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Set up your retirement account. Just do it. Then forget it.

Dave Farquhar Saving money November 2, 2014February 25, 2020mortgage, stock market, stock scam, wilshire 5000

My new mortgage company wants to see the balance of my 401(K) account. That turned out to be a bit of a problem, but for the right reasons.

You see, I might or might not get 401(K) statements. I don’t look at them. Sometimes I save them. Usually I don’t. So I hadn’t looked at my 401(K) balance in years, and I really only had a vague idea what was in it. I knew there ought to be enough to make the lender happy.

What I found when I finally got my hands on a statement shows why part of my strategy is to never look at the account. 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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Commodore was more than a stock scam

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 15, 2013May 1, 20251980s, 1990s, amiga, apple, atari, Chuck Peddle, commodore, debts, dell, hp, IBM, intel, irving gould, jack tramiel, stock scam, Texas Instruments, TI

From time to time, I see the phrase “Commodore stock scam” or something similar come up in discussion or in books. Commodore, in case you don’t know, was a high-flying computer company in the 1980s that was literally making computers as quickly as they could sell them while Apple struggled for its survival, and was in the enviable position of being the main supplier of chips for its competitors. Imagine if Intel sold computers at retail next to HP and Dell, while still selling chips to Dell. That was Commodore in 1984. I don’t have 1984 figures, but in 1985, Commodore had 38% of the computer market all to itself. IBM and its clones, combined, had 49%. Apple had 13%.

But a decade later, Commodore had squandered all of that away and was out of business. That’s why Robert X. Cringely sums up Commodore as Irving Gould‘s stock scam, then goes back to writing about Apple.

The real story is more complicated than that. More interesting, too.

Dave Farquhar

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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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The little-known story of Commodore

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 9, 2007April 10, 20176502, atari, atari 2600, Chuck Peddle, commodore, intel, irving gould, MOS, motorola, stock scam

So I’m reading On The Edge, a longish book that tries to tell the story of Commodore properly, including the people who made it happen, and the companies it bought along the way.

I’m glad the story got told.

Dave Farquhar

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