The Fall of OS/2

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  • Опубліковано 20 січ 2025

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  • @1979benmitchell
    @1979benmitchell Рік тому +473

    I shut down our last OS/2 Warp 4 deployment at the bank I worked at (was still using Token Ring!) back in 2011. Say what you will, that platform ran diligently forever without a hiccup.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 Рік тому +45

      I was just at a customer site in March. One of their server racks got my attention when I saw a server that still had a (5-1/4" tray-loading) CD-ROM drive. And then saw two others that still had floppy drives. One was running Windows XP, on a Pentium 4 CPU with 512MB RAM. Still running since its last reboot in 2018, on the network, and able to ping things. And of course it was for "security"... haha

    • @Chordonblue
      @Chordonblue Рік тому +22

      ...and I worked for an integrator that was called in to convert a bank running OS/2 and Token Ring to the new purchasing bank's system - which was garbage.We had converted a perfectly usable, stable, and clear system to an amalgamation of Windows 3.1, DOS, and Novell.
      Printing was a nightmare. User experience was in the toilet compared to what those users were used to. We were despised when we'd come to convert their sections.
      OS/2 had run everything from the teller's terminals to the ATM's to the back end servers. What a disgrace! So perfect for that system!
      It was one of the reasons why I left that company; the level of incompetence and short sightedness... 😢 I have never seen the like since.
      Was this bank in the Reading, PA area, by chance?

    • @c0t0d0s7
      @c0t0d0s7 Рік тому +5

      When I got my first job after college, the company was running OS/2 and Token Ring. It seems so long ago.

    • @user-lb8do4ew6k
      @user-lb8do4ew6k Рік тому +9

      ​@Nick Wallette Kid, I have t-shirts that are older than those servers.

    • @jeffyp2483
      @jeffyp2483 Рік тому +2

      @@nickwallette6201 'tray loading' you mean those caddy things about ¼inch thick?

  • @jamesnorman7449
    @jamesnorman7449 Рік тому +115

    [IBM Employee for 27 years -- involved in PC from beginning] The Story line is accurate; Thank you for finding, Soyring, Black, and Mr. OS/2 .. When the 'almost illegal' theft of Word Perfect and 1-2-3 hit, the depth of the enemy's efforts were better known. Good Story line.. Thank you; brings back very accruate memories. //jim

  • @mikekopack6441
    @mikekopack6441 Рік тому +214

    Great video! Here's a couple OS/2 related personal stories.
    1) I was a CS Major at Georgia Tech from 1991-1995. I was asked by the Dean of the College of Computing to be involved in some event with industry professionals. At the time I was an OS2 user on my 386-DX40 and loved it over Windows. (Pretty sure this was in early 1995). Anyhow, during the luncheon, I'm sitting at a table with "somebody" from Microsoft, and I proceeded to rip on him over how crappy 3.1 was, how OS2 was so much more stable and ran faster and was preemptive multitasking, etc. It turns out I was talking to Jim Alchin (who was a senior engineer at MS at the time!)
    2) After college I went to work for IBM Global Services in Atlanta, and my first assignment was to work downtown Atlanta for the team that was developing the scorekeeping software for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It was ALL done on OS/2! I was in heaven. (The same software was used for the 2000 Barcelona games). At that time, most desktop users inside of IBM were running OS/2, but literally 1/2 the people I worked came from Mainframe background, the other half came from PC background and boy those 2 groups did NOT mix! If the mainframe people used OS/2, they only used it to get a terminal window into the mainframe.
    3) I remember the fiasco related to the Warp name. What a disaster! I actually attended the release event they had in Atlanta.
    4) I'm convinced that Commodore's sales staff went to work at IBM after Commodore died... I apparently am a glutton for punishment because I went from C64-->Amiga-->OS/2 before finally throwing in the towel and going Windows 98 (yes I ran Warp 4.0 until 98).
    5) After the 96 Olympics, management didn't know what to do with all of us Olympics people (suddenly having to find tasking for like 300 people). So, they told us all to go do training classes, just pick stuff and go... So I picked one class on OS/2 Presentation Manager programming (which I had been trying to learn on my own through books) and the following week was going to be on this new thing called Java. The OS/2 PM class was TOUGH and I worked all week in the class struggling to get really anything to really work. It was just horribly confusing and verbose to even just get a window to open and respond to the close button and such. The next week I took the Java class and in that 1 week I had written a GUI based chat client AND a chat server that could support multiple clients over a network connection. YEah I basically gave up on OS/2 development at that point. I still ran OS/2, but I did all my coding in Java at that point.

    • @b3ans4eva
      @b3ans4eva Рік тому +7

      How did Jim take it?

    • @mikekopack6441
      @mikekopack6441 Рік тому +20

      @@b3ans4eva as I recall, he pretty much had a scowl on his face the whole time and got up and left as soon as the lunch’s was over.

    • @WallaceBMcClure
      @WallaceBMcClure Рік тому +2

      I was a gt grad as well and at the warp launch event in atl. Iirc, it was at the fox theater. Did you know Greg Shaw? Good man. He worked at ibm global services on the coke account.

    • @mikekopack6441
      @mikekopack6441 Рік тому +1

      @@WallaceBMcClure doesn’t ring a bell but I was pretty much immediately shuttled down to ACOG on my first day so I didn’t meet many folks outside of the ACOG crew. Yeah the event was at the Fox.

