Retrocomputing on YKM's Corner on the Web

Bringing modern USB xHCI support to Windows 98/ME/2K

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most of us take the USB ports on our computers for granted. We plug in devices and expect them to work automatically with the operating system. However, what if this wasn’t the case with vintage operating systems?

I present to you xHCI98, a driver that gives Windows 98 SE, ME and 2000 SP4 working USB on machines whose only USB controller is xHCI.

Windows 98 Device Manager showing xHCI Controller initialised and ready to accept USB devices on an operating system that previously could not support it.

Everything is open-sourced here if you want to jump right in to use it: https://github.com/yeokm1/xhci98.

All text below have been written and phrased by me and not AI. Only the diagrams and tables are AI created.

Demos

Demo video here showing me hotplugging many different types of USB devices to my 2020 ThinkPad P14s Gen 1. Hotplugging shows that the driver is handling this and not the BIOS.

ATTO Disk Benchmark on a USB 3.0 flash drive tops up around 18 MB/s. That is within USB 2.0 High-Speed which is all this driver supports and I’ll explain why below.

Bringing Swift to the Apple II

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Swift is the modern programming language behind many apps that run on modern Apple platforms. I thought it would be nice to bring a small taste of it back to Apple’s early days, the Apple II. It was Apple’s first mass-market series of machines, initially released in 1977 with a 1 MHz MOS 6502 CPU.

I built SwiftII, a Swift-flavored mini development environment for the original Apple II to a IIe and up.

Review and Teardown of Creative Midi Blaster MB-10 synthesizer

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Creative Midi Blaster MB-10 recently entered my retro-collection 33 years after its first release in 1993. Seeing that there isn’t much detailed information about this device on the internet, I decided to do a review followed by a teardown of this device. I will also take some sample audio recordings of it.

Llama 2 LLM on DOS

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ever thought of running a local Large Language Model (LLM) on a vintage PC running DOS? Now you can!

Modern 2024 PC with a vintage twist (ft. Ryzen 5 7600 & GeForce 4060 Ti)

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If I were to tell you a PC has a floppy drive, optical drive, Sound Blaster card, serial, parallel and PS/2 ports running DOS, you would think I’m referring to a machine from the 1990s. But my very modern PC built in 2024 possess these characteristics!

I recently built myself a PC as my previous desktop PC was insufficient for my current needs. I decided to build one with the ability to still reach back into the past to run DOS.

In this post, I will go through my thought process I went through to decide on the specifications as well as the journey I made to run MS-DOS 6.22 on it.

DOS's Last Stand on a modern Thinkpad: X13 Gen 1 with Intel i5-10310U

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When one thinks of modern technologies like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and modern CPUs, one would associate them with modern operating systems. How about DOS?

It might seem impossible, however I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run MS-DOS 6.22. MS-DOS 6.22 is the last standalone version of DOS released by Microsoft in June 1994. This makes it 30 years old today.

I shall share the steps and challenges in locating a modern laptop capable of doing so and making the 30-year-old OS work on it with audio and networking functions. This is likely among the final generation of laptops able to run DOS natively.

Setting up an open-frame Pentium 3 testbench

Sat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have amassed a respectable collection of retro-PCs in the several years I have been engaging in my retrocomputing hobby. As part of this hobby, I regularly acquire vintage expansion cards from others. Testing these newly-acquired cards will require me to frequently disassemble my properly set up retro-machines which is a hassle to do.

To reduce the repeated handling of these old and relatively fragile setups, I decided to embark on a project to build a modular vintage PC in the form factor of an open-frame testbench. This testbench setup will facilitate testing of vintage expansion cards as well as easy evaluation of vintage operating systems.

I decided to go with a Pentium 3 (P3)-based setup similar to my Tweener setup.

In this blog post, I will go through how I set up this hardware for dual-boot between DOS 6.22/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 98SE plus the challenges I encountered while doing so.

HDMI ISA graphics card for vintage PCs by improving the Graphics Gremlin

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

HDMI is a relatively modern video connector we take for granted on modern PCs and monitors. Now vintage PCs can join in the fun too with a native connection to modern HDMI monitors without any additional adapter.

(A production run has been made for this board. You can contact explit[at]mailbox[dot]org if you wish to purchase a unit.)

Teardown & review of a new 386 system: Hand386

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A new 386-based palmtop recently appeared on Aliexpress and was covered by sites like Tom’s Hardware. My curiosity was stoked and I quickly snapped one up.

Building a DOS ChatGPT client in 2023

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With the recent attention on ChatGPT and OpenAI’s release of their APIs, many developers have developed clients for modern platforms to talk to this super smart AI chatbot. However I’m pretty sure almost nobody has written one for a vintage platform like MS-DOS.

This client now supports Hugging Face API, Ollama API and text to speech (TTS) capability. More info on TTS is found at the later part of this post.

Setting up a 486 retro PC

Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The first computer I used as a kid was a 486 PC back in 1995. My family upgraded past it and it was disposed of. However very recently, someone in the local tech community donated a 486 motherboard to me. This gave me an opportunity to relive some of my childhood!

In the spirit of giving back to the online community that I have learned a lot from, I decided to write this blog post to share my setup and learnings.

Review of a new-old motherboard NuXT v2.0

Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I recently purchased a new-old motherboard. It’s a motherboard released in 2020 but not the usual you would expect of the latest motherboard released this year that support the latest CPUs and connectivity options. This motherboard supports a CPU first released in 1979 (Intel 8088) and comes with historic connectivity options like serial and parallel.

When I first heard about the earlier iteration of this board the NuXT v1.2 version from retrocomputing Youtuber LGR, I was hooked.

