Monthly Archives: December 2019

The Cape Cod Disaster

Here’s a motherboard Intel very quickly wanted to forget about: It’s the Intel CC820—or Cape Cod—desktop board, a product that was late to market (not unusual) and within a few months, the subject of a recall (quite unusual). As the … Continue reading

Posted in Bugs, Intel, PC hardware, PC history, Pentium III, RDRAM | 44 Comments

DOS Wireless Networking, Continued

As I recently mentioned, wireless networking is extra difficult when the access point reboots itself at the slightest hint of heavier traffic. The faulty TP-Link router was temporarily replaced with a Netgear WG602 of similar vintage. The Netgear has been … Continue reading

Posted in DOS, Networking, NFS, TCP/IP, Wireless | 3 Comments

The Danger of Datasheets

A few days age I came across an article about the 8237 DMA controller in an old German computing magazine (DOS Extra, issue 1 ’87/88, page 123, Schnelle Speicherverwaltung mit dem DMA-Controller, or Fast memory management with the DMA controller). … Continue reading

Posted in Corrections, PC hardware, PC press | 29 Comments

Power Trouble

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who is deeply familiar with PC hardware; the other 99% please bear with me. A good quality and compatible power supply is crucial to the healthy operation of a PC. The … Continue reading

Posted in PC hardware, PC history | 13 Comments

Wireless Networking in DOS

Wireless networking has a long history, longer than most people realize. NCR’s WaveLAN was available in 1990 and of course supported DOS. But WaveLAN was only the precursor to IEEE 802.11 and it is completely incompatible with IEEE-standard networking equipment. … Continue reading

Posted in DOS, Networking, Wireless | 19 Comments