Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Installing Oct ’91 NT from CD

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Michal Necasek

With VirtualBox 4.3, it is possible to install the oldest known pre-release of Windows NT directly from CD, the way Microsoft intended. This is the Fall ’91 Comdex preview which only supported the x86 architecture and a very short list … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, NT, SCSI | 35 Comments

SMD Fun

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Michal Necasek

I recently tried to revive an old ThinkPad 600 (with a 300 MHz mobile Pentium II processor). The system wouldn’t boot up and reported errors (173, 163) which are usually a good indication of a dead CMOS battery. In a … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, ThinkPad | 2 Comments

Fantasy History at Ars Technica

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Ars Technica today published an article titled “Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2“. Although very interesting, unfortunately the article to a significant extent engages in what can best be called fantasy history, which causes the text … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Microsoft, OS/2 | 52 Comments

IBM ThinkPad 755CD

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Michal Necasek

An earlier article about PowerPC-based ThinkPad 850 mentioned that the 850 was a close cousin of x86-based ThinkPads of the era. The OS/2 Museum now takes a look at one of those laptops, and interesting laptop in its own right: … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, ThinkPad | 12 Comments

Dongle Bungle

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A few weeks ago I needed a 3Com 3C589 PCMCIA network card to run Solaris on a ThinkPad Power Series 850. The Solaris PowerPC HCL only listed 3C589 and 3C589B as supported models (and no other network adapters were listed … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, PC hardware | 11 Comments

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