    • @WallaceBMcClure
      @WallaceBMcClure Рік тому +2

      @@mikekopack6441 I worked at Coca-Cola for a several years. I knew Greg because he was on the coke account from ibm.

  • @ManuelSchulte007
    @ManuelSchulte007 Рік тому +32

    Terrific video! Thanks!
    I went from my brother's Amiga 500 to the PC when I entered the University somewhere in 1990 and had to work with MS-DOS / Windows apps. Something I considered a step back compared to the Amiga. Then I stumbled upon OS/2 Warp 3.0 and Warp 4.0 ... It really was a fantastic OS. I remembered showing a friend how I could play DOOM in an OS/2 window whilst at the same time run MS-Word and MS-Excel and switch from one another in just 8Mo of RAM!
    After the downfall of OS/2, I reluctantly switched back to Windows, 2000 first, XP next... until I met Ubuntu Linux 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog in 2005 ... since then I never left Linux ... writing this comment on my 12 years old PC running Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS in its MATE flavor.
    I still own the boxes and original copies of my OS/2 Warp 3.0 and 4.0 ... because like my first girlfriend, I'll never forget them.

    • @chrissmith7669
      @chrissmith7669 Рік тому +1

      I had a similar journey. Amiga at Home and sun in the engineering computer lab at school. When pushed to adopt a windows box for word I bought os2warp and used WordPerfect. Warp had some quirks for a home user but was far and away better than Win95. How they could get around prosecution for sabotaging the use of their software on other platforms I never understood

    • @valenrn8657
      @valenrn8657 Рік тому +1

      Windows 95 has the superior Doom 95 version, WinQuake (Jan 1997) and GLQuake (Jan 1997).

    • @ParaT-t6y
      @ParaT-t6y Місяць тому +1

      I started with SuSE and changed to ubuntu 8.04 and still don't have any Windoof on my private Computers. In the firm the use the PowerPlatform which will be my new job.

  • @davidt-rex2062
    @davidt-rex2062 Рік тому +14

    Love the Commodore reference. No company squandered opportunity like commodore.

  • @royalsfan7786
    @royalsfan7786 Рік тому +2

    Excellent channel and series 👍🏿
    Note: 33:16 The *Fiesta Bowl* was held annually in _Tempe, Arizona_ during this time, and has been held in nearby Glendale, AZ since 2007. It has never been held in Austin, TX

  • @POVwithRC
    @POVwithRC Рік тому +24

    Dang. This was the best hour and a half on UA-cam this week and probably for a few to come. Monumental effort on your part.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому

      I really appreciate the compliment, glad you enjoyed the video!

  • @lornetyndale7974
    @lornetyndale7974 Рік тому +85

    A few extra things contributed to OS/2 Warp's downfall. Mentioned is the PowerPC version, and this is often overlooked but it did have a significant impact on OS/2. IBM had bet big on the PowerPC chip, some at IBM honestly thought it could bring some control of the higher end PC market back to IBM (they hadn't learned their lesson with MCA). They knew the PowerPC systems would need an OS, and so a lot of money was spent to bring OS/2 over to the PowerPC. It wasn't just a straight port, but more of a ground-up rewrite of much of the OS. They reworked OS/2 to run on a Microkernel running on a PowerPC architecture, and my recollection is that there was some talk about in the future it would be possible for IBM to write a microkernel for other architectures and then run OS/2 on it. In the end customers had very little interest in their PowerPC line of systems and it was one of those projects that didn't make a lot of sense to do. Unfortunately they had spent a lot of money on the project, if they had put those resources into the Intel version of OS/2 it might have resulted in a different outcome.
    Regarding the issue with the Synchronous Input Queue on Warp 3, this was actually fixed in Warp 3's Fixpak 17 (and all later fixpaks included the fix), although you had to turn the fix on with a line in the config.sys file. Of course the fix was carried on to Warp 4. Fixpaks were (are still) free to download from IBM and various other locations.
    As for Warp 4 it had a pile of features that were not mentioned in your video which put it ahead of pretty much everything else available at the time. It was the first major OS to include Java integrated in the OS (you could just double click a Java application and it would run) and the just-in-time compiler that IBM had written was extremely well optimized, it could run Java apps quicker and smoother then Windows 95. It included a software implementation of OpenGL. The voice control mentioned was actually the full version of IBM's VoiceType software which - at the time - was the leading voice recognition software on the market. Voicetype worked quite well. On the dictation side without voice training it was only about 70% accurate, however with training it could get up to about 95% accuracy (at least for English, I never tried it with other languages). You did have to have a brief pause between words, but considering this was 1996 when it came out it was certainly impressive. The other thing neat about VoiceType is it could work with any OS/2 application, even if the application had never been designed with VoiceType in mind. The Voice Navigation side was neat, but I found it more of a gimmick. You could say things like "Jump to yahoo" and it would launch Netscape and go to the Yahoo home page. You could also set up macros and say something like "Send email to Bob" and it would launch your email application, compose a new email, and pull Bob from your address book. You could then say "Begin Dictation" and go into dictating your email. A lot of things were quicker to just use the mouse, but I did hear that quite a few people with disabilities which prevented them from using a mouse/keyboard were actually able to use OS/2 with VoiceType, so in that respect it was well ahead of its time.
    Not aimed at the consumer desktop, but there were a few other releases. OS/2 Warp Server Version 4 (which came out after Warp 3 and was based on its code base - yes, more of the confusing version numbering schemes!), and later Warp Server for eBusiness (which was based on the Warp 4 code base). Then of course the Convenience Packages that IBM put out as their final versions of the line - essentially bundling all the bug fixes and product additions they'd put together over the years into a final release before the official IBM retirement.

