Category Archives: Microsoft

Well Hello

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Michal Necasek

So after some furious disassembling, assembling, and linking, things got this far: It took longer than it ought to have because although IDA is great, I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with GW-BASIC’s bizarre segment usage. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Compaq, Microsoft, PC history, Source code | 7 Comments

How Old Is OMF?

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Michal Necasek

The Object Module Format (OMF), used by most DOS development tools, and eventually displaced by COFF/ELF in the 32-bit world, is quite old. It is a somewhat strange format because of its age, and it is quite complex, both because … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Intel, Microsoft, PC history, x86 | 8 Comments

GW-BASIC Source Notes

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Michal Necasek

When I learned that Microsoft released the GW-BASIC source code, I was mildly curious to find out what is or isn’t there. The short answer is that there’s a whole lot, but a lot is also missing. Spelling note: Both … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, PC history, Source code | 18 Comments

Those Win9x Crashes on Fast Machines…

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Michal Necasek

It is well known that Win9x variants prior to Windows 98 have a tendency to crash on fast CPUs. The definition of “fast” is of course fuzzy but the problems were known to occur on AMD K6-2 processors running at … Continue reading →

Posted in AMD, Bugs, Intel, Microsoft | 24 Comments

MS OS/2 SDK Document Dump

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Michal Necasek

The Microsoft OS/2 1.0 SDK library section got a big fat update. Over the holidays I managed to finalize and upload about 25 PDFs, some of which have been lying on my NAS in 98% completed state for almost 10 … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

More on NX Insanity

Posted on November 29, 2019 by Michal Necasek

This article was supposed to be published about two years ago but got forgotten and ignored until now. It’s not the only such article. Perhaps it will start a new “better published late than never” series. After looking more closely … Continue reading →

Posted in AMD, Bugs, Intel, Microsoft | 13 Comments

LAN Manager Product Specification, 1987

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Now available is the preliminary yet fairly complete product specification for the LAN Manager server and workstation from October 14, 1987. This document was available to developers months before any pre-release LAN manager code, and about a year before any … Continue reading →

Posted in Archiving, Documentation, LAN Manager, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history | 1 Comment

Same Old Disk Bug

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

After I Kryofluxed my MS OS/2 SDK 1.01 disks, I once again tried installing the OS in a VM. While the system booted up fine, it stubbornly refused to get past FORMAT. At the end, after going through all the … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, Microsoft, OS/2, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Microsoft OS/2 Programmer’s Guide

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

For once, the OS/2 Museum lives up to its name… After a long pause, a new document from the MS OS/2 SDK has been uploaded. It’s the pre-release Microsoft Operating System/2 Programmer’s Guide from April 1987. This document was part … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator?

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

More or less anyone using modern PCs has to wonder: Why does Windows use backslash as a path separator when the rest of the world uses forward slash? The clear intermediate answer is “because DOS and OS/2 used backslash”. Both … Continue reading →

Posted in DEC, DOS, IBM, Microsoft, PC history | 42 Comments