Hey MDL people! Linux has got quite some abilities and I really like using it... it's my main OS... I already played around a bit with VMs (Windows VM on Linux), and I found a quite nice tutorial which really worked well: OS/2 Warp 4 on Linux. See here: http://www.linux.org/threads/os2-warp-on-linux.7540/ As I enjoy old computers and old operating systems I thought I'd give it a go. I‘ll spare you with the details, but really suggest giving it a try. It's super easy, it's all for free and - it's fun! I bet a lot of us will feel the spirit of bygone times. I'd love to see an OS/2 of today: OS/2 Warp 2015 or so... but well, that’s the way things are. What follows is a collection of VM screenshots of various stages of installing and using the system. Enjoy! First comes first - installation: System configuration: GUI / Desktop environment: For another fun purpose, I took the registration process... they want to know a lot Some step by step guides: System / system related: (no internetz - oh noes!) Some games at least: Making sure no one tinkers with my system: Customizing my OS/2: Also some MS Windows stuff: Office applications: Graphics: Some Internet suggestions: Shutdown process: This is it so far. I hope you enjoyed my little tour I'm open to any suggestions as I'd like to further experiment with OS/2. Maybe some software or so? Still have to do some searching. But so far the system is working. Primary goal achieved See you around!
Hey thanks for this. I remember playing around with OS/2 Warp when it came out around the same time as Windows 95 in the mid to late 1990's. As I remember, when I got OS/2 Warp it had been out a couple of years and had not really caught on, so I got it really cheap. I also remember the copy I got came on about 20 floppy discs (1.44-mb 3.5-inch floppies). It probably took 1/2 hour to 45 minutes just to feed all of the floppies into the PC, then it had to install, so all together it took over an hour to install on the old 486 or Pentium PC. Fun days. I will have to try this, I'm running Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.3 currently. A few months ago I loaded Windows 95 on a Windows 10 Virtual Box. I also loaded Lotus SmartSuite. It was on more than 30 virtual floppies. If you Google, there is a website that has all of this old abandonware like Windows 3.0, Dos 5, etc, etc, etc.
Yeah, changing floppies... annoying physically and virtually Using Soundblaster 16 and ALSA drivers, even sound works. Network devices I couldn't install successfully yet, at least not on a short try. I'm currently searching for OS2 software downloads, let's see.
Here is the abandonware site - WinWorld https://winworldpc.com/library Here are links to OS2/Warp https://winworldpc.com/product/os-2-warp-4
@Ancestor(V): Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. @Antilope: And I also remember when this was released. Those were some of the best times @sebus: The thing about these posts is that they remind me that I'm getting older. When I see a post about CP/M, then I'll really start worrying (and reminiscing).
In the end, it's pointless... but also fun There even is some kind of online museum: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-beginnings/
I guess deep down I'm a "traditionalist" in that I've always believed in the philosophy, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There has been so much over the years, good programs, great ideas that I no longer use simply because they continually have this need to "update & improve" and end up ruining everything. I'm sure there are many examples of this people could mention. But when I see a post like this, and look at those screen grabs, and take a trip down memory lane ... How utterly awesome is the progress that's been made in such a relative short period of time when looking at the modern OS's available today. Sure their not perfect, actually Windows in many respects has a lot to be desired in some regard, but overall we've come a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way really quickly. I remember loading floppy after floppy just to play DOOM, I also remember when I got my hands on the "hack" lol to change the Nazi symbols into naked babes. Those were the days ... I think threads like this can be a great reminder just how far we've come and how we can take for granted OS's today and our complaints they do this or don't do that, as we'd like. But most of all, I sit back and try to imagine what awaits us in the next 10 to 20 years? I use to imagine and hope that one day humans and machines would one day integrate. Have the hardware and OS build into our brains or something. But after seeing Microsoft's latest efforts - there's no way I'd want that Malware hardwired in my head ...
Not really pointless.... I am still running a 80486 with OS/2 warp in our lab....it is the oldest PC I am running. Reason: It is connected to a IR spectrometer which requires real time FT (fourier transformation). The time when it has been released neither the CPU alone nor windows were capable to perform such a mathematical operation. It has a co-CPU (ISA card) for maths and runs still OS/2 warp. It is a living reminder that not the best OS survived, but the monopolists'..... it is one of many historical tech facts that there had been better approaches/products which have been killed by M$'es capital.
In my eyes, IBM made a real mistake with discontinuing OS/2... AmigaOS is another example - Amiga Computers were quite impressive for that time... at the moment I'm installing software and some games via the virtual drives of the VM. Working very good
For us not au fait with this, it's like time-travel LOL... but in a good way... Let's say IBM did not sell out to Apple/MS or whatever happened then... oh well, spilt milk and all that.
Well, that's the problem with the past... But anyways, has anyone got experience with setting up graphic drivers in this environment? Games aren't really working... and I'm too tired to tinker around. Maybe tomorrow...