    • @DanielleWhite
      @DanielleWhite Рік тому +7

      I remember a lot of the tech magazines hailing PowerPC as an evolution across the boards and then admitting that it mostly became a Mac platform shift.

    • @Psy500
      @Psy500 Рік тому +13

      @@DanielleWhite It was an evolution across the board. Atari, Commodore and Sharp also had plans to migrate to PPC meaning PPC would have become a point where all these system became similar at the hardware architecture level. Yet Atari and Commodore went bankrupt before that and Sharp lost interest in having its own computer platform this along with IBM giving its own PPC workstation a lacklustre launch meant the PPC failed to become the common architecture.

    • @tolkienfan1972
      @tolkienfan1972 Рік тому +7

      One nit: it's not true that no one was interested in PowerPC systems. Apple had much success with it and IBM had and still have OS400 and AIX machines with PowerPC. I think they're up to version 10 of the chip.

    • @tarstarkusz
      @tarstarkusz Рік тому +1

      The downfall of OS/2 is OS/2. It was terrible. I supported it professionally in corporate environments where it could be fairly good. Where it really shined is interoperability with IBM mainframe ecosystems. Every place I supported OS/2 had an IBM mainframe and 2 of them had token ring networks. But all of them had the IBM mainframe imagining system. It worked very well with it, while the windows system was clunky. You could call up a document from the mainframe terminal and it would open the scanned document on a 2nd monitor attached to the PS/2 machine.
      As a general desktop, it was terrible. It was confusing. It was SLOW as all hell. It booted slowly, it opened applications slowly, it scrolled slowly. The "object oriented" stuff was just dumb and confusing for most users. Nobody wanted to copy an icon and then edit its properties.
      You also had to want OS2. Almost no vendors outside of IBM sold PCs defaulting to OS/2. They all came with DOS/Windows for "free" by embedding the cost into the cost of the PC.
      OS/2 domain networking was pretty good. I'll give you that. Especially if you had to integrate a mainframe system.

    • @tarstarkusz
      @tarstarkusz Рік тому +2

      @@tolkienfan1972 Yeah, but they weren't compatible machines. One place I worked had 2 of the IBM PPC machines sitting in open cubicles that I never once saw turned on. I was in the IT dept and I had no idea why they were there or even what software they ran.
      In my experience, the PPC chips were no faster than Intel's offerings at the time.

  • @rgi9509
    @rgi9509 Рік тому +35

    All your content is great. I need more of the Windows saga.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +36

      Rise of Windows part 2 is the next video on my list, I should hopefully be recording the audio in the next couple weeks.

    • @bigbarneyj
      @bigbarneyj Рік тому +3

      Fantastic news

    • @madams4606
      @madams4606 Рік тому +2

      @@AnotherBoringTopic yay

    • @TheBeigeBox
      @TheBeigeBox Рік тому +1

      @@AnotherBoringTopic 😍😍😍😍

  • @buckykattnj
    @buckykattnj Рік тому +102

    I spent a decade in the OS/2 ecosystem... 1994-2004. I was a DOS guy who only put up with Windows because you could, back then, always escape back to a DOS prompt. I got hired at a place already running OS/2 because their data needs were beyond what Windows could handle. We slowly put together several apps that integrated a POS system and telephony system with DB/2 that allowed customers to access with accounts over the phone, all networked together with a couple dozen franchises. More networking led us to pivot to also become an Internet Service Provider... originally all using OS/2 systems with more and more Slackware servers added over the years. I left in 2004, but still had an OS2 Warp 4 workstation at home until it got packed up into storage around 2010. I really miss those Warp systems... and I can't believe it's been over a decade since I used one.

  • @n4mwd
    @n4mwd Рік тому +69

    I worked on os2 warp in 1994. I was in testing. Management required that programmers fix bugs after hours and on weekends without pay. As a result, I was cornered and told about the really bad things that would happen to me if I continued to report bugs - which was why I was there. I was not the only one. So if you ever wondered why os2 had so many bugs, now you know.

    • @0tt0z
      @0tt0z 11 місяців тому +2

      Wow!

    • @c128stuff
      @c128stuff 11 місяців тому +5

      I was involved in testing of earlier versions, spent some time at the Austin lab for testing the national language versions of OS/2 1.2 extended edition. We quickly resorted to a planning which ensured we wouldn't submit any bugs after friday noon, to give the developers some time to deal with them while avoiding too much overflow into the weekend. Back then the standard was 'next day fix' for anything deemed critical, as we still had to work with overnight builds.
      Later we did most of this testing from Europe, which ensured no new bug reports after friday noon due to being in a different time zone 6+ hours ahead of the developers in the USA.

    • @n4mwd
      @n4mwd 11 місяців тому +1

      ​@@c128stuffactually I heard a lot of people say that os2 1.x was actually a fairly decent operating system. It wasn't until 2.0 came out that they had some really serious problems. One of the really bad ones I remember is that the installation program would reformat your hard drive and erase everything on it without giving you any notice or warning. Another bug was called The lazy write bug which caused data that was intended to be written to the hard drive to be cached indefinitely instead. So nothing got written to the hard drive until you closed down the OS. But if the OS crashed, you lost every single thing you did after the OS was booted up. It crashed a lot.

