Category Archives: Development

Microsoft Editor

(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox) In a recent blog post I lamented the lack of a good console/cmd/PowerShell text editor for Windows. During the process I made a rather interesting discovery, that in a fact … Continue reading

Posted in Development, DOS, Editors, Microsoft, NT, OS/2, Source code, Uncategorized | 23 Comments

IBM OS/2 1.x Programming Documentation Added

IBM’s programming documentation (Programming Tools and Information, aka PTI) for OS/2 versions 1.2 and 1.3 has been added. Big thanks to Bob Eager who scanned the originals and converted them to PDF. The documents have been added to the OS/2 … Continue reading

Posted in Development, Documentation, IBM, OS/2 | 2 Comments

UINT32_C Macro Considered Harmful

The C99 family of INTN_C and UINTN_C macros fills a real gap in the language, but it also lays extremely nasty traps for the unwary. The evolution of how the macros are defined in the C99 language standard shows that … Continue reading

Posted in C, Development | 2 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 Programmer’s Toolkit

For those wishing to write OS/2 1.x programs, the complete Microsoft OS/2 Programmer’s Toolkit documentation is now online. This is Microsoft’s programming documentation for OS/2 1.0 programming. It is worth noting that IBM’s programming documentation was different; worse yet, IBM’s … Continue reading

Posted in Development, Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | 2 Comments

Book Review: Linkers & Loaders

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews Linkers & Loaders, by John R. Levine Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, October 1999; 256 pages, ISBN 1-55860-496-0; $60.95 Published in 1999, Linkers & Loaders is one of the more recent books reviewed in this series. … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Development | 1 Comment

Master Builders of OS/2

The MS OS/2 videos exhibit has now been completed with the addition of two PDF documents. These are scans of two fat three-ring binders that were handed out to attendees of the Microsoft OS/2 Developer’s Conference in New York City … Continue reading

Posted in Development, Microsoft, OS/2 | 11 Comments

Windows NT BSOD Aclock Port

Do you remember the famous Windows NT Blue Screen Of Death? For years it was a source of jokes and bad reputation of Windows reliability. There even was a Blue Screen Saver! Today we fortunately see much less of it, but it … Continue reading

Posted in 386, Development, NT, VGA, Windows, x86 | 10 Comments

No comments in source code? Really?

A few weeks ago I came across an interview with an academic software researcher, now working for Microsoft. (Unfortunately the interview was in a non-English print publication, so I can’t link to it.) The interview was quite interesting, far better … Continue reading

Posted in Development | 14 Comments

Book Review: DOS Internals

A Few Decades Late Book Reviews DOS Internals, by Geoff Chappell Addison-Wesley, March 1994; 768 pages, ISBN 0-201-60835-9; $39.95 DOS Internals is a very unusual book. Written by an academic whose field isn’t computer science, it is a in-depth and … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Development, DOS, Microsoft | 6 Comments