Monthly Archives: January 2015

Demented Board

Last week I encountered a problem that I have never seen before with a recently acquired Socket 7 motherboard. The board was a Gigabyte GA-586HX (Rev. 1.58), a relatively uninteresting older Socket 7 board based on the well-regarded Intel 430HX … Continue reading

Posted in Bugs, PC hardware | 14 Comments

Windows 3.0 DR 1.14, February 1989

Another rather interesting software artifact surfaced just recently, after more than 25 years since its release: Windows 3.0 Debug Release 1.14 (further referred to as DR 1.14) from February 1989. This was an alpha version only provided to select ISVs … Continue reading

Posted in 386, Microsoft, PC history, Windows | 90 Comments

mtswslnk

Certain older Microsoft software (including Windows font files) contains mysterious strings starting with “mtswslnk”, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. This led some people to wild speculation about the meaning and purpose of the string. Let’s start with the full string: … Continue reading

Posted in Development, Microsoft, PC history | 2 Comments

OS/2 Technical Library Scans

After a lot of scanning and OCRing, here’s the OS/2 2.0 Technical Library (well, most of it) in PDF form. This was IBM’s complete programming documentation for OS/2 2.0, covering general programming, GUI development, Workplace Shell, and device drivers. Certainly … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, OS/2 | 8 Comments

Book Review: Inside Windows NT

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews Inside Windows NT, by Helen Custer Microsoft Press, 1992; 385 pages, ISBN 1-55615-481-X; $24.95 Inside Windows NT was one of the earliest published books about Windows NT, predating the actual July 1993 release of Windows NT … Continue reading

Posted in Books, NT | 6 Comments