Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Upcoming Fun

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Finally got one of these: There are pluses and minuses. Detailed report later.

Posted in 386 | Leave a comment

Something Happened

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Michal Necasek

My first experience with the Windows 10 media creation tool was, in a word, terrible. After 20 minutes or so of downloading, the tool told me that “Something happened” and the only option was to exit. That’s probably what passes … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, Microsoft | 17 Comments

OPL3 Copies

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Michal Necasek

A while ago, a reader commented that in certain circles, it’s well known that there were “fake” OPL3 chips. This does not appear to be widespread knowledge. After a bit of digging, an interesting chapter in the history of PC … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, PC history, Sound, Yamaha | 15 Comments

Summer Slowdown

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Once again it’s summer and the frequency of site updates will slow down somewhat. In the next two weeks I’ll be gone with very limited or no Internet access. So if you don’t get an answer right away, please be … Continue reading →

Posted in Site Management | Leave a comment

UINT32_C Macro Considered Harmful

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Michal Necasek

The C99 family of INTN_C and UINTN_C macros fills a real gap in the language, but it also lays extremely nasty traps for the unwary. The evolution of how the macros are defined in the C99 language standard shows that … Continue reading →

Posted in C, Development | 2 Comments

Broken Spigot

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Michal Necasek

While searching for an unrelated piece of hardware, I came across an old video capture board. Alarm bells started going off when I heard something rattling in the anti-static wrap. Sure enough, one of the large capacitors fell off… because … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware, PC history | 3 Comments

44-Voice MIDI on Yamaha OPL4

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Michal Necasek

In 1994, sound cards with wavetable synthesizers were all the rage. Typically these supported 24-voice or at most 32-voice polyphony. So 44-voice synthesis sounded fancy. The following text can be found in a README file in the driver package for … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 9 Comments

Bad Month for Laptop Disks

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Instead of writing new articles, I recently spent a lot of time fighting laptop hard disks going bad. The first was a Seagate ST1000LM14 (apparently originally a Samsung design), a hybrid 1TB 5,400rpm disk with 8GB flash. The disk was … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware | 8 Comments

Do You Know This Sound Card?

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Michal Necasek

The guessing game is back, this time with a twist: I don’t know the correct answer. A generic-looking 1997 vintage sound card recently showed up: This is what I call a high-end low-end card… it’s a standard low-end sound card, … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, Sound | 13 Comments

Sound Blaster 1.0 or 1.5?

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Michal Necasek

According to some sources, a Sound Blaster model CT-1320C is a Sound Blaster 1.5. But according to Creative’s own reference materials (which do contain many inaccuracies and cannot be taken as gospel), the only difference between a Sound Blaster 1.0 … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, PC hardware, PC history, Sound Blaster | 19 Comments