Monthly Archives: May 2014

The IBM PC BIOS and Intel ISIS-II

An interesting question recently popped up: How exactly did IBM build the ROM BIOS for the IBM PC? Knowing what tools were used should make it possible to use the ROM listing published in the IBM PC Technical Reference and … Continue reading

Posted in BIOS, IBM, Intel, PC history | 44 Comments

PC Tech Journal

One of the better PC magazines back in the day (that is, in the 1980s) was PC Tech Journal (or PCTJ for short), a sister periodical of PC Magazine published by Ziff-Davis. While PC Magazine was targeted at the general computer-buying … Continue reading

Posted in PC history, PC press | 5 Comments

IBM Power Series Exotica

One might think that for example a ThinkPad Power Series 850 is an uncommon system, but such things are relative. The OS/2 Museum recently learned of not just one but two very rare Power Series systems, one of which is virtually a … Continue reading

Posted in IBM, PowerPC | 7 Comments

Timing In Software Is Too Hard?

I recently attempted to install RedHat Linux 3.0.3 (that’s the one from 1996, not RHEL 3.0) in VirtualBox. I thought I’d use the BusLogic SCSI emulation and the newer 1.3.57 Linux kernel. It did not work at all. The problem … Continue reading

Posted in Bugs, BusLogic, Linux, SCSI | 32 Comments

Microsoft OS/2 1.3… But Which One?

A recent inventory at the OS/2 Museum revealed that two seemingly identical sets of Microsoft OS/2 1.30.1 disk images were in fact not identical at all. Probably thanks to the twilight status of OS/2 at Microsoft in the days of OS/2 1.3, Microsoft … Continue reading

Posted in Microsoft, OS/2 | 25 Comments

Have You Seen This Board?

The OS/2 Museum recently acquired this mystery 386 board (click on the image to see a high-resolution photo): This is in theory a killer 386 board: onboard Am386DX-40, a socket for a replacement 386 or 486DLC processor, a FPU socket, 256KB cache, … Continue reading

Posted in 386 | 23 Comments