All Questions
5,415
questions
4
votes
0
answers
18
views
What is the VTOC format for an AppleDOS disk with more than 50 tracks?
I am trying to read files of an AppleDOS 3.3 disk. The documentation I've found, both from Inside AppleDOS and also from Archiveteams' website (which I believe was taken from Inside AppleDOS): http://...
- 1,180
8
votes
1
answer
132
views
Win16 framework using GetProp / SetProp to bind class to window?
I'm disassembling a 16-bit Windows program from the 1994-95 timeframe. The runtime library used seems to be from Microsoft C, so I'm guessing the program was compiled with Microsoft C++ 7.0 or Visual ...
- 311
2
votes
0
answers
125
views
Pack horse in the forest - PC game
Back in the day I played a strategygame who's name I can't remember.
I only remember one mechanic of one mission, which is; every once in a while a small caravan of a few early medieval infantry units ...
- 29
12
votes
3
answers
2k
views
When did CPUs start using page mode DRAM?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random-access_memory#Page_mode_DRAM
Page mode DRAM is a minor modification to the first-generation DRAM IC interface which improved the ...
- 2,350
24
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Most modern C compilers targeting DOS 8086, running on DOS 8086 (16-bit)
I'm looking for the most recent versions of modern C compilers which were/are targeting DOS 8086, also running on DOS 8086 (16-bit). I'm mostly interested in production-ready C compilers, rather than ...
- 1
2
votes
0
answers
76
views
Psion 5mx backlight causes keyboard interference
My Psion 5mx keyboard works well when the backlight is off, but produces spurious characters when the screen backlight is switched on. This is inconistent - holding down the space key might produce ...
- 3,484
19
votes
10
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 ...
- 32.3k
13
votes
1
answer
3k
views
When did HTTP start compressing text?
HTML tends to compress well, typically consisting of text interspersed with repetitive tags. Transparently compressing it for download is a fairly obvious optimization to save bandwidth.
When did Web ...
- 111k
0
votes
3
answers
262
views
Toshiba laptop with Windows 98 shows corrupted characters while booting, then the system goes entirely blind
I have a Toshiba laptop and I am not sure what is going on with it. Thinking that maybe the computer was corrupted 20 plus years ago. Trying to fix it up.
When the laptop boots, I can see this on ...
- 141
12
votes
1
answer
258
views
How does the Atari ST's VDI polygon filling algorithm work?
I recently noticed something in Neochrome as well as Larry Mears' "Instant Graphics and Sound" programs: Polygons have slightly different shapes depending on whether an outline is drawn or ...
- 15.5k
10
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Is there a common name for this 'switch' like 6800 assembly routine?
I've been reverse-engineering a 6303/6800 binary from the early 1980s, which includes a subroutine for jumping to one entry in a table of relative offsets in memory, based upon whether the value of a ...
- 195k
1
vote
2
answers
251
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. ...
19
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 ...
- 20.4k
6
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Commodore monitor to VGA or HDMI
I have this monitor, which I think is a Commodore 64 monitor.
I would like to connect it to a pc.
Anyone know how to convert VGA or HDMI to this connector format?
I've tried searching, but so far I'...
8
votes
1
answer
491
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:...
- 3,349
8
votes
1
answer
464
views
Why does my Epson HX-20 apparently have much less RAM than expected?
When I enter:
STAT ALL
On my Epson HX-20, I get the following output:
P1: 419 Bytes
P2: 86 Bytes
P3: 0 Bytes
P4: 0 Bytes
P5: 0 Bytes
RAM FILE 256 Bytes
MEMSET 2624
105 Bytes Free
As I ...
- 1
2
votes
0
answers
88
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
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 ...
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 ...
- 2,626
58
votes
9
answers
13k
views
What was the rationale behind 36 bit computer architectures?
Was there some particular design theory or constraint that made a 36 bit word size attractive for early computers? As opposed to the various power-of-2 word sizes which seem to have won out?
- 21
4
votes
2
answers
631
views
How do I navigate the boot menu in later model Spectrum emulators?
35 years ago I had an original 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I never had any of the Plus or 128K models and practically never even touched one as I moved onto the Amiga quite early.
I'm now playing with ...
- 195k
20
votes
8
answers
8k
views
Did any laptop computers have a built-in 5¼-inch floppy drive?
In the early era of “portable” or luggable computers, such as the mains powered Osborne 1 and the Compaq Portable, 5¼-inch floppy drives were the standard storage medium. When battery-powered laptops ...
- 1,619
11
votes
2
answers
840
views
Identify early portable computer
A friend who had an early computer store is trying to identify a machine. Some guesses are Zenith mini sport, clone of a Toshiba T1000 and some kind of HP device.
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, ...
- 109
4
votes
0
answers
137
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
13
votes
2
answers
1k
views
32-bit PCI riser cards: different types?
[copied from superuser.com]
I'm duplicating an existing compact PC; I'd love to replace it with modern components, but for various reasons I can't.
I'm having a tough time finding the correct 32-bit ...
- 2,528
3
votes
3
answers
326
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 ...
- 2,098
4
votes
1
answer
356
views
What was the first backlit keyboard and were the shift characters illuminated?
I recently bought a Logitech G915 TKL Keyboard. https://www.logitech.com/assets/65840/g915-lightspeed-wireless-rgb-mechanical-gaming-keyboard-qsg.pdf
It's great but a massive disadvantage is that ...
- 121
14
votes
1
answer
640
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
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 ...
- 9,672
5
votes
1
answer
226
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 ...
- 745
3
votes
2
answers
253
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 ...
- 31.3k
0
votes
1
answer
121
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 ...
- 141
-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
10
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Did the PAL version of Super Mario Bros. on the NES really have faster music, and if so, why?
I have a real PAL NES hooked up to a modern TV with an AV-to-HDMI adapter (yeah, I'm working on finding a CRT). I bought an EverDrive cartridge for it because I'm a poor person who cannot afford to ...
- 71
3
votes
1
answer
403
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 ...
- 15.5k
8
votes
1
answer
688
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?
- 326
28
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Did underclocking the early Z80 chips improve yield?
The Z80, one of the most successful and well-known of the 8-bit microprocessors, was released in July 1976 at an initial clock speed of 2.5 MHz.
The TRS-80 Model I, released the following year, is ...
- 2,636
3
votes
4
answers
779
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 ...
- 18.9k
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 ...
- 745
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 ...
- 159
12
votes
3
answers
437
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 ...
- 32.3k
10
votes
2
answers
329
views
Does anyone have any information on GUTS (Gothenburg University Timesharing System)?
Gothenburg Universities Computer Centre (in Sweden) developed a timesharing system for IBM mainframes, known as GUTS (variously expanded either as ''Gothenburg University Timesharing System'', or as ''...
22
votes
5
answers
3k
views
How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?
Intel invented the original 32/64-bit PCI bus in the early 1990s to replace the decade old ISA bus used in PC's. It was immediately popular (in comparison to Micro Channel or EISA), being both faster ...
5
votes
1
answer
340
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 ...
- 111k
4
votes
0
answers
137
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
24
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 ...
3
votes
2
answers
596
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 = ...
- 131
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 ...
13
votes
1
answer
400
views
How did the Tandy 1000 select its drives?
I am trying to use some Tandy 1000 drives with a SuperCard Pro and have encountered some anomalies using them as "standard" floppy drives. It appears that with the original (or at least, working and ...
- 908