Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator?

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

More or less anyone using modern PCs has to wonder: Why does Windows use backslash as a path separator when the rest of the world uses forward slash? The clear intermediate answer is “because DOS and OS/2 used backslash”. Both … Continue reading →

Posted in DEC, DOS, IBM, Microsoft, PC history | 54 Comments

Developer Connection 9/11/12 Anyone?

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Recently I finally managed to put something on archive.org, namely images and scans of IBM’s Developer Connection for OS/2 CDs (called just IBM Developer Connection since Volume 10). My problem is that I don’t have any physical media for volumes … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Pointedly Confusing

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Michal Necasek

While working on an unrelated problem, I stumbled across very surprising (to me) behavior of a C compiler. My code was the equivalent of the following: #include <stdio.h>int arr[42];int main( void ) { printf( “%u\n”, sizeof( &arr ) ); return( … Continue reading →

Posted in C, Microsoft | 9 Comments

1988 Networking: NetWare OS/2 Requester

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Michal Necasek

A while ago, the question of antique NetWare OS/2 requesters came up. The oldest known surviving NetWare OS/2 Requester is version 1.2, which is designed to work with OS/2 1.2. There are clear mentions of older requesters supporting OS/2 1.1 … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, Networking, OS/2, PC history, Virtualization | 16 Comments

NetWare 2.x Notes

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Novell NetWare has quite a long history, but the older parts of it are now almost completely lost. In the mid-1980s, Novell offered Advanced NetWare, NetWare ELS, NetWare SFT, and other members of the NetWare 286 family. With the partial … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, Networking, PC history | 16 Comments

LAN Manager 2.0 Primary Domain Controller

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Michal Necasek

While messing around with late 1980s and early 1990s networking software, I had the need to switch a LAN Manager 2.0 server to the primary domain controller role, so that it could run the Netlogon service and I could use … Continue reading →

Posted in LAN Manager, Microsoft, Networking | 3 Comments

Kryofluxing PC Floppies

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Last year I finally bought a Kryoflux, unfortunately in the middle of moving house. Now I’m finally able to use it beyond verifying that it’s not completely broken. After imaging a few dozens of floppies, I can say one thing–Kryoflux … Continue reading →

Posted in Floppies, Kryoflux, PC hardware | 11 Comments

Small World

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Michal Necasek

The core of this story was originally a private e-mail, but I realized that it’s worth sharing with a slightly wider audience. Readers may know that I’m very interested in the history of PC development tools, especially C compilers, and … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, Watcom | 16 Comments

Reading From Void

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Recently I came across the following question: What happens when software reads the registers of a non-existent IDE controller? That is, what happens when software reads for example ports in the 1F0h-1F7h/3F6h range (primary IDE channel) when there is no … Continue reading →

Posted in BIOS, IDE, PC hardware | 10 Comments

Ancient NetWare OS/2 Requesters?

Posted on February 16, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Quite a while ago there was a discussion on this site about NetWare support for OS/2 versions prior to 1.3. Finding reliable information is difficult, especially when one doesn’t know exactly what to look for. Spurred by the discovery of … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, OS/2, PC history | 13 Comments