Category Archives: DOS / Win PC

Leveling Up Tracker Time with Glowing VU Meters in the Byte Cellar

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Blake Patterson

Lately, I’ve been spending time in the evenings listening to tracker tunes on my Gravis Ultrasound-equipped 486 PC. My go-to player program is Open CubicPlayer for DOS, which does a great job of both accurate playback and adjusting and sorting … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC, Just Rambling | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Thinking Back on ‘Turbo Pascal’ as It Turns 40

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Blake Patterson

November marked the 40th anniversary of Turbo Pascal, the first Integrated Development Environment (or IDE), which allowed a user to quickly and easily write a program in the Pascal programming language and see it compiled and linked — all in … Continue reading →

Posted in Amiga, DOS / Win PC, Down Memory Lane, Just Rambling, Multi-Platform, Other Platform, Programming | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

A Look at the Short-Lived 3-Inch Compact Floppy Disk

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Blake Patterson

I was recently listening to the latest episode of Retro Computing Roundtable podcast during which there was mention of a 3-inch floppy disk. No, not 3.5-inch, but 3-inch. These disks are known as Compact Floppy Disks (also “CF2”) and were … Continue reading →

Posted in Apple II, Atari, DOS / Win PC, Multi-Platform, Tandy / TRS-80 | 8 Comments

My First Taste of CGA “Composite Color”

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Blake Patterson

As a long-time Apple II users I am quite familiar with the technique of generating color video by way of NTSC “artifact color” (also sometimes referred to as “composite color”). The 8-bit Apple II series is incapable of outputting any … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC, Tandy / TRS-80 | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

My Skylake Gaming PC Build [Updated]

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Blake Patterson

A month ago I shared my feelings about Hello Games’ space exploration game No Man’s Sky. (Spoiler: I loved it — and still do, about 150 hours in.) In the post I mentioned that parts were in the mail for … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC, Gaming, No Man's Sky | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Holiday Music Week III at r/Retrobattlestations

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Blake Patterson

Once again the season is upon us, and that means it’s Holiday Music Week over at /r/Retrobattlestations. Holiday Music Week III, to be precise. While I fired up the Apple IIgs for a previous HMW, this year I’ve put the … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC, r/Retrobattlestations | 2 Comments

Behold: The 5×86 System Build Is Complete!

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Blake Patterson

Back in November I became inspired by the knowledge that my favorite old school DOS MODplayer had “recently” received an update, and expressed my intention (part 1) to more-or-less recreate the 486-class DOS PC upon which I enjoyed many, many … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC | 22 Comments

DOS Box Build: Update #1

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Blake Patterson

A few weeks back I wrote a post detailing my desire to build a 486-class DOS box. In the time since then, I’ve been actively digging parts out of my storage shelves and scanning eBay for the remaining, needed items. … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC | 13 Comments

Setting Out to Build a 486-Class DOS Box

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Blake Patterson

[UPDATE: This turned into a three-part post, with a video of the build process at the end. So, read on!] This is a quick post to lay out the plan for a retro project that has recently struck me and … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC | 8 Comments

Chips & Technologies’ WINGINE Graphics Subsystem

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Blake Patterson

I’ve gone through a lot of computers since I got my first for Christmas in 1982 (age 10). A few were PCs. Of the PCs I’ve owned, one had a particularly interesting feature that I’ll wager no one reading this … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS / Win PC, NeXT | 3 Comments