    • @c128stuff
      @c128stuff 11 місяців тому +2

      @@n4mwd inittially 2.0 had quite a few bugs, 2.1 was quite an improvement in that. But then, 2.0 was quite a big change with lots of unproven code.
      1.0, and to some extent 1.1 did also suffer from that. 1.2 was quite solid, 1.3 even more so.

    • @WallaceBMcClure
      @WallaceBMcClure 10 місяців тому +3

      Reminds me of people that wanted fewer Covid positive test results by doing less testing.

  • @AndreaFistetto
    @AndreaFistetto Рік тому +28

    in italy the os/2 system have been for decades the center for the functioning of the national railway system (25.000 km!)both for the technical and administrative part, os2 systems were found on the engines of the trains to manage the stations and the entire road traffic system up to the interface of ticket vending machines

    • @ViniciusProvenzano
      @ViniciusProvenzano Рік тому +5

      In Brazil it controlled the ATM network (like Bancomat) for the biggest Brazilian bank. It was present in all POS, I believe up to at least 2003/4

    • @ashcrimson1314
      @ashcrimson1314 Рік тому +5

      Same here in NYC, the entire MetroCard system has been run on OS/2 since it was introduced in 1995. And will probably be around for a few more years because people don’t like changes to how they pay 😂

    • @LMB222
      @LMB222 11 місяців тому

      IBM should have advertised it with "even Italians didn't manage to break it" 😂

    • @LMB222
      @LMB222 11 місяців тому

      ​@@ViniciusProvenzanonot only Brazil, it was all over the world.

  • @AdamMcNutt
    @AdamMcNutt Рік тому +9

    I used VoiceType for everything in Warp 4. I moved windows around, I dictated my college papers, heck, I even made it dial up for me to get online. I spent so loing making sure my voice model was great and did all the training for it. Worked really well, esp for the time. I think I even moved my voice model over to an Aptiva when we upgraded the family machine. I was one of those who moved to BeOS shortly afterwards, however I still have a LOT of OS/2 gear here. Great video!

  • @chrisprescott2389
    @chrisprescott2389 2 місяці тому

    Born in 71' been in IT since my first 386 and these documentaries are amazing and fill in so much backstory of my life in IT. Great work. Always looking for the next one.

  • @WallaceBMcClure
    @WallaceBMcClure Рік тому +228

    I worked at Coca-Cola in atl during all of this. I started on the os2 train and ibm pushed me into the windows train with their lack of easy to use development tools. Msft was giving away Vb and ibm was still telling me that I need to go pay tons of money for c/c++ was the route to go. I moved on and finally gave up by the late 90s.

    • @oidpolar6302
      @oidpolar6302 Рік тому +7

      VisualREXX was the OS/2 development language instead of VB

    • @iflifewaseasy
      @iflifewaseasy Рік тому +8

      I remember saving up for os/2 warp and then I guess it didn't keep working for me. And then in college, I could get NT 3.51 for either free or $99 (I forget). I also ended up installing Linux in dual boot with NT...

    • @WallaceBMcClure
      @WallaceBMcClure Рік тому +10

      @@oidpolar6302 I don’t remember our ibm team ever mentioning rexx, but it’s been 30 years. I’d been looking at os2 for years at that point. According to Wikipedia, rexx didn’t show up until 1993.

    • @jeffyp2483
      @jeffyp2483 Рік тому +4

      @@WallaceBMcClure rexx is a scripting/programming language. i dont think it is directly comparible with vb.

    • @dangingerich2559
      @dangingerich2559 Рік тому +2

      This was one of IBM's greatest weaknesses, and AMD's. Intel does the same, and Nvidia, with many free tools, and sometimes even free consultants, to optimize software for the hardware, that excludes AMD. IBM and AMD both just don't see the path of adoption lies with encouraging external software development and getting users used to certain platforms. Linux developers are even more oblivious to this.

  • @TechDeals
    @TechDeals Рік тому +5

    Wow, very nice video... I'm old enough to remember all this first-hand. For whatever it's worth, absolutely easy to sub to your channel for this, thank you for doing it!

  • @rondadams
    @rondadams Рік тому +86

    I was a developer at a software company in Atlanta who built a Warehouse Management System on the platform written in C and Visual Rexx.
    We could run a full system in just 8gb of memory that included a backend database, 2-3 dozen RFID terminals, a mainframe/midrange host connector, and a UI. The multitasking capabilities the OS offered ran circles around what a comparable Windows system would run at the time.
    We were forced by our customers to convert the software to Windows and the hardware requirements nearly tripled.

    • @yurimodin7333
      @yurimodin7333 Рік тому +1

      @@chonchjohnch google "How a web design goes straight to hell", its a comic from the Oatmeal that basically sums all of that up.

    • @Traumatree
      @Traumatree 5 місяців тому +2

      You mean 8MB of memory rather than 8GB...

  • @redsyrup1138
    @redsyrup1138 Рік тому +2

    Liked and subscribed. Incredibly well done video. UA-cam and the rest of us are lucky to have you here.

  • @BryanChance
    @BryanChance Рік тому +31

    I remember that OS/2 being very stable. I've seen OS/2 running ATM machines and industrial applications.
    It's amazing how efficient operating systems and applications were designed back in those days. OS/2 2.1 runs on 8MB of RAM? OMG!
    IBM screwed up big time with OS/2.

    • @User0000000000000004
      @User0000000000000004 Рік тому +5

      They could have owned mobile with motorola a decade before Palm and RIM. So sad. Imagine OS/2 on ARM in like 1993.

