Author Archives: Michal Necasek

ISA bus 8514/A?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Michal Necasek

During the development of the 8514/A, IBM clearly had ISA-based adapters. A proof of this may be found in the source code for the Windows 2.x setup program (part of the Binary Adaptation Kit, or BAK), which among other things … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, IBM, PC hardware, Windows | 7 Comments

The XGA Graphics Chip

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Michal Necasek

After covering the 8514/A and its clones, it’s only appropriate to write a few words about the XGA (eXtended Graphics Array), IBM’s final attempt at establishing a PC graphics hardware standard. The XGA was introduced on October 30, 1990, about … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, IBM | 5 Comments

S3 Graphics Accelerators and the 8514/A

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The previous article about the IBM 8514/A graphics accelerator and clones did not mention S3’s chips because S3-based graphics cards were never 8514/A compatible, unlike the ATI Mach 8 and Mach 32 chips and others. However, the relationship between S3 … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | Leave a comment

The 8514/A Graphics Accelerator

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Michal Necasek

On April 2, 1987, when IBM rolled out the PS/2 line of personal computers, one of the hardware announcements was the VGA display chip, a standard that has lasted for 25 years and counting. While the VGA was an incremental … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, Graphics, IBM, PC hardware | 30 Comments

VIA Apollo vs. AGP 4x

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Because there can never be enough Dualatins, I obtained a Supermicro P3TDDE board. This is one of the relatively few boards which support dual Socket 370 Pentium III processors (including Tualatins) and at the same time sport an AGP 4x … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, PC hardware | 3 Comments

The Pin N33 Mystery and the History of Slockets

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The Ultimate Museum PC (UMPC) is a dual Slot 1 based system. Fast Slot 1 based Pentium III processors turned out to be extremely difficult to find (especially at non-ridiculous prices like $200 per CPU). The current 850MHz processors are … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware | 4 Comments

R360 Correction

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Michal Necasek

In a previous post, I wrote that a Radeon 9800 XT can’t be used with a 440BX chipset because it’s based on a R360 chip, newer than the R350 used in Radeon 9800 Pros. The reality turns out to be … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, PC hardware | 2 Comments

The Tualatin Story

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Michal Necasek

While researching the Ultimate Museum PC it was hard to avoid the Tualatin, the final 0.13-micron incarnation of the Pentium III. With speeds up to 1.4GHz and 512KB on-chip L2 cache, a pair of PIII-S Tualatins should provide decent oomph. … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware | 15 Comments

The Ultimate Museum PC Update

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A quick update on the Ultimate Museum PC (should it be called simply the UMPC?). The system is currently using a Supermicro P6DBE board with 2x Pentium 850MHz (Coppermine, 100MHz FSB) processors, 1GB RAM, a 120GB IDE disk, an ATAPI … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware | 22 Comments

The Oldest OS/2 Executable In the Wild

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Michal Necasek

While researching the history of Microsoft’s segmented-executable linker originally called LINK4.EXE, I came across an OS/2 executable that was publicly released almost a year before the first OS/2 SDK was shipped, and many months before OS/2 was even announced. In … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, OS/2 | 16 Comments