Author Archives: Michal Necasek

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

Phantom 3.0

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Michal Necasek

As previously mentioned, the OS/2 Museum adapted the Phantom redirector example from the second edition of Undocumented DOS to demonstrate that the redirector interface was already fully implemented in the August, 1984 release of PC DOS 3.0, a fact apparently … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, DOS | 38 Comments

MacBook Pro with Retina display: What a letdown

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Michal Necasek

I’ve been a satisfied user of MacBook Pro laptops since mid-2006, soon after the first Intel-based Macs appeared. My current system is a mid-2008 2.6 GHz 17″ MacBook Pro which I’ve been overall quite happy with. However, the Core 2 … Continue reading →

Posted in Apple | 3 Comments

On a dark, rainy night in April 1985…

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Update: Since the original document disappeared, a local copy is now provided. When researching the history of computing, from time to time an unexpected gem turns up. The copy of Ray Ozzie’s notes from a 1985 meeting with Microsoft is one … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, Windows | 39 Comments

Minor site updates and summer time

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Summer is upon us, and as a consequence, site updates will be less frequent in the coming weeks. Regular visitors may have noticed that after a long delay, the DOS history article on DOS 4 was finally published. Researching DOS … Continue reading →

Posted in Site Management | 5 Comments