Author Archives: Michal Necasek

Why Windows NT from October 1992 refuses to install on modern CPUs

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Attempting to install the October 1992 pre-release on any CPU less than about 20 years old is likely to result in the following error message: This is similar to the behavior of the official Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5 releases, … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, NT | 15 Comments

Windows Update Fail

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The other day I needed to update a server blade with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it. The system hadn’t been running for a while and now had about 100 updates available. I wasn’t looking forward to this as … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, Windows | 7 Comments

OS/2 Library Expansion

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Thanks to a very generous donor, the OS/2 section of the library at the OS/2 Museum has been recently expanded by 25 new arrivals (although a few of them are duplicates of books already in possession of the OS/2 Museum). … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, OS/2 | 7 Comments

Book Review: DOS Internals

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Michal Necasek

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews DOS Internals, by Geoff Chappell Addison-Wesley, March 1994; 768 pages, ISBN 0-201-60835-9; $39.95 DOS Internals is a very unusual book. Written by an academic whose field isn’t computer science, it is a in-depth and … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Development, DOS, Microsoft | 16 Comments

IBM PS/2 Model 50 Keyboard Controller

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Thanks to John Elliott, a ROM dump of the PS/2 Model 50 keyboard controller (an 8742 chip) is now available. The IBM PC/AT keyboard controller (KBC) ROM has been analyzed earlier. So what exactly changed between the PC/AT and the … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PC architecture | 1 Comment

Book Review: Developing Applications Using DOS

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Michal Necasek

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews Developing Applications Using DOS, by Ken W. Christopher, Jr., Barry A. Feigenbaum, and Shon O. Saliga John Wiley & Sons, February 1990; 573 pages, ISBN 0-471-52231-7; $24.95 Developing Applications Using DOS is a surprisingly obscure … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, DOS, IBM | 2 Comments

Why does Apple hate RSS?

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Last week I was setting up a new Mac and obviously the first thing I did was to upgrade the OS to Mountain Lion. No problems there. As one of the follow-up steps of the setup process, I tried to … Continue reading →

Posted in Apple | Leave a comment

86-DOS Was an Original

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Michal Necasek

In case it wasn’t sufficiently obvious already: A forensic expert now confirmed that 86-DOS, née QDOS, and (by extension) MS-DOS were not copies of CP/M, either on source or binary level. This comes hardly as a surprise, despite years (nay, … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, PC history | 6 Comments

Another witness against WordStar

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Previous posts examined the question why IBM implemented the A20 hardware in the PC/AT, causing endless headaches to future PC hardware and software developers. WordStar emerged as a possible culprit, but no one would quite point the finger at it. … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, PC history, WordStar | 20 Comments

Book Review: Inside OS/2

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Michal Necasek

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews Inside OS/2, by Gordon Letwin Microsoft Press, February 1988; 302 pages, ISBN 1-55615-117-9; $19.95 Letwin’s Inside OS/2 was one of the first books devoted to OS/2. What sets Inside OS/2 apart from other OS/2 books published … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Microsoft, OS/2 | 17 Comments