Amiga OS 3.2 Update 3 released 10 Apr 2025, 6:17 pm

I’ve long lost the ability to keep track of whatever’s happening in the Amiga community, and personally I tend to just focus on tracking MorphOS and AROS as best I can. The remnants of the real AmigaOS, and especially who owns, maintains, and develops which version, are mired in legal battles and ownership limbo, and since I can think of about a trillion things I’d rather do than keep track of the interpersonal drama by reading various Amiga forums, I honestly didn’t even realise there’s been a development in the Hyperion Entertainment situation.

Hyperion Entertainment is the Belgian company who has been developing both AmigaOS 4 and 3.1/3.2 for a while now, but the company’s largest shareholder, Ben Hermans BV, went bankrupt, causing its shares to be annulled as prescribed under Belgian law. This happened well over a decade ago, but only earlier this year, in January, was the situation resolved for Hyperion: a new director, Timothy De Groote, was appointed by the remaining shareholders, who also instructed Hyperion to continue development of Amiga OS.

In addition, a few days ago, Hyperion released Update 3 for AmigaOS 3.2, adding a bunch of fixes and improvements to AmigaOS 3.2.2. It brings various updates to ReAction classes, a new custom menu for TextEditor users can customise with macros, a new KickStart 3.2.3 ROM, and many more smaller updates and fixes. The update is free for existing users. AmigaOS 3.2 is available for classic Amigas.

SDL2 ported to Mac OS 9 10 Apr 2025, 5:53 pm

Well, this you certainly don’t see every day.

This is a “rough draft” of SDL2 for MacOS 9, using CodeWarrior Pro 6 and 7. Enough was done to get it building in CW, and the start of a “macosclassic” video driver was created. It DOES seem to basically work, but much still needs to be done. Event handling is just enough to handling Command-Q, there is no audio, etc etc etc.

↫ A cast of thousands

The hardest part was a video driver for the classic Mac OS, which had to be created mostly from scratch using the QNX driver as a “skeleton” because it happened to be the smallest one. It works on both m68k and PowerPC as well as on SheepShaver and Basilisk II, and there’s already a few screenshots of it up and running at the link, too. Amazing work, and it opens the door for a whole bunch of especially games to be made available on classic Mac OS.

Not updated in 7 years, IIS is still a default part of Windows, apparently 10 Apr 2025, 5:18 am

This month’s security updates for Windows 11 create a new empty folder on drive C. It is called “inetpub,” and it does not contain any extra folders or files. Its properties window shows 0 bytes in size and that it was created by the system itself. Neowin checked a bunch of Windows 11 PCs with the April 2025 security updates installed, and all of them had inetpub on drive C.

↫ Taras Buria at Neowin

So this folder, inetpub, is most likely coming from Microsoft’s Internet Information Services, the company’s web server. IIS is part of Windows, but inactive by default, and it seems some buggy update script somewhere forgot to remove the folder or created it by accident. Regardless, it seems you can remove it without any issue, so if you see it on your Windows’ root drive, just delete it any be on your merry way.

Still though, something about this seems odd, right? Internet Information Services as a core product hasn’t been updated since 2018 when version 10 came out, which doesn’t necessarily mean specific Windows updates might not have changed it since then, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The Internet Information Services’ website also hasn’t been updated in ages, and is broken in places, further adding to the feeling IIS seems to be mostly abandoned, only kept going as part of Windows updates because it’s, well, part of Windows.

I’m not trying to insinuate there’s anything nefarious or dangerous going on with this silly folder glitch or anything; I was just surprised to see such an outdated, seemingly abandoned web server suite still being a default part of Windows today.

IBM unveils z17 mainframe, z/OS 3.2 10 Apr 2025, 4:55 am

IBM today announced the IBM z17, the next generation of the company’s iconic mainframe, fully engineered with AI capabilities across hardware, software, and systems operations. Powered by the new IBM Telum II processor, IBM z17 expands the system’s capabilities beyond transactional AI capabilities to enable new workloads.

