Author Archives: Michal Necasek

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

Redirectors and DOS 3.0

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Michal Necasek

When attempting to determine when exactly the network redirector interface was introduced in DOS, the situation seems to be quite clear. Available literature agrees that DOS 3.1 (released in April 1985 by IBM, possibly earlier by Microsoft OEMs) was when … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Networking, PC history | 14 Comments

MS-DOS OAKs

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Prior to 1991, Microsoft did not sell MS-DOS to end users directly. Although MS-DOS 3.2 (1986) and later was available to system builders as a “packaged product”, most PC users would get an OEM version of MS-DOS with a new … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, DOS, Microsoft | 13 Comments

Early Microsoft Networks

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Microsoft networking technologies, often referred to as SMB and/or CIFS, have a very long history, longer than one might realize. While Microsoft’s networking products only became somewhat widespread around 1993-1994 with Windows for Workgroups, their history goes back to 1984-1985. … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, Networking | 17 Comments

An old idea: x86 hardware virtualization

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Michal Necasek

It is well known that virtualization of the x86 architecture is an old idea. The Intel 386 processor (1985) introduced the “Virtual 8086” (V86) mode, enabling users to run real-mode operating systems as a task within a 32-bit protected-mode operating systems. … Continue reading →

Posted in 386, Intel, Virtualization | 14 Comments

Watcom Win386

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Michal Necasek

When Windows 3.0 came out in 1990, the press loved it and users bought it in droves. Unfortunately, technically it was at best a step sideways, and Windows 3.0 was the cause of many sleepless nights for application developers. Even … Continue reading →

Posted in 386, Development, Windows | 13 Comments

DOS boot hang update

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Michal Necasek

Additional information came to light regarding the hangs with DOS 2.x/3.x when booting from a disk with large number of sectors per track. The problem appears to have been noticed sometime in 1987—perhaps. The MS-DOS OEM Adaptation Kit (OAK) for … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, IBM, Microsoft | 4 Comments

Solaris 2.5.1 and 2.6 crashes on modern Intel CPUs

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Michal Necasek

I recently found that Solaris 2.6 and 2.5.1 does not work when run in a VM on a modern Intel CPU (Sandy Bridge generation Core i7), or to be exact fails most of the time (about nine times out of … Continue reading →

Posted in Solaris, VirtualBox, Virtualization, x86 | 27 Comments