With the latest new and improved NuXTv2.0 released recently, I decided to get one too as I needed a platform to go into coding for DOS to support the earliest IBM PCs. You can purchase this board here at Monotech PCs.

The motherboard as installed in a modern micro-ATX case.

I have an IDE hard disk caddy, Gotek Floppy Emulator with HxC firmware and a venerable 1.44MB Floppy Drive.

The bootup process. Notice the bootup sound which is the PC Speaker playing the Intel chime. What attention to detail!

The best part, the motherboard schematic is open source since it is itself based on other open-source projects. How many motherboards released today can claim that???

Building a new Win 3.1 app in 2019 Part 1: Slack client

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In October 2019, my company SP Digital held an internal hackathon. My colleague Subhransu and I worked on a whacky idea of writing a brand-new Windows 3.1 app which was an OS released almost 30 years ago. The idea we chose was a Slack client. After all, Slack clients exist for most platforms but I’m certain one does not exist for Windows 3.1.

A few months later in Dec 2019, I would join the Super Silly Hackathon for the second time with fellow retrocomputing enthusiast Hui Jing. We would develop a small game for Win 3.1 with great help from the knowledge gained from this first project.

For Part 1, I shall detail the learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today. This blog post is a few months late as I needed time to clean up the code and write the documentation.

Don’t forget to checkout out Part 2 of the game app with Hui Jing too!

The App

Of course let’s take a look at the app.

Why I use the IBM Model M keyboard that is older than me?

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The last primary keyboard I’ll use in my life might be the IBM Model M. It’ll probably last me the decades to the day that keyboards should become obsolete. - Kheng Meng, 2018

I just had to start my blog post with that self quote ^^^ but I’m pretty confident it’ll hold true for me. I have owned several keyboards so far and I have to say the Model M with its legendary buckling-spring switch is the one that fits my needs perfectly for the foreseeable future. This blog post was indeed also written on the Model M.

All the mechanical keyboards I have owned so far

A Science Project: "Make the 486 Great Again!" - Modern Linux in an ancient PC

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What is the oldest x86 processor that is still supported by a modern Linux kernel in present time?

I asked the above quiz question during the Geekcamp tech conference in Nov 2017 during my emcee role. The theoretical answer as you can glean from the title of this post is the 486 which was first released in 1989. I determined that fact from this article where support for the 386 was dropped in Dec 2012.

To get you interested, here is the result of my effort.

A Science Project: Bringing the Covox Speech Thing to 2017

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Covox Speech Thing (CST) was a sound card released in 1986 by Covox, Inc to enable computers with parallel ports to have sound capability. Unlike modern machines, proper sound support was not a given on computers in that era and the Soundblaster by Creative has yet to be released.

As you will see later, the design is rather simple so I decided to revisit this old piece of hardware and see if it is possible to get it working on modern systems.

My remake of the Covox Speech Thing with a self-wrote media player software.

Video of everything in action

A Science Project: Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on vintage and modern hardware in 2016

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

(This is a long 5600+ words post, I recommend reading this from a tablet or computer)

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (WFW3.11) was an operating system (OS) released by Microsoft in August 1993 and ended support in December 2001. It is part of a series of OSes released by Microsoft at that time so it is common for people to refer to it as part of Windows 3.1x (Win3.1). The specific history behind its name and version number and be found on its Wikipedia article. Here is a brief list of first-impressions I have if I were to describe this OS.

First Windows OS to have practical (installable) networking capabilities
Last one to not have a Start Menu and legacy interface before Windows 95
Last OS to require DOS as an initial install
Last 16-bit OS

Here is a teaser screenshot showing that I managed to get WFW3.11 installed on a “modern” 2009 Thinkpad T400 with networking capabilities. Recognise some familiar applications there?

Installing Windows XP on a modern unsupported (Haswell) system in 2016

Sat, 09 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

(This is a long ~2900 words post, I recommend reading this from a tablet or computer)

Windows XP is the second-longest supported operating system (OS) in Microsoft’s history. Support by Microsoft finally ended on 8 April 2014 after a record-setting 12.5 years. The number one rank is technically* held by Windows 1.0 at 16 years from 1985 to 2001.

*I say “technically” as that was when Microsoft finally declared Win 1.0 obsolete but I doubt Microsoft was updating Win 1.0 during its final years. This was unlike WinXP which was updated up to its final moments and even had an emergency patch after its support ended.

This page here also puts XP’s length of support in perspective with other Microsoft OSes.

Released in October 2001, it is almost 15 years old today. I was only 11 years old when this OS was released so you can imagine I pretty much spent much of my teen years using XP machines other than Red Hat Linux of course.

Despite its age, XP continues to live on in embedded systems like ATMs, factory and medical machines where replacement costs and re-certification (timelines) makes them infeasible to be replaced in the near future. An extreme example is how the 23-year-old Windows 3.1 which crashed is still used in a French airport as of late last year.

The problem

I work in a startup called Algoaccess where we deal with medical devices specifically optician-related ones. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say we occasionally have to handle such older systems and test to make sure our product can work with them. This means we actually need a Windows XP installation for testing purposes. No, virtual machines like VirtualBox or VMWare will not cut it, we need a native installation for realistic testing.

My company could easily procure a machine of an older era with full Windows XP drivers. There are guides like this where people have used an older system to install WinXP in 2016.

But where is the fun in that? I saw this as an opportunity to determine if it is really possible to install WinXP on a much newer system. It was also a good way to relive a bit of my childhood that way.

First thoughts? It shouldn’t be that hard right? I know drivers could be an issue but it shouldn’t be a show-stopper? Turns out things are not so easy to put WinXP on modern hardware.