Monthly Archives: January 2022

Another Trip to Drive Geometry Hell

Recently I took another close look at the IDE.DSK driver in NetWare 3.12. Among other things, I wanted to know how it differs from ISADISK.DSK. On some systems, the two drivers are interchangeable and either will work. But there are … Continue reading

Posted in IDE, NetWare, PC history | 8 Comments

Another Myth Busted

More than once I came across a story of a heroic MicroPro programmer who in an all-night session managed to port WordStar from CP/M to DOS by patching a single byte. This is how the legend was retold by Joel … Continue reading

Posted in CP/M, DOS, PC history, WordStar | 5 Comments

Unidentified PC DOS 1.1 Boot Sector Junk Identified

Anyone trying to disassemble the PC DOS 1.1 boot sector soon notices that at offsets 1A3h through 1BEh there is a byte sequence that just does not belong. It appears to be a fragment of code, but it has no … Continue reading

Posted in Development, DOS, PC history | 24 Comments