VFAT Shortname Rules
How long names become 8.3 aliases, and how collisions resolve
Tag: Retrocomputing
Deterministic DIR Output
Treating DIR formatting as an API contract for automation
Why Old Machines Teach Systems Thinking
When Crystals Drift
Timing faults in vintage hardware
Turbo Pascal Before the Web
The IDE that trained a generation
Recapping a Vintage Mainboard
A controlled restoration process, not just a parts swap
Mode X (TP) IV: Tilemaps
Scrolling worlds, chunk loading, and scene-scale memory budgets
Mode X (TP) III: Sprites
Masked blits, transparency, draw order, and palette animation
Mode X (TP) II: Primitives
Plane-aware pixels, centralized clipping, and page-target drawing
Mode X (TP) I: Planar Memory
VGA planes, off-screen pages, and why games left Mode 13h
Mode 13h in Turbo Pascal
Graphics programming without illusions
Latency Budgeting on Old Machines
When constrained hardware makes wait time a design variable
IRQ Maps and the Politics of Slots
Negotiating IRQ, DMA, and I/O on DOS-era PCs
Interrupts as User Interface
INT 10h, 16h, and 21h as DOS-era interaction surfaces
CONFIG.SYS as Architecture
Runtime policy before your application loads
C:\> After Midnight
A DOS chronicle
Benchmarking with a Stopwatch
Experimental discipline before high-resolution timers
Archive Discipline for the Floppy Era
Naming, verification, and restore habits that still matter
Restoring an AT 286
PSU faults, battery damage, and XTIDE bring-up on a real machine
Batch File Wizardry
Interactive menus with GOTO, CHOICE, and no real variables
Linux Networking 6: BPF and eBPF
Programmable networking and observability at the 2015 horizon
Storage on Budget Linux
IDE, SATA, backups, and what actually survived production in the 2000s
Mailboxes to Internet 4: Perimeter and Proxies
Firewalls, monitoring, and when internet access becomes mandatory
VMware on a Pentium II
Early betas, SuSE host, Windows NT guest, and the shock of local virtualization
Mailboxes to Internet 3: Identity and File Services
Samba, printers, and mixed-network habits that linger longer than servers
Mailboxes to Internet 2: Mail Under Real Traffic
Postfix, hostile traffic, and trust on weekdays
Linux Networking 5: iptables in Practice
Netfilter hooks, tables, and operator-grade change discipline
Mailboxes to Internet 1: Gateway Years
Crosspoint, dial-up culture, and the beige-box Linux bridge
Linux Networking 4: iproute2 Replaces ifconfig
Policy routing and QoS when route stops being enough
Debian Woody Home Router
iptables, BIND 9, Squid, and the box the flat finally trusts
Debian Potato on a 486
Preparing the real router migration before the final swap
LAN Services on the Router
dhcpd, BIND 8, Squid, and Adzapper for the whole flat
Linux Networking 3: The ipchains Era
Linux 2.2, chain logic, and migrating off ipfwadm habits
D-Channel Syslog Hack
Wake the router with a ring, then update DynDNS from isdn4linux logs
ISDN Dial-on-Demand
SuSE, ipfwadm, and getting the line up only when traffic asks
First Linux Router
SuSE 5.3, Teles ISDN, T-Online, and the modem that blinked for years
Linux Networking 2: ipfwadm and Masquerading
Edge policy on modest hardware before dedicated appliances
Linux Networking 1: Networking in the 90s
Practical TCP/IP for the one-box, one-CRT lab
IPX on Linux
Command-oriented primer for mixed Novell coexistence in the 90s