Yearly Archives: 2012

rtl8139 drivers..

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I don’t know why but looking for working rtl8139 drivers for OS/2 and Windows NT 4.0 has proven to be more difficult than it should have been…

But what I’ve found is that the file “oem-8139(500).zip” on realtek‘s site basically contains everything! (well old stuff).

C:.
├───BROM
├───CLIENT32
├───DMI
│ ├───95LOADER
│ ├───NTLOADER
│ ├───WINEXE
│ └───WINSYS
├───FREEBSD
├───LINUX
├───MACOS
├───MACOSX
├───MSLANMAN.DOS
│ └───DRIVERS
│ ├───ETHERNET
│ │ └───RTL8139
│ └───NIF
├───MSLANMAN.OS2
│ └───DRIVERS
│ ├───ETHERNET
│ │ └───RTL8139
│ └───NIF
├───NDIS2DOS
├───NDIS2OS2
├───NT351
├───NWCLIENT
│ ├───DOS
│ └───OS2
├───NWSERVER
│ ├───311
│ ├───312
│ ├───40
│ ├───41X
│ └───42_5X
├───RTOS
├───RTSPKT
├───SCO
│ ├───4.X
│ ├───5.X
│ └───TXT
├───TXT
│ ├───GENERAL
│ ├───IBM
│ ├───MS
│ ├───NETWARE
│ ├───OTHERS
│ └───UNIX
├───UW7
├───W95OSR2
├───WFW311
├───WIN2000
├───WIN95A
├───WIN98
├───WINDIAG
├───WINME
├───WINNT4
└───WINXP

I don’t know if the link will last, but click here, and look for “OEM disk for users and manufacturers (LAN Card)”

Tetris for the IBM PC

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Well for some reason I was interested in Tetris (Тетрис), and wanted to find an early version.  Looking around I did manage to find some background by Vadim Gerasimov, on the whole origin of Tetris.  What I never realized is that the first version was written for a Soviet PDP-11 clone, then ported to the IBM PC using Turbo Pascal! Or that it was all done in text mode!  The thought at the time is that every PC could run 40 colum mode, and thus would run Tetris.

Along the way I did manage to find some other early Russian artifacts for the IBM PC, namely MS-DOS 4.01 which not only has its own site, but has an excellent view into the history of localizing MS-DOS, and what the culture was like at the time.  There is even a promo video in Russian of course..

And I did come across a ‘Перевод’ of Windows 2.1 done in 1990, but no luck on Windows 3.0 ..  I wonder if they ever had OS/2 1.x ..?  Which speaking of non english versions of OS/2 1.x seem non existent, but I did find reference to there being a release in Japan, but naturally not even a screen shot.. I did find one rather harsh review of Windows/286 2.1 (Pусский), but seeing as far as I can tell there was no Excel 2 or Word 1 for Windows in Russian it would have been pointless running it back then.. Unless you had the 386 version!

So I figured, I’d mash in as much of the Russian bits into Windows/386, add in Tetris, and include some Amiga MOD files for the music (yes, besides being text based, there was *NO* music in the original tetris!  The Adlib! didn’t exist back then).  I’ve used the excellent 8bitboy to play the music.. You can mute if if you so wish, or skip around to various tracks…

Tetris on Windows/386

So while not all that ‘authentic’ it’s close enough I think…

Enjoy!

IBM PS/1 preload software

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Club PS/1!

I don’t think it’ll do anyone any good, but for some reason I’ve gotten two requests since I’ve mentioned that I’ve got a PS/1 and if I could dump all the weird software that it comes with…

Not that prodigy even exists anymore, or there is anything you can do with it, so I figured I’d just add it in with jdosbox, and you can just click along..

I guess it was unique at the time when most OEMs just slapped together some stuff and shipped without going that extra crazy mile of doing some custom programs, or even trying to foster their own online community even if it was just too forward looking, and too much of an Island for 1991.

So pastel, so Miami Vice!

There is some very 90’s feeling Learning Windows that also came with the system.. I’ve never heard of it before.  What is more interesting is that it is a Windows program, unlike the later introduction/tutors for Windows that were MS-DOS programs.  It’ll even run in real mode, which makes me wonder was it just such a major pain to put together that they swore to never do again, or was it specially made for IBM?

Introduction to the PS/1

At any rate most of the programs are MS-DOS based, there is a version of AOL that sits in between the time of Quantium Link & AOL called Promenade.  Again since the service is dead there isn’t much you can do with the dialer software.  It does use GEOS like the later AOL software, but its skinned to look like Windows (SAA?).