    • @egbront1506
      @egbront1506 Рік тому

      I had Warp 3.0 on an Escom box that had 4MB of RAM. Win 3.1 flew on it but Warp was unusable. You needed a minimum of 8MB just to open windows on the desktop but the sweet spot was a then hefty 20MB. 4MB set me back £85 at a computer fair so equipping my box with that amount of RAM would have cost as much as a new computer. I'm not that surprised OS/2 never took off. It was ahead of its time in resource requirements.

    • @jonleibow3604
      @jonleibow3604 Рік тому +2

      Automated Teller Machine machines

    • @del69blue
      @del69blue Рік тому

      Yes at the same time people struggled to run OS2 warp on 4MB memory, Microsoft were promising the future Windows 95 that ranon 4MB ... it too wasn't that useable on 4MB.

    • @egbront1506
      @egbront1506 Рік тому +1

      @DeeDee.Ranged OS/2 was 16 bit with a 32 bit facelift. You could run 32 bit executables but device drivers remained resolutely 16 bit as well as goodly chunks of the OS code. Not sure why the Netscape comment as I didn't mention the internet, which was dialup for me in any case back then, so Netscape vs Explorer was moot as both had little bandwidth to play with.

  • @JaredBallou
    @JaredBallou Рік тому +12

    I have been tearing through your videos since seeing the RYAD, and I just gotta say that they're great. Good production, clear narratives, your effort and attention to detail and love of the material come through clearly.

  • @DocNo27
    @DocNo27 Рік тому +7

    I recently moved and have been unpacking boxes. How funny tonight I came across Volume 0, Number 0 from November 1992 of OS2 Professional magazine - and lo and behold the publisher was Edwin Black. I though his name was familiar when you brought him up in your video!

  • @bitcortex1991
    @bitcortex1991 Рік тому +29

    Fantastic video. I was a (lonely) OS/2 1.x fan. It was the first "real OS" I could afford to run at home, back when I had a 286 PC. I even liked its unusual 16-bit architecture, though it turned out to be a dead end. By the time I could afford a 32-bit PC, commercial PC Unix was available, and Linux soon after. And since Unix/Linux was what I really wanted, 32-bit OS/2 was never very interesting to me.

    • @EarlHayward
      @EarlHayward Рік тому

      I briefly used OS/2 while working in IT at American Express in the early 90s.. But, like you, I preferred a POSIX system so was running Linux by something like ‘95… I remember spending hours to get X Windows running and think I burned up one video card in the process…

  • @tracyterpstra
    @tracyterpstra Рік тому +9

    That was one of the most thoroughly researched, well-presented videos I’ve watched on the history of any OS! Bravo!

  • @Intensity254
    @Intensity254 Рік тому +10

    Wish you had a wider audience, my man. I've been waiting for a video of this caliber on OS/2 for a good while. Great content.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +3

      Thank you very much for the kind words, and I’m very glad you enjoyed the video!

    • @jovetj
      @jovetj Рік тому +1

      Time will bring it.

    • @KameraShy
      @KameraShy Рік тому +1

      Videos like this will cause his audience to grow.

  • @KeefJudge
    @KeefJudge Рік тому +14

    Great video. I was a user of RiscOS back at this time (perhaps less niche in the UK than the US), though the whole OS/2 vs Windows thing was always fascinating. Love the amount of research you put into this. Keep it up!

    • @Benjamin.Jamin.
      @Benjamin.Jamin. Рік тому

      Oh wow. Yes RISCOS! Warp came on my first PC. Preferred RiscOs 😂

    • @headwerkn
      @headwerkn Рік тому

      #archimedesforthewin

  • @wayneholmes6914
    @wayneholmes6914 Рік тому +2

    Started as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes, and my first PC development was helping write an OS/2 app we used internally to ease the operator workload.
    Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

  • @Minty1337
    @Minty1337 Рік тому +18

    alright, sleep can be saved for another time, now to watch a 1 and a half hour documentary on a failed OS

  • @reggiebenes2916
    @reggiebenes2916 Рік тому +2

    Great video. I'm glad you put up a screen message stating that you made a microphone change, that was so abrupt that I thought I was possibly having a stroke.`

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +2

      I tried to make the transition as seamless as possible but unfortunately just could not make it work out.
      I actually considered re-recording what I did using the old mic (it actually was a fairly new mic itself, only a couple months old) but I had already put several weeks of work into editing that I didn’t want to throw away. Lessons learned, and the next video should sound much better from start to finish.
      Thanks for watching and for your patience with my mic struggles :)

  • @DanielleWhite
    @DanielleWhite Рік тому +4

    Great video! My only experience with OS/2 when I spent 6 months in 1996 at a small and long ago acquired salesforce automation company in eastern Pennsylvania. I was on the helpdesk for their contract with a big pharmaceutical firm. Though the salesforce automation system was an inhouse DB and UI they used XcelleNet RemoteWare on Win 3.1 as the GUI (and for email and expense reports) and the servers were OS/2 as were some workstations we used to diagnose user issues. As i recall they had four servers and somewhere between 50 and 100 modems.
    It was also the only job where I used Macs all the time. The call logging software was homebrew, written in 4D. Tht clients were various Quadra models that by then were a few years old and all connected via PhoneNet strung throughout the cube farm and into the drop ceiling. One occasion oops I made when logging calls with those Macs was finding the home row by feeling for the bumps. Because I otherwise used PC keyboards I automatically felt got them on the F and J keys but those Mac keyboards had them one key further from center. I suspect you can imagine the gibberish that occasionally resulted.
    After that job I was hired as a junior sysadmin by a university that was mostly on OpenVMS (and continued into the 2000s; got to play with a GS1280,) with a few flavors of Unix. I later moved up Linux which I do run on my personal desktop but I am far from suggesting that to others for the reasons you understand too well.

