All Questions
5,410
questions
2
votes
0
answers
53
views
Atari 1040 STFM power supply issue & high-pitch noise
I have an Atari 1040 STFM that's been sitting in the basement for about 30 years. It doesn't power on. The power indicator light is not illuminated and there's a high-pitch noise coming from the power ...
- 121
-1
votes
0
answers
101
views
Windows 98 laptop asking for MSINPUT when booting up, after that black screen
Wondering if the operating system is corrupted. Do I need to reinstall the OS? Can I bypass the command? I am able to press and hold F8 to go into Safe Mode successfully, but not sure what to do in ...
4
votes
0
answers
133
views
Looking for any information related to the CDC 1604 Co-Op Monitor
The CDC 1604 Wikipedia page mentions a "Co-Op Monitor (developed by the users' organization)" used as the operating system. Has a contemporary description of its capabilities, e.g. a user ...
- 17.7k
18
votes
2
answers
5k
views
What is a DVD add on card?
I have a MS-6340 micro ATX motherboard in my retro PC. It has multiple audio connectors and one is called JAUX1. It can be used to input analogue stereo sound.
But the description in the motherboard ...
- 3,549
14
votes
1
answer
620
views
What's this mysterious dynamic RAM board in my Heathkit H8?
I recently acquired a Heathkit H8 computer. It only has two boards plugged into the bus: the processor board that every H8 has, and another board, which is apparently a dynamic RAM board.
I can't find ...
- 660
24
votes
6
answers
5k
views
Did MS-DOS have any support for multithreading?
Common wisdom seems to be that MS-DOS was an exclusively single-threaded OS. Of course, implementing a scheduler would be possible, but the OS itself did not provide any facilities for multithreading, ...
- 587
0
votes
1
answer
115
views
What if ATX 12v P4 power connector was introduced 4 years earlier? [closed]
AT power supply handled +5 and +12 volts, +5 for ISA and processors, +12 for motors in disk drives.
In 1995 486DX2 was introduced with 3.3V core, so it derived that from a simple but inefficient ...
8
votes
4
answers
1k
views
"Mainframe" with Z80 [closed]
Maybe a silly question but has there ever been a mainframe OS running on a Z80 system, of course with sufficient memory and memory management unit?
I'm thinking of a ported MVS running, with TSO, the ...
- 183
0
votes
0
answers
179
views
Windows 98 laptop starts and shows logo, then goes to a command to enter MSINPUT for drive C? [closed]
Not sure what is going on with this laptop. It acts like it is working, but upon start-up it asks for MSINPUT. I try to type but nothing happens. After about 30 seconds the message disappears and I ...
-1
votes
0
answers
55
views
What mechanism does the Laser FD-100 use? [duplicate]
I need to find a manual for my Laser FD-100. I haven’t been able to find any my next next best bet is for the drive mechanism it’s self. it looks like a Teac 55BV but i’m not sure.
- 9
3
votes
2
answers
239
views
When did CMOS processors become the fastest?
The earliest CMOS microprocessors (RCA 1802, HP Stirling RISC, et.al.) were slower than contemporaneous NMOS microprocessors and Bipolar logic computers. (IIRC, both the 1802 and the 6502 could be ...
- 7,924
8
votes
0
answers
369
views
How to make Microsoft C for MS-DOS emit an immediate-target far call into the data segment?
I am trying to recreate the C source code from some 16bit DOS 8086 assembly generated by the MS C 5.0 compiler. I've hit a wall with this far call instruction.
0000008D 9A2F0CB506 call 0x6b5:...
- 587
5
votes
1
answer
221
views
Which historical Unixes supported terminal I/O with five or six bits per character, and with what character sets?
The specification for termios.h includes a facility for controlling the number of bits per character sent over the serial line, the CSIZE and CSn constants. You can request five, six, seven, or eight ...
- 429
8
votes
1
answer
681
views
Old game, probably electronic in movie Phantasm (1978)
At minute 40 in the movie Phantasm (1978) there is a strange game similar to a hexagon.
Is probably an electronic game, anyone know which game is this?
- 1,203
20
votes
3
answers
3k
views
when did command line applications start using "-h" as a "standard" way to print "help"?
I am interested to hear about the history because I have a prominent command line product that has decided to use -h for something that does not print a help message.
when did command line ...
0
votes
0
answers
171
views
What stepper motor is used in an Apple Laser FD-100? [closed]
I’ve come to the conclusion that the stepper motor in my Apple-II compatible Laser FD-100 is seized. The screws are stripped so it’s basically unrepairable. Does anybody know what kind of stepper ...
