominate PCs, but PCs as we know it are a shrinking part of the overall computing landscape, and the growth is all happening elsewhere.

I have (or at least had) a reputation as a Microsoft hater. That’s a vast oversimplification. I’m not anti-Microsoft. I’m pro-competition. I’m also pro-Amiga, and I’ll go to my grave maintaining that the death of Amiga set the industry back 20 years. I have Windows and Linux boxes at home, my wife has (believe it or not) an Ipad, and at work I’m more comfortable administering Linux than Windows right now, which seems a bit strange, especially considering it’s a Red Hat derivative and I haven’t touched Red Hat in what seems like 400 years.

What Shuttleworth is acknowledging is that we have something other than a duopoly again, for the first time in more than 20 years, and the industry is innovating and interesting again. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Notes on the Compaq Presario SR2011WM

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 12, 2013December 11, 2016compaq, garage sale, hp, micro atx, pentium d, windows 7, windows 8, Windows XP

I’ve been working on a Compaq Presario SR2011WM. It’s a basic, low-end, single-core Celeron D system from 2006 or so. It can take up to 2 GB of RAM, runs Windows XP adequately, and has SATA ports, so you can put an SSD in it if you want. But don’t be fooled by the name–the Celeron in this machine is single core, and has a Prescott-era Pentium 4 core in it at that, not a low-TDP, Pentium D-style core.

In case you’re wondering, the easiest way to get it to boot from USB is to plug in a USB drive, hit ESC as the system runs POST, then select your USB drive from the menu.

Now let’s talk about options for upgrades. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing May 4, 2013May 1, 20251980s, 1990s, Ad Lib, amiga, apple, atari, atari st, compaq, Creative Labs, Digital Research, excel, IBM, intel, motorola, radio shack, Steve Jobs, Tandy, tandy 1000, Texas Instruments, TI, VGA

I saw a question on a vintage computing forum this week: How did the IBM PC become the de facto standard for PCs, and the only desktop computer architecture from the 1980s to survive until today?

It’s a very good question, and I think there were several reasons for it. I also think without all of the reasons, the IBM PC wouldn’t have necessarily won. In some regards, of course, it was a hollow victory. IBM has been out of the PC business for a decade now. Its partners Intel and Microsoft, however, reaped the benefits time and again.

Dave Farquhar

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Mark Hurd doesn’t sound like he’s just what Dell needed

Dave Farquhar Hardware March 25, 2013March 24, 2013apple, asus, compaq, dell, hp, IBM, macintosh, mark hurd, Michael Dell, oracle

Word on the street is that Blackstone Group has a plan for turning around Dell: Buy the company, take it private, and install Mark Hurd as CEO. The thinking is that he’s available, has experience, and would have baggage keeping him from being the CEO of a public company.

I just see one glitch. Available != good fit.

Dave Farquhar

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Memories of the land of blue shirts

Dave Farquhar Personal, Retro Computing March 16, 2013October 6, 2019best buy, Circuit City, compaq

Internet pal Rob O’Hara reminisced about opening a Best Buy (presumably) megastore in 1994. Interestingly, that summer I was doing basically the same thing, only in Illinois. And I lived within driving distance, so they didn’t put me up for the night, though as I recall they did provide at least one meal a day, and I really think they provided two. After all, we worked really long shifts.

Dave Farquhar

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What to make of this Black Friday’s sub-$200 laptops

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 12, 2012amd, best buy, black friday, compaq, lenovo, Libre Office, Micro Center, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Security Essentials, netbooks, office 2010, windows 7, windows 8

It’s still a couple of weeks off, but we already know two retailers will be offering sub-$200 laptops on the day the United States gorges itself on bargains.

The question is, what do you get for your $200 on these minimalist laptops? I’ll answer those questions, then you can decide whether they’re worth $200 and braving the crowds, the weird hours, and likely the cold. (Yes, there are costs beyond the money you spend.) Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Reduce your RAID failure rate

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security November 5, 2012April 18, 2017compaq, dell, hp, raid array, Western Digital

It’s not often that you end up talking about computer hardware at church. It’s especially not often that you end up talking about a RAID failure at church. But one such conversation got me thinking again about ways to reduce RAID failure rate.

This past Sunday, I talked with the executive director, who told me five of the drives in the 8-drive RAID array failed all at once. “That’s not supposed to happen,” he said.

It isn’t. But I know why it did.

Dave Farquhar

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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

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