IBM

My first experience with data recovery

Dave Farquhar data recovery, War Stories , , , ,
My first experience with data recovery

It was 1997. I was working my first full-time  job, and my phone rang with my first crisis.

“What happened to the K drive?” the caller asked.

I glanced over at my network drive cheat sheet, which listed all of our shares and what server they were on. In those days, most of our servers still had 300-400 megabyte drives and that meant every file server hosted, at most, a couple of shares. There was no K drive on our list. I was afraid this was about to get interesting. Read more

Happy 30th birthday, Commodore 64

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , ,

The C-64 sort of turns 30 this week. It was introduced 30 years ago this week, though it wasn’t until August or so that you could actually buy one. It took that long for memory prices to come down to reach the target price, and if memory serves, the machine they displayed at CES in January wasn’t quite production-ready anyway.

I remember the machine well. It was my first computer. It seems like just yesterday the thing turned 25. And not all that long ago that I still used one on a regular basis.

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I think this is the secret of Amazon’s success

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

When talking about e-books Friday, I mentioned that Amazon is making deals with authors directly, cutting traditional publishers out of the loop. And then my wife asked a good question: How does Amazon think of stuff like that?

I think it’s because Amazon isn’t hung up about last year. Let me explain.
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Balancing safety and versatility

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John C Dvorak has a very simple solution to the HP printing problem. Lock down the firmware so it’s not upgradeable. And while we’re at it, do the same thing to routers and other equipment.

This solves the problem of loading rogue firmware on the devices, but there are several problems with such a draconian approach.
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Don’t write Android’s obit yet

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , , , , ,

PC Magazine’s Tim Bajarin seems ready to write the obituary for Android for tablets which, to me, seems extremely premature.
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HP decides to keep its PC business

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

HP came to its senses this week and decided that ex-CEO Leo Apotheker’s decision to pull out of the PC market he didn’t understand was a bad decision. They’re staying in.

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Was CP/M overrated?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Was CP/M overrated?

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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Microsoft: No x86 apps for ARM

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So, The Register reports that Windows on ARM will not have compatibility with apps compiled for x86. Intel has been saying this for a while, while Microsoft has been mum. So now we know.

There are arguments both for and against having an x86 emulation layer.
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My first really bad day in IT

Dave Farquhar security, War Stories , , , , , , ,

Next weekend is Labor Day weekend. I can’t remember if it was one Thursday or two Thursdays before Labor Day weekend in 1997, but one of those two days happened to be the beginning of the first crisis of my career.

Whichever Thursday it was, it was getting close to midnight when my phone rang. It was Max. The print server wasn’t working. That happened a lot. That server had IBM’s Services for Macintosh on it, which never worked all that well, and, worse, tended to make the rest of the server act up a lot. That in and of itself shouldn’t have been a crisis. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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Lessons of the HP Touchpad

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

At full price ($499 for the 16 GB model and $599 for the 32 GB model) the HP Touchpad was a colossal flop. Like AT&T’s first PC clones of the mid 1980s, it was a me-too product at a me-too price that wasn’t quite as good as the product it was imitating. So, basically, there was no reason to buy it.

At closeout prices, it became an Internet sensation. The few web sites that have it in stock can’t handle the traffic they’re getting. At $99 and $149, it’s selling like the Nintendo Wii in its glory days.

And I think there’s a significant parallel there that highlights the missed opportunity.
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