Category Archives: Documentation

OS/2 Programmer’s Toolkit

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Michal Necasek

For those wishing to write OS/2 1.x programs, the complete Microsoft OS/2 Programmer’s Toolkit documentation is now online. This is Microsoft’s programming documentation for OS/2 1.0 programming. It is worth noting that IBM’s programming documentation was different; worse yet, IBM’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | 2 Comments

Weekend Reading, OS/2 and Windows

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Michal Necasek

In a recent post I mentioned that the OS/2 Museum’s stack of PC Tech Journal issues ironically does not include the first PCTJ issue devoted to OS/2. Thanks to pcjs.org, the October 1987 issue of PCTJ can now be read … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2, Windows | 3 Comments

Undocumented 8086 Opcodes

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A minor mystery recently surfaced while analyzing DOS boot sectors. DOS uses several criteria when deciding whether a boot sector contains a valid BPB, and one of the criteria is (oddly enough) checking whether the first two bytes of the … Continue reading →

Posted in 8086/8088, Documentation, Intel, x86 | 62 Comments

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

Undocumented VflatD

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The virtual flat framebuffer driver, or VflatD, was introduced in Windows 95 in order to ease development of display drivers. It was surprisingly poorly documented and the sample drivers did not illustrate its use very well. A short backgrounder may … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, VGA, Windows | 2 Comments

What’s in a name… OS/2 or DOS?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Michal Necasek

There have been many rumors that the name “OS/2” was chosen only shortly before the product was announced. It’s not entirely clear what the name would have been otherwise, but quite likely DOS 5; certainly DOS in some form. There … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, DOS, OS/2, PC history | 1 Comment

Microsoft OS/2 1.0 user documentation

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Michal Necasek

In late 1987, Microsoft shipped a set of OS/2 1.0 user documentation as part of the OS/2 SDK. The set included the Setup Guide, Beginning User’s Guide (a tutorial style document), and User’s Reference. The manuals were similar in style … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, OS/2 | 3 Comments

Converting NT DDK/SDK PostScript documents to PDF

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Michal Necasek

Pre-releases of Microsoft’s NT development tools, as well as the final NT 3.1 SDK and DDK, shipped with a full set of printable documentation in PostScript format. The PostScript book-style document were rather more pleasing to the eye than the … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, NT | 5 Comments