Category Archives: PC hardware

The Dual-Drive IDE Hell

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Michal Necasek

I have perhaps inaccurate but very strong memories from my PC-building days (in the early to mid-1990s) that one of the most failure-prone and frustrating endeavors was trying to get two IDE drives working together on a single cable as … Continue reading →

Posted in IDE, PC hardware, PC history | 22 Comments

How Not to Erase Data

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Michal Necasek

From past blog posts it is fairly obvious that the OS/2 Museum occasionally purchases used hard disks. Most of the time, the disks are either completely erased (overwritten with zeros) or don’t have anything very interesting on them. But sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, PC hardware, Storage | 17 Comments

The IBM PC, 41 Years Ago

Posted on August 10, 2021 by Michal Necasek

No, the OS/2 Museum does not have either a time machine or difficulty doing basic math. As of this writing, it is August 2021 and the IBM PC was announced in August 1981, 40 years ago. But in August 1980, … Continue reading →

Posted in 8086/8088, BIOS, DOS, IBM, Intel, PC hardware, PC history | 69 Comments

IDENTIFY Ancient DRIVE

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Michal Necasek

This article will attempt to collect IDENTIFY DRIVE dumps from antique IDE drives, with running commentary. For the purposes of this list, “antique” is defined as a drive model released in 1990 or earlier, typically with the drive itself also … Continue reading →

Posted in IDE, PC hardware, PC history, Storage | 9 Comments

Learn Something Old Every Day, Part II: ST-506 Drives Need Correct Jumpers

Posted on July 17, 2021 by Michal Necasek

The ultimate reason why I pulled out the old Seagate ST-225 drive was because I wanted to try connecting it to the Western Digital WD1003-IWH board that I recently acquired. The WD1003-IWH is a curious evolutionary half-step between ST506 interface … Continue reading →

Posted in IDE, LSOED, PC hardware, PC history, Storage | 11 Comments

Learn Something Old Every Day, Part I: ST-506 Drives Have Programmable Step Rate

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Michal Necasek

More or less by accident I found myself writing a very basic DOS utility to read data off of an IDE drive. It started out by just issuing the IDENTIFY DRIVE command and capturing the data, but adding the ability … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, LSOED, PC hardware, PC history, Seagate, Storage | 4 Comments

Centaur Close-ups

Posted on July 2, 2021 by Michal Necasek

Readers have expressed interest in seeing what exactly a Western Digital ‘Centaur’ drive looked like. I took a few photos of a WD95044-A drive, the larger capacity (40 MB) and newer variant of the WD Centaur family. Some photos were … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, PC history, Storage, Western Digital | 4 Comments

Whence IDENTIFY DRIVE?

Posted on June 4, 2021 by Michal Necasek

As most everyone knows, the AT Attachment standard (informally known as IDE) started by literally bolting the previously standalone AT disk controller onto a MFM drive with a ST506 interface and connecting the assembly to the host system with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Compaq, Documentation, IDE, PC hardware, PC history, Storage | 40 Comments

Like New

Posted on May 31, 2021 by Michal Necasek

About twenty years ago, I bought a used IBM Model M keyboard with a PS/2 connector. I believe it cost me around $5-$10 plus shipping at the time. A good investment, given that this sort of keyboard is probably worth … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, Keyboard, PC hardware | 5 Comments

Fake vs. Real

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Michal Necasek

After discussing an Adaptec SCSI HBA that was clearly made from recycled parts and likely fake, I wanted to see what a real one looks like. It looks like this: For reference and for comparison, here’s the sketchy one: The … Continue reading →

Posted in Adaptec, Fakes, PC hardware | 6 Comments