Archive for March, 2016

Andrew S. Grove (1936-2016)

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016

Andrew S. Grove, Former CEO of IntelIn Memoriam: Andrew S. Grove (1936-2016),
Former President, CEO, and Chairman of Intel

Few tech executives have had as monumental an impact on the computer industry as Andy Grove, who passed away yesterday at the age of 79. His stewardship of Intel marked a period of astounding success and growth for the company, including establishing the firm’s x86 microprocessors as a de facto standard for the PC industry — a legacy that continues today. May he rest in peace.

[ Retro Scan ] Dune II

Monday, March 14th, 2016

Dune II PC Game Advertisement Scan - 1992I just got a craving for The Spice

Dune II is to the real-time strategy genre as Wolfenstein 3D is to first-person shooters. Like Wolf-3D, Dune II wasn’t the absolute first example of its genre, but it was the first game to bring together all the distinctive elements of its respective genre into one title — in this case, those elements would later be copied and expanded upon over and over again by games like Command & Conquer and Warcraft.

That being said, I’ve only played Dune II a few times — only many years after its release. I never got into it, but I can see why it is a historically important game. Warcraft was my first modern RTS game.

[ From VG&CE, November 1992, p.4 ]

Discussion Topic: What’s your favorite Real-Time Strategy game of all time?

[ Retro Scan ] Dogs and Families Love IBM PS/1

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016

IBM PS/1 IBM PC Dog Family Smithsonian Advertisement Scan - 1991Now you’ll have more time to spend with your dog

I’ve previously featured a later-model IBM PS/1 that also happened to be my brother’s college computer, circa ’94. But here we see an ad for an early — if not the first — model of the PS/1. This is back when PS/1 systems had the OS and a nifty mouse-based GUI program launcher built into ROM. They also shipped with Prodigy on the hard disk. I’m starting to really want one of these for my collection.

[ From Smithsonian, December 1991, p.20-21 ]

Discussion Topic: Has a pet ever done damage to your computer or game system? Tell us about it.