The History of BIOS and IDE Limits covers the following limits:

• ATA Specification (for IDE disks) - the 137 GB limit
• BIOS Int 13 - the 8.5 GB limit
• 528 MB limit
• 2.1 GB limit (April 1996)
• 3.2 GB limit
• 4.2 GB limit (Feb 1997)
• 7.9 GB limit
• 8.4 GB limit
• 33.8 GB limit (August 1999)
• 137 GB limit (Sept 2001)
• 2 TiB limit

Looks like MyDoom's reported Denial of Service attack against SCO does not actually work. (Via Slashdot) UPDATE: Guess that was wrong.

Jakob Neilsen on Information Pollution: "Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message."

David Miller kindly sends word of HydraIRC, "an open-source IRC client with an attractive and easy to use interface. It supports DCC Chat and File transfers, Connecting to multiple servers, Dockable Floating Tabbed Windows, Autohiding Windows, DLL Plugins, Channel Monitoring, Message Logs, Event Viewer, Themes, Color schemes, Buddy groups, Audible and Visual Notifications, Reg-Exp Highlighting, Favorites and much more."

Thanks to Blogger, TinyApps now features syndication powered by Atom. More info on Blogger's decision to go with Atom.On a related note, skyzyx.com has a handy online RSS/Atom Reader.

Yet another handy extension for Firebird users: User Agent Switcher "adds a menu to switch the user agent of the browser. It is designed to provide functionality similar to the 'Browser Identification' feature of Opera and allows configuration of the list of user agents to display in the menu." Released under the GPL. (Found via BlueJAMC's posting on grc.techtalk)

FileZilla is slightly too large to be listed on TinyApps, but it is a powerful (and open source) FTP client with many great features, including: Resume uploads/downloads, SFTP support, Site Manager with folders, firewall support, and much more.

For those using Mozilla Firebird and wondering how to "Work Offline" (i.e., browse cached webpages), check out Pike's Work Offline extension.

Kamelion kindly informs us of 0irc, a small IRC client for Windows. Download size is about 120k and the source code is available under the GPL. Screenshot.

Fixing Unknown Devices (those with yellow question marks) in Device Manager:

•  Unknown Devices [392k] {S}+ Determine the identity of unknown devices in Device Manager.
  
• How to Use Registry Editor to Identify an Unknown PCI Device
  
• PCI Vendor and Device Lists
  
• Plasma Online
  
• ID HW
  
• Driver Magic - 30 day free trial, $24/yr. "Instantly identifies all of the required device drivers in your computer and enables you to download them quickly, without spending hours trawling the internet hunting for them."
  
• See also System Info & Diagnostics.

Time to clean out the ol' Inbox... here's one (couple hundred more to go!) from June 2002:

"World smallest audio/video conferencing tool, freeware and customizable. EWrama is a small conferencing application you can use alone, or feel free to embed in your own messenger program, as long as you follow the license terms."

Many thanks to Sture for sending in a link to Steffen's Calculator 1.4, a scientific calculator with tape display. The download size is 241k, and once extracted, the program weighs 447k. While not requiring installation, it does create three new registry keys. Please keep the suggestions coming... still looking for a truly tiny calculator with tape. The built-in Windows 2000 calculator is only 89k.

A.H. kindly found Euromat, a smaller (225k) freeware calculator with tape, more features, and completely install/registry-free. The only issue is that it requires MSVBVM50.DLL, which is 1.29mb, and not always found on older Windows versions. At the moment, this disqualifies Euromat from TinyApps... is it time to change this policy?

The creator of Euromat, Detlev Schaefer, has authored a host of freeware apps. According to his site, each and every app:

1. is FREEWARE
2. needs no installation (...simply start the exe-file for instant use)
3. writes nothing into your system (...that makes your system slow)
4. can be simply removed (...by deleting the program folder only)
5. has a small download size (no libs, fonts etc.)
6. comes with its own folder (not required to generate manually)
7. requires the msvbvm50.dll (normally present on each system)

Slogan: download -> unzip -> run -> enjoy

A.H. Banen wrote in to recommend SteelBytes, a site "dedicated to the fine art of hand crafting software." He also offered that, "The utilities spotted in your weblog aren't always that tiny :) Otherwise TinyApps is great!" True, apps like Moffsoft FreeCalc (featured on Jan 4) could hardly be called tiny, but I have yet to find a smaller freeware app that does the same job (virtual tape which can be copied, saved, and printed). If you know of one, please send it in.

A.H. is an admin for Dialect, which he describes as "a tiny development system (script based, but can produce stand alone executables) for the Win32/WinCE platforms.)"

Moffsoft FreeCalc [787k] Windows Calculator replacement with virtual tape (copy/save/print), sizeable display, "always on top" setting, double & triple zero keys, international support for thousand separators, and more.  

For those browsing with Mozilla Firebird, there is a tiny, RSS reader panel available. Requests to provide RSS feeds for TinyApps prompted an email to Blogger, which replied, "We'll be releasing a syndication feature very soon, for all Blogger users." If this doesn't happen within the next month or so, RSS feeds will be offered through The Feedster Builder.

blo.gs "lets you keep an eye on your favorite weblogs via the web, email, and instant messenger. you can even put the list on your site: a blogroll that knows what is new!"