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LGR Tech Tales - IBM's OS/2 Operating System

🕑 Added 2015-03-20 00:24:03 +0000 UTC

Comments

Thank you!

Zabe

He reupped it! <a href="http://youtu.be/wQdK9owqVd0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/wQdK9owqVd0</a>

What happened to the video??

Rob Caporetto

Great episode! I've only seen OS/2 tangentially (more from articles than using the thing). It's still such an impressive OS for the period, that really feels like it was the victim of politics :( It feels like a much nicer step between the DOS era and the modern children of Windows NT, than compared to Windows 9x to be honest…

Lon Seidman

In the early 90's I ran a FidoNet BBS and my upstream hub was a big OS/2 guy. He ran the OS/2 version of Maximus BBS.

I always thought BeOS had a nice icon theme. :D

LGR

It is! At least, one of them I plan to make :) And I do not, not yet.

Zabe

The OS/2 video! It's here! While we're on the subject of tales of technology past, do you have any experience with BeOS?

Fun video. I still don't understand how Unix didn't just destroy all of the other operating systems.

RetroSwim

I don't know if you noticed, but your screenshot showing QBasic running under OS/2 is actually from a PowerPC system, running the elusive OS/2 for PowerPC. So it's not only running DOS apps, but it's running them on a non-Intel CPU. That's pretty cool. I have a PowerPC PReP system (Motorola PowerStack II), but since OS/2 for PPC is proverbial unicorn blood, I don't think I'll ever get to try it myself.

LGR

Here's a re-uploaded version featuring some small changes and additions. Mostly just corrected myself in saying IBM no longer makes OS's, and extended my ending monologue: <a href="http://youtu.be/wQdK9owqVd0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/wQdK9owqVd0</a>

Justin Laughlin

Perhaps its the same parallel universe where the worlds largest consumer electronics company Tandy/Radioshack is also riding high on the excellent sales of the new Tandy VIS V system

LGR

Glad to hear it :)

Ezydenias

Funny I never saw anything using OS/2, at least when I had the chance to see the OS it was ever Windows XP or Win7 even for ATMs and stuff like that. Even on big as sorting machines for packages at the airport there is Win7 installed even it uses some programmes that may or may not bne OS/2 Related, but they could just be DOS because they look so DOS. But maybe OS/2 never found a big market here in Europe or never bothered with it. Actually I wanna know that.

Matthew Dooley

Love me some Tech Tales.

LGR

I use the same hardware I used in my previous OS/2 video! It's a 233Mhz Pentium II with 32MB RAM

David Stringfellow

What hardware were you running it on for making of the video mate?

Bad Sector

Nice video. It would be nice if there was a bit more info on eComStation since that one seems to have a few but die-hard fans :-). I bought it last year to install it on a laptop i have and it was nice that it mostly worked perfectly out of the box (except the wifi dongle that had connection issues, but i have that problem with linux too and *i think* eComStation uses ports of linux drivers which would explain the identical problem :-P). I mostly ran some of the prepackaged stuff (the second CD has a bunch of games and tools :-P) and installed OpenWatcom. Then i proceeded to make a window with "hello world" on it :-P. Also i remember reading in an article last year about OS/2 (i think it was in osnews but i'm not 100% sure) that IBM intentionally crippled the OS's marketing (and even features) so that it wont compete against their mainframe business and it was an inside battle of the teams working on it.

RetroSwim

Thanks for the reply, I suppose maybe I could forego the NR and just try to find a quieter place to record, haha! Anyhow, another great video! I got an opportunity to play with OS/2 a while ago, an Aussie magazine had it on their cover disk in July 2000. Needless to say, without any OS/2 software or games to run, it got deleted pretty quickly. It's cool as a curiosity, but useless for pretty much anything. Anything except playing SimCity for OS/2 I suppose! :P

LGR

I use a Blue Snowball, but it shouldn't make that much of a difference! The Yeti is good stuff too. I don't know, I don't really do anything to the audio other than run it through a hard limit filter.

RetroSwim

How do you get your voice recordings to sound so clear? I picked up a Blue Yeti, and the raw capture sounds great, but after I do NR in Audacity, my voice sounds flat and muffled.

LGR

Haha nice!

LGR

Can't say I have seen any personally, but it seems like something someone would have covered. It's a world I've wanted to dive into myself.

Excellent edutainment as always Clint. Sorry to crash this DOS-centric party but as a Linux user myself since the mid 2000's, I'm much more comfortable & proficient with Unix-based OSes even though I grew up with DOS/Windows. Clint or any other viewers: Have you ever seen any type of videos like this on Unix? I'd be interested to know.

SwissArmyTin

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. A full in-depth review would be totally awesome, but the amount of content and effort to review an OS of this caliber would just be too much in the long-run. Oh, you weren't kidding in the OS/2 SimCity Classic video with Warp 3. There's something like 40 floppies in that box! Pretty crazy for an operating system back in the day. 10 to 20 is forgivable, but 40...jeeze

I swear your timing is impeccable. This is the second video to crop up almost immediately after I look into the subject matter myself (first one being the MSX video) XD

LGR

Yeah, I always just used the blue spine editions to avoid multibooting! Not perfect, but for the playing around with it I wanted to do it was more than good :)

LGR

Warp 3 and 4 are more than usable indeed. Shame the SimCity port sucked, but at least you got things like Galactic Civilizations that were good!

LGR

Can't say I have any experience with pre 2.0 versions myself. But yeah, Tech Tales videos are more about the overall history of a subject rather than an in-depth review of a product!

Zem Hysong

I actually really like OS/2 Warp 4. I used it a lot as a kid, and still play around with it today. It had some very fun casual games and stuff that just reek of nostalgia.

LGR

I've used it a fair amount, I like it! Here's another video I did on it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlTPrwmGnU" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlTPrwmGnU</a>

SwissArmyTin

OS/2 has always been a fascinating operating system. Sadly it's become a pain to track down certain versions, namely the final boxed release of Warp 4 Connect. Shame. At least there's 2.1 for Windows-based machines and Warp 3, which are both fun to mess around with nowdays, as there isn't a real practical use for them anymore. Also, I'm surprised there was no mention to the compatibility issues of earlier versions. OS/2, essentially pre-2.1 versions, had a hard time with Windows programs, and even some DOS programs. I can't remember exactly, but I remember that running certain programs could completely deadlock the system, so yeah, for a business-focused OS, that could cause some issues.