Category Archives: OS/2

The Future That Never Was

Microsoft OS/2 2.0 SDK Pre-Release 2, June 1990 In 1990, the strategic PC operating system of Microsoft and IBM was not DOS, not Windows, but OS/2. The first 16-bit OS/2 was initially released in 1987 with a reduced feature set, … Continue reading

Posted in 386, IBM, LAN Manager, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history, Pre-release | 59 Comments

Retro-Porting to OS/2 1.0

A few weeks ago I embarked on a somewhat crazy side project: Make the Open Watcom debugger work on OS/2 1.0. This project was not entirely successful, but I learned a couple of things along the way. The Open Watcom … Continue reading

Posted in Development, IBM, Microsoft, OS/2, Watcom | 10 Comments

Slovenian OS/2 Warp 4

This is a guest post written by Marko Ć tamcar from the Slovenian Computer Museum in Ljubljana. Additional context and commentary from the OS/2 Museum can be found at the end of the article. Slovenia being a tiny country with a … Continue reading

Posted in IBM, OS/2, PC history | 14 Comments

1989 Networking: OS/2 NetWare Requester 1.1

When I wrote about the pre-release NetWare Requester for OS/2, the oldest archived officially released NetWare OS/2 Requester was version 1.2 from 1990. In the meantime, version 1.1 of the requester showed up, although I only became aware of that … Continue reading

Posted in NetWare, Networking, OS/2, PC history, Virtualization | 11 Comments

OS/2 6.304: Finally Complete

Some time ago, I lamented that even though the OS/2 Museum had a good number of disks of the final OS/2 2.0 beta, level 6.304, there wasn’t enough to install the OS, let alone any of the development tools or … Continue reading

Posted in CD-ROM, IBM, OS/2, PC history, Pre-release | 5 Comments

Page Too Big

The other day I was able to look at an IBM OS/2 pre-release CD-ROM from early 1992. The CD-ROM appears to have been produced by IBM UK under the DAP (Developer Assistance Program) umbrella. The CD-ROM contains about 250 MB … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, IBM, OS/2, PC history | 4 Comments

Where Did CP852 Come From?

In the 1990s, a lot of my documents were written in code page 852 (CP852), also known as PC Latin 2. This code page is sometimes called “Eastern European”, which is a bit misleading, given that it does not cover … Continue reading

Posted in DOS, I18N, IBM, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history | 47 Comments

OS/2 6.304: Who Has More?

Yet another interesting item that I recently ran through a Kryoflux is a set of 30 floppies labeled “IBM OS/2 Version 2.0 Pre-release Evaluation Copy – 6.304”. In this case, there’s no mystery as to what it is: 6.304 was … Continue reading

Posted in Archiving, IBM, OS/2, Pre-release | 8 Comments

OS/2 1.2 EE DAP

That same shoebox I mentioned the other day also contained three plain cardboard 3.5″ floppy boxes with a set of disks that look like this: Once again, despite the plain-looking labels, these are mass-duplicated floppies, which is handy because Kryoflux … Continue reading

Posted in Archiving, IBM, Kryoflux, OS/2, PC history | 2 Comments

Archival Puzzles

Every now and then I attack the large amount of floppy disks in my basement and run a bunch of them through Kryoflux. This time it was a shoebox full of OS/2 related floppies. Among them was a very incomplete … Continue reading

Posted in Archiving, IBM, Kryoflux, OS/2, Pre-release | 30 Comments