DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
562 clips, strongest first.
Dr. Dave recalls attending Comdex from its early years through 2001, describes its enormous influence, and reacts to news that the vanished trade show would return as a virtual event.
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Microsoft’s preserved first homepage leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve through Mosaic, Cello and the surprisingly recent arrival of public web access. Dr. Dave remembers paying $150 per month for a newsgroup account, then contrasts the Internet’s security burdens with the way it became indispensable to everyday information, his business and the radio show.
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The brothers remind listeners that DaveMason.com carries both a live stream and show archives posted a couple of hours after broadcast, with seven months of programs then available. It is a concise, date-stamped description of how the original site connected live radio with preservation.
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Dr. Dave responds sympathetically to Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple CEO, calls him a revolutionary figure in modern computing and remembers trying to arrange Jobs as a Computer Talk guest during the NeXT years, when Jobs would not agree to discuss his earlier time at Apple.
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Dr. Dave marks Netscape’s tenth anniversary, recalls its early dominance and reads from the 1994 announcement that promised smooth browsing over a 14.4 modem.
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A retro-technology feature prompts the hosts to remember the 1983 Gavilan and react to its weight, tiny monochrome screen, memory, modem and original price.
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A major digital-music milestone, new playlist sharing and Evil Steve’s proposed funk collection. The anniversary is corrected on air to iTunes, not the iPod.
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For the hard drive’s fiftieth anniversary, Dr. Dave remembers managing an apartment complex for a retired IBM engineer. A massive cooler on the man’s 1973 Ford pickup came from an early hydraulic disk system whose thirty pound head assemblies required elaborate cooling, filled roughly a five foot cube, cost about a million dollars and stored ten megabytes.
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A printer question reminds Dr. Dave of an Okidata machine he owned around 1982, when letter-quality dot-matrix output and usable graphics were remarkable. He remembers it as fast, affordable and built like a tank, imagining that some examples might still be working.
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At launch, the brothers weigh Palm's do-or-die supply problem and note that the highly anticipated phone will arrive on June 6, Dr. Dave's birthday. The personal coincidence gives a major mobile milestone a memorable frame.
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The sound of Mazda’s rotary-powered 787B sends Dr. Dave and Evil Steve into an enthusiastic account of its Le Mans victory, engineering and reliability—a vivid meeting of their shared love of racing and technology.
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Dell’s twenty pound XPS M2010 leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to question whether the industry has rediscovered the luggable computer. They compare its folding screen and leather handle with the old Compaq Portable, remember the sturdiness and weight of early machines and wonder whether an expensive device that needs its own tray still counts as portable.
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Ahead of a new Xbox announcement, the brothers look back at the original console and the Xbox 360's long run. Dr. Dave sees its growing role in television, movies, sports and news as a story bigger than gaming.
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Looking back at the one-hundred-dollar computers of the early 1980s, Dr. Dave remembers debating Uncle Randy over the TI-99/4A and Commodore 64. He credits luck as well as judgment, then uses the tiny memory, built-in BASIC and television connection to show how dramatically personal computing changed.
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Dr. Dave remembers seeing short computer-animation demonstrations, including early Pixar work, at a small alternative theater in Tucson around 1985 or 1986. The images were raw but their potential was visible, and he connects that memory to Jobs allowing John Lasseter and Ed Catmull to pursue animated films rather than only imaging hardware.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve discuss the unusually friendly joint appearance by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the D5 conference, then contrast it with Dr. Dave's memory of the tiny, combative computer gatherings of the early 1980s. The distance between those scenes lets him marvel at how dramatically the industry changed.
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Dr. Dave recalls giving Internet-security talks in 1998 and 1999 when firewalls and spyware were unfamiliar to most people and his warnings made him feel like a paranoid outsider. He uses a reported early remote-intrusion story to show how rapidly the risks became real.
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Linux-based mobile systems lead Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to imagine the phone becoming the single interface for screens, printers and computers; Dr. Dave grounds the forecast in his own early IBM Palm, folding keyboard and infrared printer.
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A preserved Windows 1.0 press kit reminds Dr. Dave of debating other computer enthusiasts about Windows and IBM TopView when the product was still revolutionary and questionable, long before the eventual winner seemed obvious.
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As early Windows 8 convertibles and touchscreens approach release, Dr. Dave celebrates the marketplace giving users different forms to choose from. What matters to him is that no single company dictates how everyone must work.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve react to the sale of IBM’s personal-computer business to Lenovo, treating IBM and the ThinkPad name as symbols of American computing. They question the political and brand consequences while acknowledging that they will have to watch product quality and service after the change.
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Before the announced transaction was complete, Dr. Dave reacts to reports that Lenovo might buy IBM’s personal-computer business and explains the symbolic importance of IBM PCs and his respect for ThinkPad laptops.
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Dr. Dave reports Microsoft’s acquisition of Giant and the first beta of its anti-spyware software, carefully saying that he has not tested the new program. Evil Steve’s “evil empire” setup gives the brothers room for satire before they return to callers.
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Howard reports a tool for building Commodore 64 software on modern operating systems. Dr. Dave and Evil Steve move from disbelief to delight at the thought that new work might require “resurrecting the dead.”
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Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
