– since 1993 –
That’s right – the very first IBM Personal Computer, the IBM 5150 – a business-oriented machine and a hallmark platform that started it all, shipped along with an integrated cassette port. Too bad it could only be utilized through the cassette BASIC contained in ROM… Or shall we say thankfully? Yes, this interface was abandoned soon after, for obvious reasons.… [more]
This is a follow-up to my previous article about connecting old 8″ drives directly to a PC equipped with a classic floppy disk controller. Since there is a way on how to do it on a hardware level without paid or proprietary equipment, there still needs to be a free and available software solution that enables the OS to interface these drives, as they were not officially supported… [more]
In other words, finding a more creative use for the Arduino Mega than a neon clock: to be able to read all sorts of old data storage media and send’em over USB, blending old technology with the new.
Originally inspired by the ArduinoFDC project, I have decided to try a different approach: instead of using the Arduino to talk to a floppy drive directly, why not leave the hard work on… [more]
Most PCs tend to boot from a primary media storage, be it a hard disk drive, or a solid-state drive, perhaps from a network, or – if all else fails – the USB stick or the boot DVD comes to the rescue… Fun, eh? Boring! Why don’t we try to boot from a record player for a change?… [more]
The BootLPT/86 project was created to allow booting of classic and vintage x86 systems through the parallel interface using a cross-over LapLink null printer cable. Originally inspired by Martin Řehák’s ROMOS project, it is defaultly provided as a ROM image for any PC-compatible systems, and can also serve as a fallback boot option, should all the other boot options fail… [more]
A third version to go with the third anniversary of CMOS De-Animator!… [more]
Derrick was a hybrid monolithic 16/32-bit kernel which I wrote in FASM in 2008, to learn myself low-level Intel x86 assembly along the way. Derrick can be executed on a machine equipped with at least an 80386 CPU, runs from a floppy disk and will execute everything in ring 0 to be as fast as possible… [more]
As a follow-up to my previous article about the IBM PCjr and its quirks and features, I have decided to create KeybJr – a small open-source project, that allows the PCjr to use a regular keyboard of the era, through both cable or the infrared link. This is because the system did not contain any provisions of connecting a normal PC keyboard… [more]
As a teenager, I used to publish small freeware Win32 applications and system tools under the name ST-WARE Softworks. Because the original site is now defunct, I decided to put up a mirror for all of them here. Feel free to share… [more]
Triple333, or 333-333-333, is a Wolfenstein 3D-like first person shooter I’ve made, heavily inspired by -among others- the Wyoming Incident, a fake television hijack, the Max Headroom WTTW TV pirate, who was for real, Russian “Wyoming incident parody” БЕЗНОГNМ and the scary ВИD mask, which itself was a logo of a Russian private TV company.… [more]
In mid-2010, Slovakia had been converting into DVB-T and analog terrestrial TV transmitters were continually phased out. On April 30th, a new DVB-T transmitter, located just a few kilometers away from me, was put into service. I was already using an IP TV with two receivers… [more]
I have once stumbled upon an interesting article from 2018 published on retrocmp.de, discussing about provisions on connecting an 8″ floppy disk drive to a PC. You know, those huge “boat anchors” that accept flexible disks just four inches shy of an LP record, in exchange of a couple of hundred kilobytes data storage. That sort of type.… [more]
The WKSW (Windows / Workstation Kill Switch) is a small, “anti-boss” system-wide utility, which allows you to set up a global hot-key to power down your Windows machine within seconds, making it handy in such situations, where locating the power button or a classic shutdown would cause more trouble… [more]