Commodore 8250 disk drive

Commodore 8250 disk drive

The Commodore 8250 disk drive was the highest capacity floppy drive Commodore made for its 8-bit computers. It was a dual drive unit the connected to the IEEE-488 bus used on the PET and CBM line of computers. Each drive stored one megabyte of data on 5.25 inch double sided quad density disks. When you listed the directory on a Commodore equipped with an 8250, the disk read 4133 blocks free.

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Panasonic Business Partner 1650: Tandy in disguise

Panasonic Business Partner 1650: Tandy in disguise

The Panasonic Business Partner 1650, also known as the FX 1650, is a PC clone from 1989. Everyone was making 286 based PC clones in 1989, but this Panasonic is a little bit different. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing depends on when you bought it. The label on the back provides a clue.

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How the Tandy 2000 doomed Tandy computers

How the Tandy 2000 doomed Tandy computers

The Tandy 2000 was aptly named. It was twice as good as the Tandy 1000 in nearly every way. But it wasn’t even half as successful. In this blog post, I will explain how the Tandy 2000’s commercial failure set the tone for subsequent Tandy computers and perhaps even doomed the whole product line.

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Intel 80186 CPU: So misunderstood

Intel 80186 CPU: So misunderstood

Back when a 386 or 486 PC was hot stuff, I remember a common insult for a slow PC being, “What is that thing, a 186?” But no one we knew had a 186 PC, and no one really knew why either. In this blog, post, we will explore the Intel 80186, the CPU the PC industry forgot, why a misconception exists that it was a failure, and how both things can be true at the same time.

Although the 80186 powered two infamous PC-compatible flops in the early 1980s, a company founded by two Californians in a garage did use a 186-compatible CPU in a pioneering handheld computer about a decade later. Additionally, the 186 saw use in other embedded applications.

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What happened to Adaptec?

What happened to Adaptec?

For about 20 years, Adaptec was synonymous with SCSI controllers for PCs. Their controllers were frequently imitated, and its competitors undercut them in price. But the reliability, performance, and compatibility of Adaptec products was tough to beat. So if you wanted the very best, you bought Adaptec. In this blog post, I’ll uncover what happened to Adaptec. Hint: they didn’t go out of business.

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Configure mystery jumperless NE2000 cards

Configure mystery jumperless NE2000 cards

The NE2000 doesn’t have the best reputation, and that may not exactly be deserved. Today, the biggest problem with them is getting a jumperless NE2000 card configured when you don’t have the disks that came with it, and you can’t find any identifying marks on the card that point you to a manufacturer. Furthermore, even if you identify the card, the setup disk may or may not be available anywhere. So it’s not exactly a wonder that most retro Youtubers just use 3com and Intel cards.

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Jetway 386WB motherboard

Jetway 386WB motherboard

The Jetway 386WB was an inexpensive clone motherboard with an Opti chipset available in the 1989 /1990 time frame.

I’m familiar with the Jetway board because I own one, but many manufacturers in Taiwan produced boards based on the same Opti reference design. Essentially, Opti did the engineering work, and the Taiwan-based manufacturers handled production. The result was an unassuming board that provided good value for money.

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DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS

DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS

Back when I was getting started in Linux, the network card to get was anything based on the DEC Tulip chipset. DEC sold them themselves for a short time, but so did Netgear, Linksys, and probably others. Unlike DEC ISA cards, which were junk, the Tulip chipset was great. At least in Linux and Windows. DOS? I never had reason to check. Here’s how (and why) I set up DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS.

I recently came across a couple of old DEC Tulip cards in my parts stash, and I decided to try to get them working in DOS. I’ve had mixed success with PCI cards and DOS, so if I could get those old Tulip cards working, it could make life easier for me when I run DOS on that type of machine. Here’s how I did it.

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Fix 3.5-inch floppy drives with these easy tips

Fix 3.5-inch floppy drives with these easy tips

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about how to fix 3.5-inch floppy drives, especially the 1.44 megabyte format that was a fixture in PCs for nearly 20 years. Maybe everyone knows how to do it, but that won’t be true forever. In this blog post, I’ll record the secrets of fixing this enduring storage format, before they get lost to time.

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Intel 8088s and non-Intel non-clones

Intel 8088s and non-Intel non-clones

Did you know Intel wasn’t the only company that manufactured 8088 CPUs? No fewer than nine other companies produced exact copies of the Intel 8088, and they did it with Intel’s cooperation. In this blog post, I’ll explain why.

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