Windows 10: OS/2 – Yes, THAT OS/2 – is getting an upgrade

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...

 

PS/2 was a great flop because IBM tried to keep it to themselves only, something like Apple but by that time IBM clones have already taken off, even IBM made their own clone, it was called Patriot. Some good stuff came out of it though, PCI port was developed on the lines of IBM PS/2 ports and PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports are still with us.
BTW, Atari already had data CD and 3D vision by that time.

 

IBM tried use the Micro-Channel bus but then EISA came out. Never knew IBM made their own clone but genuine bioses were the best for compatibility with software, Phoenix was good too. AMI and Award were more of the cheaper offerings. I still remember memory above 640k, some people used it for Extended Memory and some people used it for Expanded memory with expanded memory being a Lotus/Intel/Microsoft thing. I remember even back in the early 1990's, people called it PC compatible machines or clones then later, it's all basically named after the processor.

 

I still have fondest memories of TOS (Tramiel Operating System) and Atari.

 

I still remember the Sorry Atari commercials from CollecoVision.

 

There was a lot of competition those days and that produced some interesting OSs.

 

Even Microsoft had Xenix in those days, it's Unix flavor.

 

And I hear that they are flirting with Linux developers these days.

 

Compaq was the first "clone" to develop an IBM compatible BIOS. The BIOS was used in their first product, the Compaq Portable. Early clones from Taiwan used the ERSO BIOS.

Expanded memory could be used to add memory above 640K for 808x cpus, Extended memory could be used to add memory for 80286 and later cpus.