- 9
19
votes
9
answers
5k
views
Why does cat with no argument read from standard input?
In advice about how to design good CLI commands I read:
If your command is expecting to have something piped to it and stdin is an interactive terminal, display help immediately and quit. This means ...
- 1,003
20
votes
3
answers
7k
views
Did mechanical hard drives often malfunction in high elevation places such as Bogota?
Bogota, Colombia has an elevation of 2,640m. A cable car in the city (Teleférico de Monserrate) can also take one to an elevation of 3,152m. Given that regular hard drives were usually pressurized to ...
- 303
4
votes
0
answers
136
views
Why didn't Remington Rand integrate their own teleprinter in their UNIVAC?
Remington was a successful typewriter producer whose shift-key products had been the role model of typewriter. Remington Rand was an early manufacturer of Computers and created the famous UNIVAC ...
- 3,582
5
votes
1
answer
330
views
Are Windows 2000 SP4 installation CDs home brewed?
I want to buy the latest official available Windows 2000 (Desktop) CD in both German & English.
On https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-nt-2000/final there are CD images without service pack and ...
- 3,549
13
votes
8
answers
4k
views
How were rackmount workstations wired-up to mice, keyboards, monitors, etc?
"Workstation"-class machines have long been available in today's conventional desktop form-factor, but have also been available in a rack-mountable form-factor, for installation into a ...
- 623
23
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Detecting the version of i486 CPU
Detecting the CPU model has been easy since Intel added the CPUID instruction to their Pentium processors (and some late 486s). However, earlier CPUs did not have this feature, so software had to rely ...
- 1,709
1
vote
0
answers
147
views
Math and French practice floppies
A long time ago, at school, they used to provide us with some 5.25 inches floppies each year. The teacher used to boot Unisys PCs with some bootable floppies (I do not believe they had hard disks), we ...
- 1,595
6
votes
2
answers
201
views
Reviving a Mac Mini (PowerPc) - Not booting correctly: video is out of sync, blinking, usb boot not enabled
I come from superuser.com where I asked this, but was told to post here for further help
https://superuser.com/questions/1772907/mac-mini-g4-powerpc-wont-boot-how-can-i-reset-it-to-factory-defaults?...
3
votes
4
answers
776
views
What page layout parameters imitate a line printer?
If I want to imitate the (scaled) look, albeit not the feel, of a typical line printer printout on fan-fold paper, using Letter-, Legal- or A4-sized paper, what settings should be used to reproduce ...
- 17.7k
3
votes
3
answers
321
views
Looking for old C64 game with "thriller" plot
In the late 80s (1989...) I had a C64, I bought some magazine about videogames.
In one of this I read about a "thriller" game, in which you must discover the assassin in a house, I recall a ...
- 1,203
21
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Origin of UNIX symbolic links?
When I search the web for information about the origin of UNIX symbolic links, I see "Symbolic links were first introduced into Unix with 4.1c-BSD". But when I go to fact check that, it ...
- 500
18
votes
2
answers
2k
views
What was 'Maclogal'?
While reading about the ATOLL Checkout Language in the April 1965 issue of DATAMATION (pp 33-35), I came across one letter to the editor (pg 12), discussing the volume required to house the ~1QB ...
5
votes
0
answers
174
views
How is the Genreal MIDI Soundbank file format structured?
Until today, you can download soundbanks for the Java Sound API from Oracle here. What surprises me is, that they are not hidden on an old subpage -- you find them freely accessible on their website ...
- 651
5
votes
1
answer
605
views
WIDTH command in MSX BASIC
I'm thinking of doing a project in MSX BASIC. I've seen some books where they discourage setting the width of SCREEN 0 to 40 characters wide with the WIDTH command (or 32 characters wide in SCREEN 1), ...
- 53
3
votes
2
answers
590
views
How do I diagnose a "system board error" on IBM Thinkpad 600E?
I have an IBM Thinkpad 600E that won't boot up. I used ctrl + alt + ins to boot into a screen with some diagnostic tools.
Memory test passes
HD test passes
SystemBoard test FAILS with Dev = 1 ERR = ...
- 61
3
votes
1
answer
398
views
Looking for an old game with culture question
In the game rooms with the usually coin-ops there was a "game" which use touch-screen (!) and you have to answer correctly to some quiz about culture, for example: Which is the capital of ...
- 1,203
1
vote
1
answer
173
views
Old IBM ThinkPad laptop gets stuck booting Windows on a weird screen. How to proceed?
