1
IDEs we had 30 years ago
A deep dive into the text mode editors we had and how they compare to today's
Julio Merino
A newsletter on operating systems, build systems, programming languages, software engineering, and my own software projects. Specifics include FreeBSD, Linux, Rust, Bazel and EndBASIC. Click to read Blog System/5, by Julio Merino, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
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Visit blogsystem5.substack.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Nov 2023 – Jan 2025
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2
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison
NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than Unix, if anything? And is that still the case?
3
Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines
The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
4
Revisiting the DOS Memory Models
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a bunch of articles on the various tricks DOS played to overcome the tight memory limits of x86’s real mode. There was one question that came up and remained unanswered: what were the various “models” that the compilers of the day offered?
5
Hands-On Graphics Without X11
A crash course on direct framebuffer and keyboard access via NetBSD’s wscons
6
How DOS was able to use most of the 1 MB address space of the 8086
A tour on how DOS was able to use most of the 1 MB address space of the 8086
7
Revisiting the NetBSD Build System
I recently picked up an embedded project in which I needed to build a highly customized full system image with minimal boot times and NetBSD was the best choice for it. Let's look at why its build system helps.
8
The costs of the i386 to x86-64 upgrade
If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as “legacy cruft from the 1990s that nobody cares about any longer”. It's time to see how any of that carried over through the 16-bit to 64-bit evolution.
9
Picking Glibc Versions at Runtime
Using a glibc version that is different from the system-provided one shouldn't require the use of containers, as I recently heard someone claim. Let's take a look at how dynamic linking works and what the options are.
10
Windows NT: Peeking into the Cradle
A review of "Showstopper!" by G. Pascal Zachary and my own reflections