↫ IBM z17 press release

Alongside this brand new behemoth of a computer, IBM also announced z/OS 3.2, the next version of its mainframe operating system, which brings with it even more “AI” buzzwords and features. z/OS 3.2 is slated for release later in 2025. It it is highly unlikely any one of us will ever get to interact with any of this hardware or software.

FreeDOS 1.4 released 9 Apr 2025, 4:15 pm

With FreeDOS being, well, DOS, you’d think there wasn’t much point in putting out major releases and making big changes, and you’d mostly be right. However, being a DOS clone doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement within the confines of the various parts and tools that make up DOS, and that’s exactly where FreeDOS focuses its attention. FreeDOS 1.4 comes about three years after 1.3.

This version includes an updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help system. This also includes improvements to many of the utilities including FDISK, JEMM, 7Zip, FORMAT, FASM, MORE, RUNTIME, and more!

↫ FreeDOS website

If you’re using FreeDOS, you’re most likely doing so for a highly specialised task, and racing to upgrade isn’t exactly high on your list of priorities. Still, it’s great to see FreeDOS moving forward and improving where it can.

What’s up with Linux support for Qualcomm X Elite chips? 9 Apr 2025, 3:46 pm

Remember when Qualcomm promised Linux would be a first-tier platform alongside Windows for its Snapdragon X Elite, almost a year ago now? Well, the Snapdragon X laptop have been out in the market for a while running Windows, but Linux support is still a complete crapshoot, despite the lofty promises by Qualcomm. Tuxedo, a European Linux OEM who promised to ship a Snapdragon X laptop running Linux, has posted an update on its progress, and it’s not looking good.

While Tuxedo did reach a major milestone last week by sending the laptop’s device tree to the LKML, that’s where the good news ends.

The next step is to support additional components of the ARM notebook within the device tree. This includes all USB functionalities, including USB4, external monitor connectivity via HDMI, and audio features, such as the headset jack. Additionally, driver testing is on the agenda. Unfortunately, a planned collaboration with Qualcomm, the manufacturer of the Snapdragon X Elite, did not materialize. However, we are in contact with the ARM specialists at Linaro and have sent test devices to them. We hope to receive valuable feedback from their developers and the community in the near future.

↫ Tuxedo’s website

This seems to indicate that Qualcomm isn’t as interested in Linux support after all, which may be because the Snapdragon X machines haven’t exactly taken over the laptop market as Microsoft and Qualcomm had hoped. The market for these things is probably not large enough for Qualcomm to justify investing in Linux support, especially when Windows on ARM is apparently not up to snuff yet either.

In case you are unaware of why device trees are such a big thing in ARM land, it’s because ARM devices do not have a nice ACPI table for operating systems to read system information from. Whereas x86 devices have their hardware components laid out in a nice ACPI table in UEFI, ARM devices do not, meaning that the Linux kernel needs to know specifically which device you’re using so it can load the correct device tree. On x86, this isn’t necessary, as the Linux kernel can just read the ACPI table, which works 99% of the time to get it to boot, even if specific components might not be supported (yet). On ARM, without a device tree, the Linux kernel doesn’t know what to do.

That’s one of the major reasons why it’s so hard for ARM to take off in the same way x86 once did. It’s just not designed to be infinitely intercompatible and interoperable as we’ve come to expect from the x86 world, and I don’t think anybody has any vested interest in changing that. I had hoped Microsoft might throw its weight around here, but it seems that’s not happening either.

The ARM desktop/laptop revolution seems mostly confined to Apple for now.

This month in Redox, March 2025 9 Apr 2025, 2:32 pm

Another month, another month of Redox improvements and bug fixes. This month saw a ton of work on process management as part of the NLnet grant, massive improvements to the USB stack, including a USB hub driver, as well as the usual kernel and driver improvements. On top of all this work, there’s the usual long list of bugfixes and smaller improvements.

