Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Better Late Than Never

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Michal Necasek

Better late than never, although in this instance, it’s really really late—about thirty years late. In the world of computing, that is eternity. The talk is about the new CR4.UMIP control bit documented in the latest (revision 58) Intel SDM, … Continue reading →

Posted in 286, Intel, x86 | 13 Comments

Updating Windows

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Michal Necasek

Updating older (but still supported) Windows versions can be a tedious tasks. Not only for humans but also for computers. Searching for updates for half an hour every time with the CPU going at full tilt must be a not … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, Windows | 20 Comments

What’s the Point…

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Michal Necasek

Somethings things just don’t make much sense. Like this, for example: What’s unusual about an ISA sound card with a wavetable daughterboard? Nothing. But experts will recognize that the host card is a Terratec Maestro 32/96, which already has a … Continue reading →

Posted in Sound | 6 Comments

Any Soundscape VIVO fans here?

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Michal Necasek

While digging into the implementation of Sound Blaster compatibility on PCI cards, I found an unexpected gem. Ensoniq’s U.S. Patent 5,790,837 includes partial source code for the Sound Blaster emulation driver used with the Ensoniq Soundscape VIVO boards, SSINIT.COM. The VIVO boards were … Continue reading →

Posted in Ensoniq, Sound, Sound Blaster, Source code | 6 Comments

The Wave Blaster II Does Talk!

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Michal Necasek

As previously mentioned, the Wave Blaster II (aka WB2) documentation makes no mention of possible bidirectional MIDI communication. But while trying the Wave Blaster II control panel with various host cards out of desperation, an interesting thing happened: When attempting … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, Wave Blaster | 15 Comments

Deeper Into Wave Blaster

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Michal Necasek

I have continued to dig into the mysteries of Wave Blaster (WB) connectors, daughterboards, and DB-50XG MIDI. To recap, the objective is to find how to convince a Yamaha DB-50XG to send MIDI data, if at all possible. A closer … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Wave Blaster, Yamaha | 6 Comments

Zapping the SVP on a T42p

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Michal Necasek

A T4x ThinkPad with a supervisor password is a ticking time bomb. The password is not needed during boot and is only required to change certain BIOS settings, something which isn’t typically needed. But if CMOS settings are lost, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware Hacks, ThinkPad | 4 Comments

Can a DB-50XG Talk?

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Michal Necasek

I seem to have embarked on another crazy research project. It was spurred by a broken Yamaha DB-50XG wavetable daughterboard. The DB-50XG was a bit dirty but not obviously damaged. It produces no output but gets warm exactly like a … Continue reading →

Posted in Sound, Wave Blaster, Yamaha | 1 Comment

Solaris 7 Boot Panic

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Michal Necasek

On some systems, it has been observed that Solaris 7 panics during boot from installation media and reboots the system. At least Solaris 7 U1 (3/99) and U4 (11/99) are affected. Only “fast” systems (definitely including Sandy Bridge 3+ GHz … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, Debugging, Solaris | 6 Comments

IBM OS/2 1.x Programming Documentation Added

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Michal Necasek

IBM’s programming documentation (Programming Tools and Information, aka PTI) for OS/2 versions 1.2 and 1.3 has been added. Big thanks to Bob Eager who scanned the originals and converted them to PDF. The documents have been added to the OS/2 … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Documentation, IBM, OS/2 | 2 Comments