Monthly Archives: August 2021

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 | 20 Comments

Drive Price Mystery

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Michal Necasek

While digging into the history of DoubleSpace and DriveSpace, I came across a handy article about the rocky relationship between Stac Electronics and Microsoft. Only I was distracted by the bold claim (certainly claimed in very bold letters) that a … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, Storage | 16 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 | 60 Comments