Category Archives: Interrupts

Normally, newer DOS applications are actually easier to run on the board because they are compiled with standardized libraries that tend to do more things by the book instead of clever I/O trickery. But Microsoft QBASIC was different. It worked perfectly until I opened any of its menus, upon which it hung immediately. Debugging 8086… Read More »

When you try to make a computer PC compatible, you usually think about BIOS interrupts and hardware peripherals. Instead, you should be thinking about timer interrupts and delay calibration loops. Surprisingly many PC DOS applications run a small loop in the beginning of execution, trying to measure the amount of time it takes to execute… Read More »