The Bell and Howell Apple II

The Bell and Howell Apple II

The Bell and Howell Apple II, also known as the Darth Vader Apple II, was a slightly modified Apple II for the education market manufactured by Apple but distributed and supported by Bell and Howell. It is a curiosity for collectors today, and a potential pitfall.

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Microsoft Softcard: How it transformed the company

Microsoft Softcard: How it transformed the company

The Microsoft Softcard, released April 2, 1980, was Microsoft’s first hardware product. Not only that, it was a hardware product that made two products from two of its historical rivals work together. For those reasons and more, it is a historically very important product. But even more important was how this hardware product from a software company changed Microsoft’s trajectory dramatically, and in unexpected ways.

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Desktop keyboard drawer: Unheralded retro accessory

Desktop keyboard drawer: Unheralded retro accessory

I don’t look for vintage computers in the wild nearly as much anymore as I look for vintage computer accessories. I was very happy to find a vintage desktop keyboard drawer less than 6 miles from home. And I bought it straight out of the room its previous owner probably used it in for a good three decades.

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FreeDOS on physical hardware

FreeDOS on physical hardware

Vintage computing has gotten expensive. One way to enjoy the vintage computing experience on a budget is to install FreeDOS on aging physical hardware that isn’t quite old enough to be collectible, building what some people call a time machine. I had someone ask me on Mastodon to walk them through the process.

The goal was to walk someone through a project that would be affordable and not require someone to have a storage unit full of hardware already. If you’re ready to graduate from DOSBox or FreeDOS on VirtualBox and onto bare metal, this project is for you.

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Fixing a sticky Teac 5.25 inch floppy drive

Fixing a sticky Teac 5.25 inch floppy drive

I have a Teac FD-55BV 5.25″ 360K floppy drive for my Tandy 1000EX. Teac drives tend to be very reliable, but this one had one problem. The spindle clamp would stick when I opened the lever and tried to remove the disk. Here’s how I fix a sticky floppy drive, and you can too.

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Stereo SID for Commodore 64 and 128

Stereo SID for Commodore 64 and 128

The Commodore 64 came equipped with a powerful sound chip called the SID, acronym for sound interface device. In its later years, one of the ways Commodore enthusiasts extended the usefulness of their machines was by adding a second sound chip. Let’s talk about this capability and how many people took advantage of it.

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IBM PC DOS 2000: An underrated DOS

IBM PC DOS 2000: An underrated DOS

What’s the ideal operating system to run on a retro PC? There are several names you hear over and over again. MS-DOS 6.22 is probably the most frequent option. MS-DOS 3.31 is one that comes up from time to time. Then there’s FreeDOS, and SvarDOS, an open source DOS optimized for 8088-class PCs. I don’t think enough people talk about IBM PC DOS 2000. I think it’s an underrated choice.

IBM PC DOS 2000 was derived from the same code base as MS DOS 6.22, so it has a very high degree of compatibility with the most common and most popular retro DOS. But it also has some advantages.

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IBM 4863 monitor

IBM 4863 monitor

The IBM 4863 matched the industrial design of the PCjr, but was functionally very similar. And it wasn’t really priced any lower than it counterpart for the IBM PC. It’s retail price was $680, and the RGB cable to connect it to a PCjr was an additional $20.

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Clear CMOS password on an Intel AL440LX

Clear CMOS password on an Intel AL440LX

I was restoring an old Micron Clientpro 766Xi when I ran into a corrupt BIOS password, so I couldn’t do much with the system. Micron used a slightly modified Intel AL440LX motherboard in these systems. So here’s how to clear a CMOS password on an Intel AL440LX. Other P2-era Intel boards will be similar.

The Intel AL440LX has a jumper at the front of the board. Unlike some other systems, you have to change the position of the jumper and turn the power on.

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Write files to an img file in Windows

Write files to an img file in Windows

Creating an IMG file of a DOS disk from individual files isn’t something you have to do often, but when you do, it’s a bit of a hassle. But it’s doable. Here’s how to write files to an img file in Windows, which you can then read with a Gotek floppy emulator running Flashfloppy.

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