Oh well its a look at a distant OEM past, now IBM doesn’t make PC’s and I would almost guess that OEM’s would be forbidden or heavily shunned to make their own online social type thing, as of course everyone would be on face book ….

PS/1 2121 doing what it does best..

At any rate, I’ve upgraded mine with a semi compatible sound blaster, and a network card.. With rlfossil an Conex, its a nice BBS terminal, with good ansi support.  Sadly the bigger DJGPP stuff won’t run as I don’t have a math coprocessor, and I’m just not going to go through the motion of finding an 80387sx .. Assuming the PS/1 even has a socket for one (I haven’t seen it, but I didn’t look too hard).  But I’ve found it good with old era games, as there is some things that just don’t seem to cooperate just right with emulation.. And sometimes it is nice to have some real machines… Sometimes.

Upgraded my Mac Pro to include Wifi & Bluetooth!

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There! Done!

Trust me if you’ve ever attempted this, then you know not only just how difficult this whole process is, but to not only get it working was a major accomplishment!

And I only lost ONE of the screws.. Sigh they are just too small, I finally broke down and got an eye glass repair kit after losing one of them (no idea where it went to, I shook the case like crazy then it stopped rattling, so its either wedged somewhere good, or I’ve thrown it somewhere around here….).  The trick was to use a small plastic sleeve to jam the screw almost all the way in, with enough of the stem showing so I could carefully get a few twists of the tread into the hole…

But of course I didn’t start it out that way, instead I thought it’d be easier to clip on the antennas to the wifi card (BCM94311MCAG) first, then slip it into its slot, then screw it down, but since it goes in at an angle, it forces itself up & out so you end up fighting it.  This is where I lost the one screw during installation.  The ‘trick’ was to use my iphone’s camera light so I could see what I was doing, then try to press down on the wifi card while trying to screw in the board using one of the plastic sleeve things from the repair kit.  Surprisingly after enough false starts I got it to thread and was able to finish screwing it in with the driver.

The Bluetooth module (A1115) was much easier, as it is just a simple daughter card, that you just push onto the board, then screw in.  Because its not actively resisting you, it was much easier to get into place, and screw in…. I just hope mine lasts ok as its only got the one screw.

As always have a clean work area, and take your time.  Working with stuff this insanely small is going to take longer than you expect..

Hack 1.0.3 for Xenix (i386)

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Hack

I figured that since I could build hack for some ancient 4BSD flavors that I should be able to build hack for good old fashioned Xenix.

And it all seems to work as it should!

I used the source from here, and only had to do a few small modifications to get it to compile and run on Xenix via GCC 1.37.1 .

You can download my binary, and source mods.

I’ve managed to keep this instance of Xenix up for 19 hours, I was thinking about doing some kind of public access to this system, but I don’t know if people would even be vaguely interested..

But if you want access, I can set you up.

Although all that is of interest is ‘dungeon’, fortune, hack, robots, and ircII …

 

PC Plus magazine reviews OS/2 2.0

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June 1992

I thought this was cool, PC Plus magazine is doing a best of, 25 year retrospective, and up there is of course, the release of OS/2 2.0!

It really is an in depth look, and a great job for a magazine!  I’ve always like the UK based stuff, nice glossy photos, etc..

But even at the end it was the same old same old, installation issues, and speed..

I remember OS/2 2.0 on a 386sx 16 with 4MB of ram was unusable, while OS/2 1.3 was great… But like everything else that was involved at the time, keep in mind they had not reviewed NT yet… Although the pre-releases were floating around.. Naturally they have both Windows 3.1 & Windows 95 launches..

Quick update on Qemu 1.1.0-1

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It seems that I’m not the only person getting this error with existing qcow2 images:

Header extension too large

The good news, is that if you have any way to build your own Qemu its a trivial thing to uh “fix”.  Now I haven’t done that much in the way of testing, maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with Qcows created from older versions of Qemu but the error comes from HERE.

You could just comment out the “return -EINVAL;” and Qemu will continue on its merry little way.

Now I’ve tried converting my qcow2’s to other formats with 0.14 but they all have slight errors that wind up preventing OS/2 from booting (I know that 99% of the would wouldn’t care..).

I’m not sure what to make of it, but it looks like to me, that if you really really want this version its best to remove that check so you can keep your old disk images.. try converting them, but.. they may not work `exactly` right.. TEST…!!!