Category Archives: PC history

How Not to Buy a Computer

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

The following is an unauthorized translation of an article by Jiří Franěk, published in the Czechoslovak computer magazine List sometime in early 1989. Some readers probably remember those times, others have forgotten. As for the rest—consider yourselves lucky. The number … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, PC press | 27 Comments

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

PC-NFS 3.0.1

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Between a search engine and a friend, the search for PC-NFS 3.0 yielded a set of seven 360K floppy images of Sun PC-NFS 3.0.1. Hooray for the Internet, and thank you! Judging by the timestamps, PC-NFS 3.0.1 was finalized in … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, NFS, PC history | 9 Comments

PC-NFS 3.0 Anyone?

Posted on July 14, 2019 by Michal Necasek

I’m looking for Sun’s PC-NFS 3.0 (circa 1989), or ideally even older PC-NFS version. The ultimate goal is to get the oldest surviving x86 NFS client going in a VM; it is almost certain that the first such product was … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, NFS, PC history | 5 Comments

Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator?

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Michal Necasek

More or less anyone using modern PCs has to wonder: Why does Windows use backslash as a path separator when the rest of the world uses forward slash? The clear intermediate answer is “because DOS and OS/2 used backslash”. Both … Continue reading →

Posted in DEC, DOS, IBM, Microsoft, PC history | 42 Comments

1988 Networking: NetWare OS/2 Requester

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Michal Necasek

A while ago, the question of antique NetWare OS/2 requesters came up. The oldest known surviving NetWare OS/2 Requester is version 1.2, which is designed to work with OS/2 1.2. There are clear mentions of older requesters supporting OS/2 1.1 … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, Networking, OS/2, PC history, Virtualization | 16 Comments

NetWare 2.x Notes

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Novell NetWare has quite a long history, but the older parts of it are now almost completely lost. In the mid-1980s, Novell offered Advanced NetWare, NetWare ELS, NetWare SFT, and other members of the NetWare 286 family. With the partial … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, Networking, PC history | 14 Comments

Small World

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Michal Necasek

The core of this story was originally a private e-mail, but I realized that it’s worth sharing with a slightly wider audience. Readers may know that I’m very interested in the history of PC development tools, especially C compilers, and … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, Watcom | 16 Comments

Ancient NetWare OS/2 Requesters?

Posted on February 16, 2019 by Michal Necasek

Quite a while ago there was a discussion on this site about NetWare support for OS/2 versions prior to 1.3. Finding reliable information is difficult, especially when one doesn’t know exactly what to look for. Spurred by the discovery of … Continue reading →

Posted in NetWare, OS/2, PC history | 13 Comments

Historical ATA Standard Drafts

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Michal Necasek

After some digging, I discovered that several old drafts of the original ATA standard (later known as ATA-1) have been out in the public all along, or at least for a very long time, cleverly hiding among hundreds of SCSI-related … Continue reading →

Posted in IDE, PC history, Storage | 15 Comments