  • @claudiatje85
    @claudiatje85 Рік тому +1

    Not sure how I stumbled on this video, but this channel is criminally undersubscribed. These videos are clearly well researched and it's nice to finally find a channel that doesn't fixate on schedule but on doing it right instead.

  • @PearComputingDevices
    @PearComputingDevices Рік тому +23

    Years ago I was a system engineer for BeOS, I urged the CEO (Jean) to keep with the hardware side of things, even though the other engineers seen it as a dead end. I often would quip if Apple can do it, so can we but unlike Apple we wouldn't have to be strictly vertical integration, we could still do retail since work was already mostly completed for a x86 build, it wouldn't be wasted resources. Finally Jean gave me permission to pursue that ends, I came up with a few systems namely by Gateway since Gayeway, Inc as a company loved the idea of moving away from Windows but didn't want to risk their relationship with Microsoft. This was 1998 remind you, and so work was done to successfully boot BeOS on a Destination workstation.. the target system. Ultimately the business side of things fell apart and we couldn't come to an agreement but I think such systems might have saved the company.. especially since the retail market required so much support. It wasn't like today when so much stuff is kind of universally plug and play. The hours upon hours of writting drivers from sketchy documentation, to hours upon hours debugging buggy hardware. It's a whole different world in that respects today. It's still not a joy ride, but it's a lot easier.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +9

      Wow, you were an actual BeOS engineer?! That's awesome and thanks so much for sharing some of your memories! BeOS is one of those systems that frequently gets overlooked, but deserves a lot more attention and recognition. I am definitely covering it at some point...just not sure when yet.
      So I have to ask...do you run Haiku at all? And do you still have a BeBox (I assume you had one when you worked for BeOS)?

    • @PearComputingDevices
      @PearComputingDevices Рік тому +4

      @Another Boring Topic Yeah I was really, really young too. Fresh out of high school with a knack for assembly. My primary job was getting hardware to work with the OS. It was a lot of work but I loved hardware and the OS enough to tough it out until bankruptcy.

    • @PearComputingDevices
      @PearComputingDevices Рік тому +3

      @Another Boring Topic Hey, I love your videos by the way, anything but boring. I am nerdy like that, I find your knowledge impressive and enjoying. Thank you for doing it.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +4

      Thank you very much for the compliment, I really appreciate it!

    • @hfrox1
      @hfrox1 Рік тому +3

      As a younger person (early 20s) interested in the history retro pcs. I have loved messing around with beos in a vm (and hope one day to get a bebox). Thank you for your work on BeOS even through it never made mainstream people still love it today (Haiku being a great example of this)

  • @danielclawson2099
    @danielclawson2099 Рік тому +13

    I remember installing the OS - from floppy - as a young computer technician in the early 90's. It felt soo cool to be running a full 32 bit operating system, and it was so stable.
    Then I realized there were no applications that I wanted on it.
    I uninstalled it, went back to DOS/Windows 3.0, and never looked back.

    • @paulbriozzo4895
      @paulbriozzo4895 Рік тому +2

      Yep, same here. People choose software then OS. Sad but true.

    • @jonfreeman9682
      @jonfreeman9682 Рік тому

      Haha ha you nailed it. LoL. Great OS but no native applications. Kinda like BlackBerry when they came out with their new awesome QNX OS. It was ahead of its time but DOA with no apps.

    • @danielclawson2099
      @danielclawson2099 Рік тому +2

      @@jonfreeman9682 Balmer was right: applications drive adoption.

    • @phinix250
      @phinix250 Рік тому

      ​@@danielclawson2099 Funny how this is what killed Windows Phone.

  • @tedhead70
    @tedhead70 Рік тому +3

    Even though I have not watched it yet I can say for sure this day just got better with a new video by Another Boring Topic. Please keep the faith in your work and do not stop bringing videos whether it's new topics as well as finishing any incomplete series.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +2

      Appreciate the kind words! Not to worry, all series will eventually be wrapped up and I have dozens more computing history topics that I want to cover

  • @JonnyBlueChair
    @JonnyBlueChair 10 місяців тому

    Love this series so far. Thank you so much. Please don't make us wait another year for part 3!

  • @random007nadir
    @random007nadir Рік тому +15

    Sounds remarkably like the 90s Amiga scene. All these advanced features no one else had, squandered by an incompetent parent company that ensured their own products were out-competed and eventually obsolete.

    • @keithbrown7685
      @keithbrown7685 4 місяці тому +1

      If I had to choose a gun to stick to, back then, I'd have stuck with Amiga.

  • @MYNAME_ABC
    @MYNAME_ABC 5 місяців тому +2

    Definitely NOT a boring topic!

  • @BobSakamoto
    @BobSakamoto Рік тому +88

    I was one of those zealots for OS/2, and was a member of the Canopus forum. Due to the members there, it was one of the most intellectually stimulating groups I've ever experienced. Yes, I ran into the broken Warp install but made it through. OS/2 was so good at speed, capability, and stability. Even as enthused as I was, watching IBM make mistake after mistake made me realize that it was not a long term solution. Without trying to appear dramatic, it was a sad sad day when I had to install my first version of Windows and feel like I'd gone 5 years back into the past.