I’m trying to breathe life into an old IBM ThinkPad Pentium II. I think it runs Windows NT or Windows 98 or whatever came after that
It turns on fine and asks me to enter the year and date which I do. ...
- 61
16
votes
0
answers
486
views
Are any CP/M systems still in use today?
I understand that there is a great deal of mainframe-era enterprise software that is still in active use, if not on the original hardware then in emulated environments. Its users keep it running ...
- 6,941
12
votes
3
answers
434
views
How much extra die area did a CMOS CPU take?
Starting in the late seventies, the microchip industry generally switched from NMOS to CMOS, primarily because CMOS circuits use less power, though they also have other advantages like more noise ...
- 55k
6
votes
1
answer
503
views
Basic page layout program from the PrintMaster 2.0 era
I remember it as "Fantasy" but the lack of results makes me think I may be wrong.
All I know for sure is that it was a single page layout program; it was contemporary with PrintMaster 2.0, ...
- 163
22
votes
1
answer
8k
views
Why did Windows 3.0 fail in Japan?
According to The launch of Windows 3.1 in Japan was such a big event that they even called it “Windows Day” (Bullfrag):
When Microsoft released Windows 3.0 in the United States in 1990, they were ...
- 55k
7
votes
1
answer
704
views
Identify those arcade games from a 1983 Brazilian music video
This is a music video, recorded around 1982/1983, from Kodiak Bachine, considered to be the first Brazilian synthpop musician.
At 5:39 you can see what looks like an arcade game:
and at 5:50 another ...
- 365
0
votes
2
answers
205
views
Windows 95 install help
I have installed Windows 98 on a pc made for windows 7. (it runs) although without audio because its probably not compatible with windows 98. but I would like to install Windows 95.
It's not the CPU ...
26
votes
3
answers
4k
views
What did Ctrl+NumLock do?
In my answer here I infer that the unusual scancode for the Pause/Break key emulates the user pressing and then releasing CtrlNumLock. Obviously that key combination did something specific, back when ...
- 729
0
votes
1
answer
149
views
A2M6020 AppleColor monitor not showing color
When I got my Apple IIc computer, it came with an A2M6020 AppleColor 13" NTSC composite monitor. However, I have not been able to get color working on it.
I don’t know if it just has a monochrome ...
- 9
5
votes
2
answers
637
views
BASIC line input buffer location on ZX Spectrum
I'm currently writing a ZX Spectrum emulator (I know there are plenty, but it's a project).
I'm having an issue where it keeps repeating the last key press even though I know the port lines have been ...
- 161
25
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Did any DOS compatibility layers exist for any UNIX-like systems before DOS started to become outmoded?
Quoting from Jim Hall's "FreeDOS turns 25 years old: An origin story":
Around 1994, Microsoft announced that its next planned version of Windows would do away with MS-DOS. But I liked DOS. ...
- 551
7
votes
2
answers
790
views
How did StorageTek STC 4305 use backing HDDs?
StorageTek STC 4305 is often referred as the first SSD. However, from the modern point of view, it looks more like a "hardware-implemented persistent cache", if possible. I mean that it ...
- 303
7
votes
2
answers
336
views
How did ‘logically-sectored FAT’ work?
While browsing online materials about the FAT file system, I occasionally came across mentions of ‘logically-sectored FAT’. This was apparently some kind of special mode of formatting a hard drive, ...
- 20.3k
16
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Did Digital Research clean-room MS-DOS?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS
DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in ...
- 55k
8
votes
1
answer
371
views
When did Kay Nishi offer a million dollars for a competing DOS?
The development of Digital Research's fully-compatible MS-DOS competitor, DR DOS, was encouraged when, according to https://retrotechnology.com/dri/dri_wein.html
After DOS Plus for Philips we did a ...
- 55k
17
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Why do Java classfiles (and JNI) use a "Frankenstein's monster" encoding crossing UTF-8 and UTF-16? [closed]
It seems like using either UTF-16 or UTF-8 would have been a lot more straightforward than what Java decided on for storing strings in classfiles and JNI payloads. It is a monstrosity that combines ...
- 1,977
21
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Identify these old accounting machines
My mom is an accountant and when I was a child I remember that she had at her work some odd accounting machines. I wish to identify what those were, but unfortunately the bits and pieces she remembers ...
- 1,305
14
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Intel "Kernel processor" or "OS Kernel"
I used to have an Intel data book from 1981. I gave it away to a friend, and he probably also lost it along the way.
In this book there was a data sheet for a component called "OS Kernel" or ...
- 628