Category Archives: Documentation

Looking for High Sierra

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Michal Necasek

Some time ago, I thought it would be useful to understand exactly what is the difference between CD-ROMs recorded in the old High Sierra format versus the ISO 9660 standard. This was in part spurred by the fact that I … Continue reading →

Posted in CD-ROM, Documentation, PC history | 23 Comments

Learn Something Old Every Day

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, PC hardware, PC history, Seagate, Storage | 3 Comments

EISA Specification 3.1

Posted on June 9, 2021 by Michal Necasek

While researching the Compaq Intelligent Drive Array (IDA), a circa 1990 EISA-based IDE RAID controller, I quickly established that there’s very little surviving information about it, and most of what there is can be found in two or three patents … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, EISA | 19 Comments

WD1007V Commands

Posted on June 5, 2021 by Michal Necasek

While researching material for a previous article, I wanted to examine the only AT-compatible ESDI controller I have, a Western Digital WD1007V-SE2. My board was made in 1990, the firmware is from 1989, and the controller was likely introduced in … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, Documentation, ESDI, Western Digital | 3 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 | 36 Comments

MS OS/2 SDK Document Dump

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Michal Necasek

The Microsoft OS/2 1.0 SDK library section got a big fat update. Over the holidays I managed to finalize and upload about 25 PDFs, some of which have been lying on my NAS in 98% completed state for almost 10 … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

LAN Manager Product Specification, 1987

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Now available is the preliminary yet fairly complete product specification for the LAN Manager server and workstation from October 14, 1987. This document was available to developers months before any pre-release LAN manager code, and about a year before any … Continue reading →

Posted in Archiving, Documentation, LAN Manager, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history | 1 Comment

Microsoft OS/2 Programmer’s Guide

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

For once, the OS/2 Museum lives up to its name… After a long pause, a new document from the MS OS/2 SDK has been uploaded. It’s the pre-release Microsoft Operating System/2 Programmer’s Guide from April 1987. This document was part … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | Leave a comment

The History of a Security Hole

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Michal Necasek

Warning: If you do not care for the finer points of x86 architecture, please stop reading right now—in the interest of your own sanity. A while ago I was made aware of a strange problem causing a normal user process … Continue reading →

Posted in 386, BSD, Bugs, Documentation, PC history | 44 Comments

USB 0.9

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Michal Necasek

A couple of months ago I lamented the fact that historic USB documentation appears to have vanished from the face of the Earth. Today I finally found one such document, the USB 0.9 specification from April 13, 1995, published almost … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, PC history, USB | 30 Comments