    • @allenmorseiii295
      @allenmorseiii295 Рік тому +3

      Correct! You were moving back 5-years. Windows didn't get it right until Windows 7 and it clearly smoked Apple OS 10X variants! We would have been at Windows 10 level before the turn of the century with OS2. Currently I'm extremely impressed with Windows 11, but we would have had that by the year 2000 had OS2 been the standard. Currently run Android 12 & 13 on my current devices and amazed at how narrow and proprietary Apple's OS is. I can do so much but I still think even now that OS2 would be even more flexible!

    • @danielclawson2099
      @danielclawson2099 Рік тому +2

      Or like Lego Technics to ratty Lincoln Logs.

    • @hajjdawood
      @hajjdawood Рік тому

      @@allenmorseiii295 macOS X+ has been better then windows in nearly every regard. It uses UNIX as its core and can run reliably for months at a time without a reboot

    • @jmdavison62
      @jmdavison62 Рік тому

      @@allenmorseiii295 Windows 7 didn't exactly "smoke" Mac OS X variants. When Steve Jobs showed off a beta release of Mac OS X and joked, "This _is_ Longhorn," that pretty much said it all.
      But, since you mention it, imagine if you'd installed NeXTSTEP instead of Windows. Sure, NeXTSTEP died due to lack of uptake, but it was miles ahead of any desktop OS when it was around--so much so that Mac OS X was still ahead of the pack when it came out, despite being warmed-over NeXTSTEP.
      That's not to say that Dave Cutler isn't a brilliant engineer. VMS was an extremely well designed operating system, and much of it carried over to the design of Windows NT.

  • @philbiker3
    @philbiker3 Рік тому +1

    @23:00 I was a home user of OS/2. Workplace Shell was an absolute pleasure to use. It was extremely forward looking as described in this video. I still miss it in so many ways.

  • @mercster
    @mercster Рік тому +4

    Ahhh the long awaited OS/2 video! Thanks buddy!

    • @mercster
      @mercster Рік тому

      While I appreciate the passion of Mr. Black, and sympathize with wanting the company behind software you want to do well... I can also understand IBM's ire. Maybe sabotaging his publication was a little much, but... I am reminded of today's many loudmouths criticizing software developers today. Mostly in the video game space, but also operating systems.
      Constructive criticism is one thing... being a backseat driver who gets angry when their "genius" ideas aren't taken up is another. I can't imagine many companies who would appreciate a supposed "supporter" demanding massive, sweeping internal structural changes and being a fanboy to the point of hostility and derision. OS/2 was failing for many reasons... many institutional, but also some technical. It's very easy from the outside to tell an organization what is going wrong... it is another thing to take the correct actions to right the ship.
      Again, I assume no actual malice on his part. Never attribute to malice, which can be better be explained by... well, you know the saying. Maybe he should have applied to work at IBM and help fix their problems. Could he have gotten through the first interview? Who knows. What I do know is, large organizations are slow to move, and that is true for anyone. It's just a law of the universe. I doubt they were unaware of the deficiencies, and having someone who supposedly wanted them to succeed, lambasting them with insults and quips from the outside was never going to be welcomed and embraced. That is not a wise, or mature, course of action. Bullying rarely works, even if you believe yourself to be "right" or even "ideologically pure."

    • @mercster
      @mercster Рік тому

      LOL so yeah this guy goes on to list other rabble rousing he's done... he's a rabble rouser journalist, not a technician. He was passionate about the technology, but also very interested in becoming "the voice for truth" or something. Whatever, that's fine. His beef on the Warp editorial seems to be sour grapes about... not having enough press access? 😏 I know BS when I smell it, mate...

    • @mercster
      @mercster Рік тому

      "Don't get angry, get even - stick with OS/2." 😂 Again, spoken like a true, hyper-emotionally invested person. This is like the adult version of arguing about sports teams, or whether Genesis or Super Nintendo is better. So silly.

    • @mercster
      @mercster Рік тому +1

      "No TCP/IP and no local networking, though it seemed to have a way of accessing Compuserve via modem." Kinda obvious... all connecting to Compuserve required was a working serial port driver and a terminal emulator. No TCP/IP or network stack involved.

    • @mercster
      @mercster Рік тому +1

      I was running Linux around 1993 ;-) As a teenager, I taught it to myself, but yeah... I mean, you had to know what you were doing (or know how to find and understand copious amounts of text-based documentation), if you wanted to do word processing... hello TeX!

  • @CrudeSausage
    @CrudeSausage Рік тому +1

    This is by far the greatest documentary on the topic I've ever watched. Fantastic job.

  • @terminalterminus
    @terminalterminus Рік тому +13

    At work we ran a lot of DOS MS Mail MTAs, all of which required dedicated hardware. I hit on the idea of using Compaq Prosignia 300s to run 4x MTA per box under OS/2 Warp. These worked fine for a while but then started crashing and Microsoft's recommendation was to use Windows NT instead as it would be more reliable and wouldn't have the same issue. It was at this point I discovered 1) the same crash occurred and 2) the OS/2 MTA software was the same executable as the NT binary...