The insanity of being a software engineer 7 Apr 2025, 4:06 pm

Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason. But what happened to specializing? When a house is being built, tons of people are involved: architects, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, interior designers, roofers, surveyors, pavers, you name it. You don’t expect a single person, or even a whole single company, to be able to do all of those.

↫ Vitor M. de Sousa Pereira

I’ve always found that software development gets a ton of special treatment and leeway in quality expectations, and this has allowed the kind of stuff the linked article is writing about to become the norm. Corporations can demand so much from developers and programmers to the point where expecting quality is wholly unreasonable, because there’s basically no consequences for delivering a shit product. Bugs, crashes, security issues, lack of documentation, horrid localisation – it’s all par for the course in software, yet we would not tolerate any of that in almost any other type of product.

While I’m sure some of this can be attributed to developers themselves, most of it seems to stem from incompetent managers imposing impossible deadlines downwards and setting unrealistic expectations upwards – you know, kick down, lick up – creating a perfect storm of incompetence. We all know it, we all experience it every day, and we all hate it – but we’ve just accepted it. As consumers, as developers, as regulatory bodies.

It’s too late to fix this now. Software development will forever exist as a sort of no man’s land of quality expectations, free from regulations, warranties, and consumer protections, and imposing them now after the fact is never going to be accepted by the industry and won’t ever make it through any lawmaking process of any country, and we all suffer from it, both as users of software and as makers of it.

Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU kernel deep dive 7 Apr 2025, 3:34 pm

Apple’s Darwin operating system is the Unix-like core underpinning macOS, iOS, and all of Apple’s modern OS platforms. At its heart lies the XNU kernel – an acronym humorously standing for “X is Not Unix.” XNU is a unique hybrid kernel that combines a Mach microkernel core with components of BSD Unix. This design inherits the rich legacy of Mach (originating from 1980s microkernel research) and the robust stability and POSIX compliance of BSD. The result is a kernel architecture that balances modularity and performance by blending microkernel message-passing techniques with a monolithic Unix kernel structure. We’ll go through a chronological exploration of Darwin and XNU’s evolution – from Mach and BSD origins to the modern kernel features in macOS on Apple Silicon and iOS on iPhones. We’ll follow this with a deep dive into the architectural milestones, analyze XNU’s internal design (Mach-BSD interaction, IPC, scheduling, memory management, virtualization), and examine how the kernel and key user-space components have adapted to new devices and requirements over time.

↫ Tanuj Ravi Rao

Despite its popularity and open source kernel, it’s quite rare to see detailed deep-dives into the underpinnings of macOS. It always surprised me that nobody took whatever Apple threw across the fence every macOS release and ran with it – much further than “run existing open source desktops but worse” we never got when it comes to Darwin distributions (although this might change) – so perhaps having more approachable articles like these out and about get people interested.

Getting the firmware of a VTech/LeapFrog LeapStart/Magibook 7 Apr 2025, 10:38 am

This is a very small blog post about my first reverse engineering project, in which I don’t really reverse engineer anything yet, but I am just getting started!

A family member asked me to add additional book data to the LeapStart he bought for his son, this is the starting point here.

↫ leloubil’s blog

We’ve all seen toy, child-focused computers like these, and I always find them deeply fascinating. I’m not buying them for my own kids – they’ll get their start on a “real” computer I’ll set up for them to explore and break – but I see their value, and they’re probably a better choice than giving a kid a tablet or whatever (which my wife and I are opposed to for our kids). What fascinates me about them is, of course, what software, and more specifically, what operating system they run.

It turns out this one most likely runs on something called µC/OS-II, one of the many relatively obscure embedded operating systems you never hear about.

µC/OS is a full-featured embedded operating system originally developed by Micriµm. In addition to the two highly popular kernels, µC/OS features support for TCP/IP, USB-Device, USB-Host, and Modbus, as well as a robust File System.

