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Category Archives: Microsoft
More than Two Hard Disks in DOS
Investigating the rather odd behavior of the Microsoft OS/2 1.21 disk driver led me to Compaq and their EXTDISK.SYS driver. While experimenting with various setups, I realized that DOS versions older than 5.0 do not support more than two hard … Continue reading
Posted in Bugs, Compaq, DOS, Microsoft, PC history
77 Comments
1990 Networking: LAN Manager 2.0
In 1990, Microsoft released LAN Manager (LM) 2.0, a member of a long line of Microsoft’s networking products that started with MS-NET circa 1984 and eventually morphed into Windows NT file sharing. LAN Manager 1.0 was released in 1988 as … Continue reading
Posted in 3Com, LAN Manager, Microsoft, Networking, PC history
2 Comments
1989 Networking: 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1
The previously mentioned warez dump on archive.org contains a lot of little gems that would have been otherwise lost. One of those might be 3Com’s networking package from 1989, the 3+Open LAN Manager version 1.1. The software was released in … Continue reading
Posted in 386MAX, 3Com, DOS, LAN Manager, Microsoft, Networking, OS/2
21 Comments
The Strange MS OS/2 1.21 Disk Driver
Attempting to install Microsoft OS/2 1.21 will fail on many systems with the following scary looking error: Pressing Enter as directed shows the following more detailed error message: The initial boot phase, as well as the installation stage immediately before … Continue reading
Posted in Bugs, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history
44 Comments
Time Trouble
Last Friday I had a moment of panic. While investigating why different run-time libraries might interpret file timestamps differently, I noticed that even Windows doesn’t always agree with itself. When was dos4gw.exe last modified, at 10:14 PM or 9:14 PM? … Continue reading
Posted in Bugs, Development, Microsoft
20 Comments
Programming NetBIOS on OS/2
Recently I spent some time trying to understand a piece of networking code, and it turned out to be far more difficult than it should have been. The code in question is the NetBIOS interface of C-Kermit and was originally … Continue reading
Posted in Development, Documentation, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, OS/2
24 Comments
More MS OS/2 2.0
Over the last few weeks, two “new” pre-releases of OS/2 2.0 have been found in ancient warez archives. The first is OS/2 2.0 build 6.64, released in early April 1990: In general, this build is not substantially different from the … Continue reading
Posted in IBM, Microsoft, OS/2, Pre-release
6 Comments
Who Knew What When
When Microsoft released the unique early beta build of Multitasking DOS 4, I quickly found out that it does not run in VirtualBox: This was a bit of a surprise, because the more-or-less released versions of Multitasking DOS 4 from … Continue reading
Posted in 286, DOS, IBM, Microsoft, PC architecture, PC history, VirtualBox
31 Comments
Learn Something Old Every Day, Part XII: Strange File Resizing on DOS
Someone recently asked an interesting question: Why do Microsoft C and compatible DOS compilers have no truncate() and/or ftruncate() library functions? And how does one resize files on DOS? OK, that’s actually two questions. The first one is easy enough … Continue reading
Posted in Computing History, CP/M, Development, Documentation, DOS, Microsoft
29 Comments
The Future That Never Was
Microsoft OS/2 2.0 SDK Pre-Release 2, June 1990 In 1990, the strategic PC operating system of Microsoft and IBM was not DOS, not Windows, but OS/2. The first 16-bit OS/2 was initially released in 1987 with a reduced feature set, … Continue reading
Posted in 386, IBM, LAN Manager, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history, Pre-release
76 Comments