Warning: These pages are permanently under construction. Wearing protective headgear is advised.

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the Cyberspace. I suppose some sort of introduction is in order: my name is Michal Necasek, I'm currently 27 and I work as a software engineer in Chico, California. My interests range far and wide, the most important being computers, computers, books and computers. I'm a utilitarian person so don't expect any fancy graphics or flashy animations here.

As far as computers are concerned, I'm convinced that the PC is one of the worst things that befell humanity in the 20th century but hey, it earns me a living so I can't really complain. I started using computers in late 1980's when I got a C-64 - okay, admittedly "using" meant playing games 90% of the time. In early 1990's I got a PC, quickly learned the ins and outs of DOS and started programming in Turbo Pascal and later C. That came handy later as now I do most of my work in C, with bits of assembly and some C++. I also have passing familiarity with Java and REXX (and of course BASIC from the 8-bit days).

On the operating systems side, my first OS (if I stretch the definition a little) was DR-DOS 6 - it was so much better than MS-DOS 5. I briefly played with Windows 3.0 and later used Windows 3.1 when I had to but I was very unhappy with its stability (or rather lack thereof). In 1995 I built myself a kickass Pentium 90 box and switched to OS/2 Warp which I found a lot more satisfying to use than DOS/Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Right now I'm using eComStation (eCS) which is a sort of successor to OS/2 (OEM version of OS/2, substantially enhanced). If you're interested in OS/2 or eCS, a good place to visit is OS2World.com.
 

History of OS/2

For past and present users of OS/2 as well as for anyone else who's interested, I have put together a few pages describing the history of OS/2. Most of the information presented there has been originally published in the VOICE Newsletter. However my OS/2 History pages contain several additions and corrections and likely will be further updated.
 

More OS/2 stuff

From time to time I sit down and write some OS/2 related piece of text. My collected writings (not much really) now live here.
 

Open Watcom

In the course of my work I got involved with the Open Watcom project. I was no stranger to the Watcom C/C++ compiler because I had first used it many years ago (version 10.0 on DOS, later 10.x and 11 on OS/2). It looks like I'm sort of in charge of the OS/2 specific efforts of the OpenWatcom team.

After a long wait, Watcom 11.0c was finally released and can be found at the Open Watcom FTP site. This is not yet open source and is intended as a patch for existing Watcom 11 users - there are no 3rd party files from Microsoft, IBM or Tenberry included. Depending on your needs however, 11.0c can be used even without previous copy of Watcom. 16-bit DOS development requires no 3rd party files at all and there is a variety of free 32-bit DOS extenders available. For OS/2 users it is possible to use the headers, libraries and tools from the latest 4.5 Toolkit. Windows users now can use w32api which is a free set of Win32 headers and libraries. I'm trying to create an OS/2 equivalent called, of all things, os2api.

The Open Watcom source and first binaries are now available as well. I'm already using the Open Watcom binaries that I built on my own machine for most of my projects. See the Open Watcom website and Open Watcom FTP site for more. Be sure to visit the Open Watcom newsgroups for the very latest information.

Books

Sometimes I don't read a book in months (I don't count programming books and manuals of course). But then I invariably get into a reading frenzy and chew through 4-5 books in succession within a week or two.

My favorite authors are currently Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and I'm also a fan of Douglas Adams (who unfortunately died not long ago) and his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. I'm fairly well versed in Pratchett's Discworld series, having read all of the first 26 books. I have also read a few non-Discworld books by Pratchett. I haven't read nearly as much stuff by Gaiman - justNeverwhere,Smoke and Mirrors,Stardust and most recently American Gods. And of course I read the brilliant collaborative work of these two authors, Good Omens(this one gets an A+ from me, don't miss it!).

Games

Even at my advanced age, I am not ashamed to play computer games. But then again, I know there are people two times as old as me who play them too. My favorite genre is adventure games although I don't mind an occassional RPG or strategy game. Good games seem to be harder to come by nowadays but from time to time a great game still appears. The best releases of 2000 are in my opinion Deus Ex and The Longest Journey. My 2001 favourite is Arcanum, and Max Payne wasn't bad either - for a shooter. 

Feedback

I can be contacted at <MichalN@prodigy.net>. Feel free to e-mail me if there's anything on these pages that you particularly like or dislike.