↫ µC/OS GitHub page

The documentation provides a lot more detail about its capabilities, so if you’re interested in learning more, that’s your starting point.

Windows Hotpatch comes to client version of Windows 4 Apr 2025, 5:50 pm

Good news for Windows users, and for once there’s not a hint of sarcasm here: Microsoft has started rolling out Windows Hotpatch to the client versions of Windows. This feature, which comes from the server versions of Windows, allows the operating system to install patches to in-memory processes, removing the need for a number of restarts. Obviously, this is hugely beneficial for users, as they won’t have to deal with constant reboots whenever a new bunch of Windows updates are pushed.

There are some limitations and other things you should know. First, the way the system works is that every quarter, installations with Hotpatch enabled will receive a quarterly baseline update that requires a reboot, followed by two months of hotpatches which do not require a reboot. Hotpatches can only be security updates; new features and enhancements are rolled up into the quarterly baseline updates. In other words, while this will not completely eliminate reboots, it will cut the number of reboots per year down from twelve to just four, which is substantial, and very welcome in especially corporate environments.

The biggest limitation, however, is that Windows Hotpatch will only make it to one client version of Windows, Enterprise version 24H2, so users of the Home or Professional version are out of luck for now. On top of that, you’re going to need a Microsoft subscription, use Microsoft Intune, and an Intel/AMD-based system (Hotpatch will come to ARM later). I hope it’ll make its way to Windows 11 Home and Professional, too, because I’m fairly sure quite a few of you using Windows would love to set this up on your own machines.

How big is VMS? 4 Apr 2025, 5:30 pm

This question was asked during my Boot Camp presentation last fall in Boston, and over the past 35 years dozens of times people have asked, how big is VMS? That translates into “how many lines of code are in VMS”? I thought it was time to at least make a stab at pursuing some insight into the answer. I wrote some command procedures to count the number of source lines in .B32, .B64, .C, .MAR, .M64, and .S files. Not counted are blank lines and lines beginning with the standard comment characters and miscellaneous directives for the particular language.

↫ Clair Grant

As always with the ‘lines of code’ metric, there’s some real arbitrariness going on, and in this case that means things like excluding networking, which to me seems like a core part of an operating system, but alas, choices need to be made. The final tally for lines of code, as per the definition used in the article, in the most recent version of OpenVMS, version 9.2-3, is almost 1.9 million. Do with that information as you please.

What’s really fascinating, though, are the deltas between the versions investigated in this article: V6.2 (May 1995, port to Alpha), V7.2 (February 1999, kernel threads, 64-bit APIs, Galaxy, and more), V8.2 (February 2005, port to Itanium), V9.2-3 (december 2024, port to x86). Going from one version to the next, roughly 400000 lines of code were added each time – the article doesn’t theorise about the consistency of this number, and I suspect it’s mostly just a fun coincidence, but it does jump out.

Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations tainted by the company’s role in the genocide in Gaza 4 Apr 2025, 3:55 pm

Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of this milestone, Bill Gates has published a blog post about the first code the company ever wrote.

In 1975, Paul Allen and I created Microsoft because we believed in our vision of a computer on every desk and in every home.

Five decades later, Microsoft continues to innovate new ways to make life easier and work more productive. Making it 50 years is a huge accomplishment, and we couldn’t have done it without incredible leaders like Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella—along with the many people who have worked at Microsoft over the years.

↫ Bill Gates

There’s obviously no denying the impact Microsoft has had on the computer industry and the world as a whole, and a lot of that impact is not exactly what you would call positive. I find the fact that the blog post by Gates is nothing but JavaScript that slows down some browsers and devices, breaks page up/page down navigation for some people, does not allow for text selection, and whose source code is just a bunch of scripts without any of the actual text is a biting metaphor for the role Microsoft has played in the industry.

