On August 14, 1984, Commodore International purchased Amiga Corporation for $27 million, with the expectation of bringing Amiga’s multitasking computer with high-color graphics and sound to market within a year. It took a little longer than that, and it created

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The IBM 5170 PC/AT, launched August 14, 1984, is a very popular retro PC, for several reasons. It was the last of the open architecture IBM PCs. And from 1984 to about mid-1987, it was the fastest and most expensive

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45 years ago today, IBM introduced the original IBM PC. This computer changed the industry and change the world. There is no shortage of analysis about its impact, but I find a lot of it self-serving and, in some cases

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It was 27 years ago this week, on Aug 11, 1999, that Red Hat, the Linux vendor, conducted its IPO. It was not the biggest IPO of 1999, and it wasn’t even the biggest Linux-related IPO of 1999. But Red

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MP3 piracy was born August 10, 1996. That day, a pirate using the handle of Netfrack released a copy of Metallica’s Until it Sleeps for free download on IRC, an Internet protocol intended for chat, not file sharing. It’s appropriate

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The early star of the dot-com boom wasn’t Amazon or Ebay, it was Netscape, a company who produced a web browser of the same name. It went boom high and it went boom fast as it rose. And when it

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On August 6, 1997, Apple and Microsoft reached a truce, to the tune of $150 million. At an Apple event, the two companies announced Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple, leaving everyone wondering why. The whole event had a weird

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The eBay domain name was registered 31 years ago today, on August 4, 1995. But the site we know today as Ebay didn’t launch until almost month later, September 3, 1995, under a different name. Auctionweb, the original name for

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When Radio Shack announced its TRS-80 Model 1 on Aug 3, 1977, designer Steve Leininger thought they could sell 50,000 units. Tandy executives didn’t believe him. But the response overwhelmed the company, and 250,000 people put their money where their

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On August 2, 2000, a second-tier Linux vendor acquired a struggling Unix vendor. The merger received some press, but if you weren’t really following Linux at the time, it would have been easy enough to miss. But the merger of

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It was 30 years ago this week, on July 31, 1996, that Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 to manufacturing. The workstation version appeared on store shelves a month later, with the server version following in September. In many ways, version

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Here’s a late ’80s memory you may not have thought about in a while. Do you remember going to the video rental store to rent a video game and getting the cartridge but not getting the instruction booklet? The reason

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Who did more than any other person in history to make computers affordable? My nomination goes to Sir Clive Sinclair, who was born July 30, 1940. And I’m an American who never used one of his computers. Clive Sinclair: King

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On June 29, 1993, IBM released the first energy star computer, the IBM PS/2 E. The “E” stood for energy. But while it was undeniably more efficient than other desktop PCs, arguably it was a PS/2 in name only. To

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I’ve talked a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of old milestone operating systems. But what were the advantages and disadvantages of Windows NT 3.1, first released July 27, 1993? That’s a fair question, and there are valid reasons it

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ARCNET was the first commercially available local area network standard, beating both Ethernet and Token Ring to market. Conceptually, it had similarities with both, and because it was inexpensive and efficient, it was popular for a good 15 years or

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David Bunnell, born July 25, 1947, was the founder of three of the most successful computer magazines of all time. He even edited two of them simultaneously, straddling two very different worlds. He was not only a pioneer of tech

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On July 23, 1996, Novell sold the intellectual property of Digital Research to Linux vendor Caldera. The common thread the two companies had was Ray Noorda. Noorda had been CEO of Novell and was Novell’s largest shareholder, and Caldera was

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On July 23, 1985, Commodore introduced its Amiga 1000 computer. And let’s just say the world wasn’t ready for it yet. Dave Haynie, a Commodore engineer who worked on the later models, has said there was no such thing as

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On January 2, 1975, Microsoft announced Altair Basic, their first product. It was a programming language for the MITS Altair 8800 computer, a product that let people write their own software for the new computer. The makers of the computer

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On November 4th, 1997, MCI and Worldcom merged in a deal worth $37 billion. This was an attempt by two large telecommunications companies to to combine and rival AT&T, but instead it turned into one of the biggest scandals and

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On July 17, 1991, Novell bought Digital Research for $80 million, a merger of a pioneer in desktop computer networking with a pioneer in desktop computer operating systems. Novell saw Microsoft coming after its business on multiple fronts, and saw

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Intel was founded July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore’s law fame) and Robert Noyce and investor Arthur Rock. Intel’s employee #3 was Andrew Grove. Moore, Noyce, and Grove had all worked together at Fairchild Semiconductor in

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On July 15, 1996, German PC manufacturer Escom declared bankruptcy. But Escom wasn’t necessarily just an ordinary PC manufacturer. Escom went bankrupt less than 2 years after acquiring the Commodore and Amiga brand names and starting to use their technology.

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On July 15, 1983, the Famicom, or Family Computer, launched in Japan. Despite the name, the Family Computer was a game console, and it went on to shatter the Atari 2600’s record for the most sales worldwide by a game

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Code Red was a computer worm that exploited one of the earliest notorious Microsoft vulnerabilities, a buffer overflow in Microsoft IIS. It is credited as the first large scale mixed threat attack against enterprise networks. Code Red was released July

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Gary Kildall’s death investigation, or the seeming lack thereof, has taken on mythical proportions. Gary Kildall’s story seems to have that effect on people. Just like the story of Kildall allegedly going flying instead of meeting with IBM in August

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Monorail was a short-lived PC vendor from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Founded November 2, 1995, they were the first company to sell a Pentium-class PC including a display for under $1,000. And Monorail PCs were the first desktop

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In July 1981, at the height of Pac-Man fever, Nintendo released its third stand up arcade game. This game, Donkey Kong, took over as the most popular arcade game in the world, but it had a lasting repercussions. It irreversibly

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Raymond Edward Kassar was born January 2, 1928 and died December 10, 2017, aged 89, in Vero Beach, Florida. Ray Kassar was president, and later CEO, of Atari Inc. from 1978 to 1983. Atari’s parent company, Warner Bros, hired him

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