New
#11
I don't recall having any warm feelings about OS/2, not even for Warp but it looks like that Retro is modern now, expecting an Edsel in modernized version soon.
I might try this one as a part of my winter sports plan.
I don't recall having any warm feelings about OS/2, not even for Warp but it looks like that Retro is modern now, expecting an Edsel in modernized version soon.
I might try this one as a part of my winter sports plan.
Hi there.
OS/2 was a REAL multi-tasking OS back in those days while Windows was cheaper but worked. IBM though was totally uninterested in the HOME PC market and the rest is history.
IBM tried to hobble Ms (the upstart company at the time) by copyrighting its BIOS (which was actually BASIC !!). Ms had to do some clever design to get its own OS (Ms-DOS) to work without infringing IBM's copyright.
However Ms eventually succeeded with a fairly stable version of Windows (3.0) which ran on top of Ms DOS. The real corporate breakthrough came with Windows 3.1 and 3.11 (called Windows for Workgroups) which at the time worked OK.
The mega disaster was WINDOWS NT ( NEANDERTHAL or NO THANKS) we called it -- to get anything to work was the ultimate pain, Fortunately Windows 2000 and possibly the best OS Ms wrote Windows server 2003 (W2K3 server) cleaned up the rest of corporate networks and small businesses.
IBM is now primarily a service company with a few labs around the place --- amazing how things have changed in not such a long space of time.
Cheers
jimbo
Part of the initial problem was that that IBM implied (or didn't disabuse customers who assumed) that OS/2 would run only on PS/2s. That greatly delayed general acceptance. Also, there apparently was not a common generic software installation procedure so each 3rd party product seemed to have it's own process. (I suspect it was just the gui that was different, but that was enough to confuse customers.)
I remember having a dual-boot OS/2 and Windows system - probably Windows 95 - for quite a while. I greatly preferred OS/2, but that may have been just a familiarity issue.
That's hilariously wrong. IBM's BIOS was never BASIC although the original IBM line of PCs did have BASIC in ROM. Having BASIC in ROM meant that even if there was no disk in the disk drive with an OS on it to boot from, the machine could still boot to a BASIC prompt and run BASIC programs.
The only thing MS needed to do for MS DOS vs IBM's PC DOS was to include gwbasic.exe instead of basica.exe that PC DOS came with. Basica relied on some of the BASIC code in ROM to run.
I was a beta tester for OS/2 and developed OS/2 software for quite a few years. The fact that Windows won out had nothing to do with the two OS's capabilities because OS/2 was clearly more capable. OS/2 had true multi-tasking capabilities while Windows was simply a GUI on top of DOS in versions prior to Win NT. Lack of 3rd party support for drivers and native OS/2 software was OS/2's downfall.
I don't know anything about OS/2 But speaking of windows 3.1 I read that a airport terminal running on windows 3.1 in Paris just recently grounded several flights do to a crash.
OS/2 is going to get an upgrade...WOW
It was the o/s I used for my first job...so long ago.
I remember I bought it when I was in college. It was a pretty big box with an astronaut printed on it.
2 CDs and 2 1.44 floppy disks and a bunch of manuals.
May not be the same year, 95 came out, I bought it also.
OS/2 remained my o/s until I changed to an other job.
One thing about OS/2 was that it had something like DOS batch(.bat). It was cmd. It is fun to use it!
CD's was later on. When I first got OS/2, I had a PS/2 Model 80 as well and it was many 3.5" floppies and a lot of manuals... IBM still has AIX and the RiSC machines.
For windows 3.1/3.11, there were 10 or more floppies. Chinese version even got more!
They didn't sell OS/2 using floppies in my place...that may be a sales strategy!
Windows/286 and Windows/386 had lots of floppies too, forgot how many exactly but never really used it as during that time, DOS + QEMM/386 + Quarterdeck DeskView worked better for multi-tasking...