A brief history…. IBM was the big player 1980, but they had almost no clue about who makes the soft. They wanted to release a PC and looked for somebody who could make an ‘OS’. They thought M$ is competent and successful, but IBM did not realize that M$ made their money with an add on card for the Apple II (Z80 CPU). It ran CP/M, BUT CP/M was licensed by M$ and made by Digital Research. IBM did firstly not realize that M$ had no own. When IBM got that M$ is not able to deliver what they want they sent somebody to Gary Kildall founder of DR to get their OS there directly. But DM did not sign, because of claimed NDA by IBM. (Better said the wife of Klidall was not sure, her husband was not at home) M$ new one was XENIX. M$ tried to convince IBM to go for UNIX, but XENIX required more hardware resources. Too expensive for an ‘PC’ Seattle Computers Products SCP worked on a copy of CP/M (Q-DOS). SCP had trouble (capital). M$ took the chance and got Q-DOS license. They actually sold QDOS without changes to IBM as PC-DOS. SCP did not know who the partner of M$ was that time. There was also CP/M-86 from Digital Research which was more stable than PC-DOS. Consider M$ got a license for QDOS from SCP, changed the name to PC-DOS and sold the license to IBM AND the product PC-DOS was worse than CP/M-86. PC-DOS 1.0 was instable less performant and almost nothing ran on it. M$ was clever enough to have claimed for only a little licensing fee. CP/M-86 license was much more expensive, but far better. This was the first time M$ dumped cheap cr*ap on the market to kill the better product. IBM then paid money to DR that they do not sue them when IBM recognized that PCDOS is actually a copy of CP/M Confused? Remember SCP made the copy of CP/M as QDOS and M$ licensed it as PCDOS and sold it to IBM. Then 1983 PCDOS was now MS-DOS 2.11 could overtake CP/M-86 as Gates convinced to develop Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS rather than on CP/M-86 The windows stuff where M$ 'borrowed' the idea of 'windows' which others had as 'workbench' /GEM already came later. In the meantime M$ got rich with DOS due to the licensing with IBM and flexible licensing of any other who wanted to make a clone PC. At the end of the 80s Digital Research had their own DR-DOS which was more performant and cheaper than MS-DOS. Attention second time where M$ killed the better one, DR! M$ had implemented a warning box into windows 3.1 PRERELEASE which spitted out an error if it should run under DR-DOS!!! The reputation of DR-DOS has been ruined already when the full version of w3.1 came out. On January 2000 it ended with a 200 Mio USD settlement M$ paid to Caldera. M$ has been originally sued 1998 by Caldera to pay for that…..(DR-DOS became Novel-DOS and that became Caldera DOS) Through the entire history of M$ you can recognize that they played foul not only one time. Not to forget the OS/2 story. @the older out there. Feel free to add/ correct if I should have made a little mistake, it’s been a long time ago. I guess things are right, though.
all of the stuff you mention i saw on soft floppies, i think 5,.25 inch they were, when i think of all the wrong turns the industry took to get us to where we are now, not just ibm or m$, but intel too, at least the 80286 was still a do-anything processor, we could have been a lot further down the road of development by now..the raspberry is only now just learning run a pentium instruction set, but when i look at prices maybe is was not all that bad..
LOL @ My first copy of CP/M was on 8" 160k floppies, which was gifted to me along with the hardware to run it around '93... Needed a pickup truck to move it all.
I personally went on the Motorola 68000 route. Friend's father had an 8'' floppy from IBM. I myself started on datasette lol. I moved to X86 when the Intel 586 came out...before I considered the IBM-PC / Intel as joke.
Don't forget the BDS C compiler. Or Musimp (The grandfather of Derive and the TI symbolic math calculators) Those were the days...
I was always interested in electronics and had subscriptions to elementary electronics and popular electronics, and actually built from scratch the altair 8800 when I was in high school, etched my own circuit boards and everything. Then life got in the way, and while I was still reading about the stuff I had no hands on experience. In 1990 a drunk driver decided to commit Hari Kari on my brand new pickup truck and the insurance company took a year to investigate ( I walked away, he did not... Head on at ~100 MPH combined speed, Renault Alliance vs. Ford F-150 with 3/4 of a ton of snow in the bed. It was NOT pretty. ). By then I had another truck and I had a lump sum of extra cash with which I purchased my first "real" computer, a Tandy HX-1000. Within 6 months of that purchase I had more expansion cards than slots and was swapping them back and forth frequently as needed, along with an external 5.25" RLL hard drive, running Compaq DOS 3.1. A year later I spec'd and built my first 386 with parts purchased mail order from "The Computer Shopper" magazine. The computer bug had bitten me hard, and I have been going at it ever since. I was a beta tester for Windows 95 and I remember telling my boss that I wish I knew how to invest in the stock market because Bill Gates did it right this time. If there was just one thing I could change in my life, I would have taken time off work to learn that.
memories... compaq dos had this very nice command.com... only 25k on disk, ran on all drdosses too, saved ram... i guess you were very lucky with that crash, ford steel is harder than what renault made..
My first computer, in 1983, was Commodore 64 with an attached cassette drive (didn't want to pay $120 for a 5.25 external floppy, the cassette drive was $65). The Commodore 64 cost $200. My first PC was a generic brand PC with an Intel 8088 processor. I bought it from Fry's Electronics in 1989 for $1000, on sale. It came with an Amber CRT monitor. It had a 5.25 inch floppy drive and a 20mb hard disk. It came with MS-Dos 4 and a few "educational" programs. It also had a 1200-baud modem to access other "websites" called "bulletin boards" where you could access forums or download "shareware" over the phone.