Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Will This Last?

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Michal Necasek

The OS/2 Museum site has now moved to a completely different hosting setup (a VPS). There could well be various quirks caused by the move, although for the most part moving the WordPress setup went surprisingly (for me at least) … Continue reading →

Posted in Site Management | 12 Comments

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