Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Cracking a ThinkPad 755C

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Note: Most of the following information does not apply to any Lenovo-made ThinkPads or even IBM-made ThinkPads manufactured after circa 1999. If you have one of those laptops protected with an unknown password, please look elsewhere. Imagine you bought, found, … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PC hardware, ThinkPad | 16 Comments

Don’t Let This Happen to You

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Michal Necasek

I recently got an old ThinkPad on eBay for a modest price. The seller marked it as defective, with absolutely no warranty. Since the ThinkPad came with a port replicator (the kind with two PCMICA slots) and an external 2.88MB … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, ThinkPad | 10 Comments

More on LOADALL and OS/2

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Michal Necasek

As previously mentioned, IBM’s OS/2 1.0 and 1.1 used the 286 LOADALL instruction, even on 386 and later processors which do not support it. This was typically solved by BIOS emulation. Now there’s more information about how OS/2 uses LOADALL. … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Intel, Microsoft | 31 Comments

The Carolina Mystery

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Michal Necasek

On the weekend I decided to examine my old PowerPC 604 system. The case is from a RS/6000 type 7248, but the actual system board is from a Power Series 830. This is the famous Carolina board (or “planar” in … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PowerPC | 6 Comments

LOADALL Strikes Again

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A minor mystery recently popped up while running IBM’s OS/2 1.1 (1988), the first OS/2 version with the Presentation Manager GUI. While Microsoft’s and IBM’s releases of OS/2 were fully compatible from application perspective, there were differences in the drivers … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Intel, Microsoft, OS/2, x86 | 13 Comments

IBM ThinkPad Power Series 850

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Michal Necasek

In the mid-1990s, IBM and Motorola unsuccessfully tried to create a new personal computer platform built around PowerPC RISC processors. Apple was initially a member of the alliance called AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) and used PowerPC processors in its own Macintosh systems … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PowerPC | 48 Comments

Ctrl-Alt-Del Myths

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Michal Necasek

In a recent interview at Harvard University, Bill Gates claimed (around 16:35 mark) that Windows uses Ctrl-Alt-Del as a logon key combination because “IBM didn’t want to give [Microsoft] a single button”. This statement is curious because it takes several facts … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, PC hardware | 8 Comments

Taking Screenshots of OS/2 on ThinkPad 850

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Michal Necasek

An article about OS/2 on a PowerPC-based ThinkPad 850 needed a few screenshots for illustration. Once an OS is installed and running a GUI, it’s typically possible to run a screen grab utility and capture screenshots digitally. But that’s not an … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, PowerPC | 4 Comments

OS/2 on ThinkPad 850

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The ThinkPad 850 was no ordinary ThinkPad. It was IBM’s high-end portable multimedia workstation, built around a 100MHz PowerPC 603e processor, with a list price of $12,399 (February 1996). The ThinkPad 850 was originally slated (see IBM announcement letter 195-176) to … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2, PowerPC | 18 Comments

The Central Point Backup Floppy Format

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A reader recently asked about the “native” format of Central Point Backup (CP Backup) floppies. Diskettes formatted in this manner are somewhat tricky to work with as they do not use a standard DOS format. A session with Sydex’s AnaDisk … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Floppies | 28 Comments