This is where you'll find documents, tutorials, knowledgebases, and other stuff I've written regarding vintage computers on this site. All of the material concerns IBM Compatible MS-DOS/Windows machines, usually 80486 and older. Most of this is stuff that has come from decades of experience with tech old and new, as new developments for old computers continually come all the time.
As of October 2022, I have organized things further into subfolders because the "docs" folder here has become such a huge mess of pictures, documents, and other stuff. Each section now has a main page to pick from.
| SECTION LINK/NAME
| DESCRIPTION
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DOS
| Basically what it says, this section deals with DOS, the disk operating system invented by Tim Patterson in 1979 as a test O/S for a prototype computer at Seattle Computer Products, bought by Microsoft, licensed to IBM, Compaq, Dell, and others, and then cloned in open source by Jim Hall in 1994 as FreeDOS. This is the primary operating system of all pre-1995 IBM Compatible PC's and I'm really building this section to help out with what REALLY Can be done in DOS in the 21st century, as opposed to people thinking it's not that capable anymore.
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GENERAL STUFF
| A General section for newbies to vintage PC's and the various what, how, where, when of them. I'm aware a lot of the people taking this up now are of a much younger age and did not grow up in the age of IBM Compatible pre-Pentium PC's like I did. There's a lot that's different, just as much that's much the same as a modern PC, and a whole lot of interesting details and idiosyncracies that seem normal to someone seasoned like me, but seem weird to other people who have been at this a much shorter time.
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HARDWARE
| My various writings on hardware. That's what I came to be known for for a time, as a hardware tinkerer pushing these things to do things that their designers probably never intended them to do. This includes a mix of things like, installing ginormous hard disks into ancient PCs, hardware and firmware settings, various wiring stuff. Just whatever I happen to mess with and feel is worth writing about.
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NETWORKING
| This section goes into the unique caveats of networking vintage IBM Compatibles on the modern network and internet. While many armchair infosec dweebs spend their time screaming "securiteez" into their FUD powered megaphones, I'm here to tell you a vintage machine can be secure - but to a point - on the modern web and otherwise, modern networks.
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MICROSOFT WINDOWS
| Here's where I keep all the Microsoft Windows articles. Though in recent years, through FreeDOS, projects like HX GUI/RT, and Links the web browser, DOS is generally a better choice of platform for retro-computing, I'm still providing up my knowledge and experience with Microsoft Windows 3.1x and 9x (mostly) here so that
that information is not lost, as I do still use 9x and 3.1x occasionally to this day, but honestly, for uses beyond gaming or nostalgic web surfing via FrogFind, I find Windows considerably less useful today.
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