Making today’s celebrations even more biting is the fact that Microsoft’s role in the ongoing genocide in Gaza is causing a lot of unrest within the company. Twice now today, presentations and talks by Microsoft’s current and former CEOs have been interrupted by Microsoft employees protesting Microsoft’s contributions to the genocide in Gaza, and before the day’s over there will probably be more incidents like these. One of the Microsoft employees who protested, Ibtihal Aboussad, also sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees, detailing why Microsoft employees are protesting today.

My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org. I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice. This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue. For the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim community at Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and doxxed, with impunity from Microsoft. Attempts at speaking up at best fell on deaf ears, and at worst, led to the firing of two employees for simply holding a vigil. There was simply no other way to make our voices heard.

↫ Ibtihal Aboussad

It goes without saying that Ibtihal Aboussad can probably go and clean out her desk after this, but giving up what must be a high-paying job – and possibly risking worse under the current Trump regime – for standing up and protesting an ongoing genocide is nothing but praise-worthy and noble. It obviously won’t stop the genocide or make Microsoft even blink, but it’s better than doing nothing, and it does painfully highlight how many other Microsoft employees remain silent while the company they work for does an IBM.

I don’t really care about Microsoft’s 50th anniversary. Look at any of the company’s current products – Office, Windows, the “AI” stuff – and there’s clearly nothing left. They’re empty shells of what they used to be, hollowed out, their contents replaced with upsells, dark patterns, cruft, and “AI” nonsense nobody wants. But hey, at least Microsoft is creating synergies to make eradicating Gazans easier.

Here’s your party popper.

An AlphaStation’s SROM 4 Apr 2025, 2:21 pm

The AlphaStation 500 is a workstation from Digital, circa 1996. Mine is a 500 MHz model and has an Alpha 21164A processor (aka EV56). And the way it boots is weird.

On your common-or-garden PC, there has always been some kind of ROM chip. It holds a piece of firmware known as the BIOS. This ROM chip is available at a well-known location in the processor’s address space (remembering that any PC processor boots up in 16-bit, 8088 compatible mode, with a 1 MiB address space, just like an IBM PC 5150) and the processor just starts executing code in it after reset.

The Alpha (or at least this AlphaStation 500 – although I think they mostly worked like this) is different.

↫ Jonathan ‘theJPster’ Pallant

A great read, but a little bit over my head considering I’m anything but a programmer or developer. Still, even I managed to get the basic gist and learn quite a bit from this article, and especially the part about how the AlphaStation uses a little jumper to tell the SROM exactly which stream of boot code to send to the processor is fascinating. I’m not sure just how unusual the Alpha’s way of booting is, but I’d at least never heard of it.

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax 3 Apr 2025, 5:28 pm

There isn’t a lot to this story beyond the fact that in around 1990 I helped debug someone’s Lotus 1-2-3 set up via fax. But it’s a good reminder of how important the Zeroth Law of Debugging is (see below).

Without some sort of online connection with these folks, and with transatlantic phone calls being very, very expensive (I was in the UK, they were in the US) fax was the obvious answer.

↫ John Graham

Honestly, this would still be easier today than some of the bug reporting systems I’ve seen.

Windows 9x QuickInstall simplifies installing Windows 98 3 Apr 2025, 5:12 pm

If you’re elbow-deep in ’90s retrocomputing and maintain a fleet of your own personal seemingly identical but definitely completely different Windows 98 machines, Windows 9x QuickInstall is tailor-made just for you.

It takes the root file system of an already installed Windows 98 system and packages it, whilst allowing drivers and tools to be slipstreamed at will.

For the installer, it uses Linux as a base, paired with some tools to allow hard disk partitioning and formatting, as well as a custom installer with a custom data packing method that is optimized for streaming directly from CD to the hard disk without any seeking.

↫ Windows 9x QuickInstall gitHub page

What you end up with is an easily customisable packaged Windows 98 installation that can be installed onto computers (or in virtual machines, I guess) at blazing speeds. It’s a relatively simple concept, but its implementation is genius and definitely not simple at all. This is a great tool for the retrocomputing community.