Category Archives: OS/2

OS/2 on ThinkPad T23 and T30

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Recently I had a need to install IBM’s OS/2 on real hardware rather than in a VM, and for various reasons I wanted “genuine” IBM OS/2 and not eComStation. One of IBM’s older ThinkPads was a logical choice. A T42p … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, ThinkPad | 11 Comments

OS/2 Technical Library Scans

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Michal Necasek

After a lot of scanning and OCRing, here’s the OS/2 2.0 Technical Library (well, most of it) in PDF form. This was IBM’s complete programming documentation for OS/2 2.0, covering general programming, GUI development, Workplace Shell, and device drivers. Certainly … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, OS/2 | 8 Comments

Ladders and Dragons

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Michal Necasek

While looking at the Windows 95 disk subsystem, something seemed oddly familiar. The nagging feeling was confirmed by the Windows 95 DDK documentation (a file called BLOCK.DOC). The new Windows 95 layered block device driver model called “Dragon” wasn’t all … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, PC history, SCSI, Windows 95 | Leave a comment

OS/2 Kernel Debugger and MVDM Interrupts

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Michal Necasek

While working on an unrelated problem, I noticed a strange behavior of one of my OS/2 VMs running OS/2 Warp 4.52. To cut a long story short, if an unhandled floating-point exception occurred in a DOS window (VDM, or Virtual … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, Debugging, OS/2 | 12 Comments

Windows Presentation Manager Documentation

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Michal Necasek

The OS/2 Museum just posted a three-volume set of draft Windows Presentation Manager reference documentation. This refers to the OS/2 Presentation Manager GUI but highlights the story Microsoft pushed in 1987: Windows and OS/2 both used the same graphical user … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | 5 Comments

OS/2 Programmer’s Toolkit

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Michal Necasek

For those wishing to write OS/2 1.x programs, the complete Microsoft OS/2 Programmer’s Toolkit documentation is now online. This is Microsoft’s programming documentation for OS/2 1.0 programming. It is worth noting that IBM’s programming documentation was different; worse yet, IBM’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2 | 2 Comments

Weekend Reading, OS/2 and Windows

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Michal Necasek

In a recent post I mentioned that the OS/2 Museum’s stack of PC Tech Journal issues ironically does not include the first PCTJ issue devoted to OS/2. Thanks to pcjs.org, the October 1987 issue of PCTJ can now be read … Continue reading →

Posted in Documentation, Microsoft, OS/2, Windows | 3 Comments

Microsoft OS/2 1.3… But Which One?

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Michal Necasek

A recent inventory at the OS/2 Museum revealed that two seemingly identical sets of Microsoft OS/2 1.30.1 disk images were in fact not identical at all. Probably thanks to the twilight status of OS/2 at Microsoft in the days of OS/2 1.3, Microsoft … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, OS/2 | 25 Comments

OEM MS OS/2: 1987-1990

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Michal Necasek

When Microsoft started offering OS/2, the arrangement was roughly similar to how DOS 3.3 had been handled: Microsoft and IBM jointly developed the code, IBM maintained its own version, and Microsoft licensed an “adaptation kit” to OEMs. While the IBM … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, OS/2 | 18 Comments

Multitasking MS-DOS 4.0, Goupil OEM

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Michal Necasek

The recently unearthed copy of the near-mythical Multitasking (aka European) MS-DOS 4.0 clearly did not want to be alone. James Lariviere, a kind reader of this blog, provided a disk image of multitasking DOS 4 which was released in 1986 … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, OS/2 | 29 Comments