Monthly Archives: June 2013

ATI mach8/mach32/early mach64 Documentation?

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Michal Necasek

It’s a long shot, but I’m looking for programming documentation for ATI’s mach8/mach32 and early mach64 chips (prior to 1996 or so). The earlier documents may have only existed in paper form. These used to be available from ATI but … Continue reading →

Posted in ATi, Documentation | 37 Comments

BSD Buglets

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Last week I ran into two wholly unrelated problems while researching the history of BSD-derived Unix systems on PCs. Both are classics in their category and merit a closer look. Y2K Strikes Again The first issue is a very typical … Continue reading →

Posted in BSD, UNIX, x86 | 11 Comments

PC DOS Retro

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Michal Necasek

There’s a new DOS history and reference information website called simply “PC DOS Retro Page”. The site includes several reference pages (DOS commands, drivers, functions, internal structures) as well as a very extensive timeline of DOS releases. Vernon Brooks, the … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS | 20 Comments

If you ENTER, you might not LEAVE

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Michal Necasek

I’ve recently spent some time debugging curious hangs/aborts in two more or less exotic operating systems, Plan 9 and QNX 4.25. Both turned to be caused by the same innocuous-looking BIOS change, even though the circumstances were somewhat different and … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, x86 | 9 Comments