TI Archives - The Silicon Underground

Where to buy vintage computers

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 11:00:13 +0000

Collecting vintage computers can be fun. I also personally think it’s great that people are interested in preserving that history. Where to buy vintage computers hasn’t changed much over the years. It just may take a bit more work than

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

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 04 May 2013 11:00:31 +0000

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

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Commodore was more than a stock scam

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:00:22 +0000

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

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Asus gets into the sub-$200 tablet fray

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:35:40 +0000

Now Asus is jumping into the sub-$150 tablet range too, but with a device that’s much more subdued than what Polaroid and Archos are offering. It appears to me that Asus is trying to remain mid-tier, and hope that name

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RIP, Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:34:08 +0000

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

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Google drops a bombshell, buys Motorola

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:05:50 +0000

I was shocked to read today that Google went out and plunked down $12.5 billion for Motorola. I’m sure that other Android phone makers aren’t exactly happy about it–it means Google is going to be competing with them, unless Google

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Apple’s first CEO speaks

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:05:57 +0000

Business Insider has an interview with Apple’s first CEO, Michael Scott. (Not the guy from the TV sitcom.) It’s interesting reading from a historical standpoint. It also illustrates the difficulty with history, even recent history. Scott recalls that, early on,

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Dinosaur hunting

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:06:01 +0000

Today I slipped over to Laclede Computer Trading Company for the first time in many years. I was in search of an ISA parallel card. They're not easy to find these days, mostly because they aren't particularly useful to most people these days, but I figured if anyone would have one, it would be them.

No dice. But man, what memories.

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Why I generally buy AMD

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:20:10 +0000

I was talking to a new coworker today and of course the topic of our first PCs came up. It was Cyrix-based. I didn't mention my first PC (it seems I'm about four years older--it was an Am486SX2/66).

With only a couple of exceptions, I've always bought non-Intel PCs. Most of the Intel PCs I have bought have been used. One boss once went so far as to call me anti-corporate.

I'm not so much anti-corporate as I am pro-competition.

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Time for a core dump

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 25 Aug 2003 04:17:22 +0000

I've been keeping a low profile lately. That's for a lot of reasons. I've been doing mostly routine sysadmin work lately, which is mind-numbingly boring to write about, and possibly just a little bit less mind-numbingly boring to read about. While a numb mind might not necessarily be a bad thing, there are other reasons not to write about it.

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