  • @Roman-nu1om
    @Roman-nu1om Рік тому +2

    I love your videos, it's a complete mystery to me why you don't get more views, quality content like that is incredibly rare on youtube. I watched the IBM 3 part series twice, it's just soo good.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +1

      Appreciate the compliment! It’s always great to hear that people are enjoying these oddball deep excursions into obscure tech history :)

  • @briguy4238
    @briguy4238 Рік тому +55

    I was an OS/2 early adopter - and fan - starting at version 2.0 in 1992. At the time it ran DOS applications much better than Windows did. I believe IBM was simply unable to overcome their own corporate group-think when the time came to appeal to the public at large rather than huge mega-corporations that bought mainframes. Some have famously said it would take IBM six months to ship an empty box. Inertia is a beast to overcome.

    • @KameraShy
      @KameraShy Рік тому +2

      I worked for a large corporation in the 80's and the mandate was that everything computer related had to be IBM - even if a vastly superior product at a fraction of the price was available from a different vendor. Key IT management were hired in from IBM as well. I witnessed first hand the junk - total garbage, exorbitantly priced - that IBM pushed off on them. DisplayWrite, Displaywriters, PC's with Microchannel, $10k laser printer (forget the model) competing with HP LaserJet II, 5520 Office System, and more I can't remember offhand.

    • @JaredConnell
      @JaredConnell Рік тому +5

      Former IBM programmer Rich Seidner actually said that they found it would take them *9* months to ship an empty box.

    • @andywolan
      @andywolan Рік тому

      @@KameraShy The irony is that IBM also allowed low-cost clones to ensure the success of the platform, so much so as to ensure someone other than Intel could make PC compatible CPUs!

    • @jonfreeman9682
      @jonfreeman9682 Рік тому +2

      IBM didn't do a good job marketing the OS and alot of customers were afraid of compatibility issues as everyone still used Windows applications.

    • @citizen240
      @citizen240 Рік тому +1

      I’ve heard 9 months to ship an empty box. Eight months and three weeks for the lawyers to sign off on the contract guaranteeing that the box actually is empty.

  • @JeffreyBue_imtxsmoke
    @JeffreyBue_imtxsmoke Рік тому +1

    I was one of those early adopters of OS/2 and couldn't have foreseen how things would eventually turn out. I never know the entire story until watching your video. Excellent work sir.

  • @danny8bit
    @danny8bit Рік тому +15

    Excellent presentation, and re-iterating what Edwin Black said at the end, in 1993 IBM's OS/2 2.1 we had a stable 32-bit preemptive multitasking / multithreading OS (I believe the multitasking was on another level compared to Windows NT, making it ideal for realtime apps), which Microsoft only truly matched for consumers on October 25th, 2001, with the launch of Windows XP, where I must say that it is _pathetic_ that Microsoft, in all the years since, couldn't have found a way to allow for natural language file names, as available with OS/2's HPFS, where we have to remove everyday characters, such as colon ':' and question mark '?', purely because these are a legacy from MS-DOS, which for most users is _bananas_ , who don't even know what a command prompt is!
    For those that haven't seen it, I highly recommend David Barnes's presentation from the 1993 HAL-PC OS/2 [2.1] NT Shootout, which I reckon is quite possibly the most enthusiastic tech demo *EVER* ! ua-cam.com/video/-DAojx2Hgec/v-deo.html (I skipped to this point in the video).

    • @watchm4ker
      @watchm4ker 11 місяців тому +1

      Those characters cause problems in other OSs as well, and the use of escape sequences introduces its own problems. *Nix systems just have to put up with it, and the security flaws that are risked by not properly catching them, for that benefit.

  • @_Digitalguy
    @_Digitalguy Рік тому +2

    15 minutes into watching, will probably watch it over several days but great video as usual! And glad to see many are watching too!

  • @harryseldon362
    @harryseldon362 Рік тому +66

    As a programmer I used OS/2 in several applications and loved it. Too bad it lost against Windows, it was truly better in every way.

    • @BenState
      @BenState Рік тому +3

      did you not watch the video? btw you can still use it.

    • @MommyKhaos
      @MommyKhaos Рік тому +10

      @@BenState yeah but it's just better to run Linux nowadays

    • @tarstarkusz
      @tarstarkusz Рік тому +4

      Apparently you never sat down with a normal computer use and then tried to convince them OS/2 was better. The first thing you would have had to do was convince to buy a new CD ROM. Whereas every CD ROM sold for PCs had drivers disks that came with them or were detected automatically in Windows 95, OS/2 supported a limited number of CD ROM drives.
      Then you would have had to convince them to buy a new PC because their existing PC didn't have enough RAM or HD space and was too slow anyway. After spending a couple grand on a new PC and another 100 bucks or more on OS/2, the new PC would be slower than the old PC. OS/2 was ungodly slow on the same hardware.
      OS/2 had its strengths, particularly in a corporate environment with IBM mainframes. But outside of a corporate environment married to IBM MF technology, there was never even a single compelling reason to use OS/2.

    • @sdrc92126
      @sdrc92126 Рік тому

      The message que was a disaster and retarded decision

    • @andywolan
      @andywolan Рік тому

      Was OS/2 easy to program on? If so, what IDE did you use? I heard it was easier, and that it's multi-threading capabilities was easy to understand.

  • @anthonyferguson7158
    @anthonyferguson7158 Рік тому +2

    Thank you!! I had been waiting for this one!

  • @flywheeldk
    @flywheeldk Рік тому +3

    Awesome video - I still weep.
    I remember cloning the floppy disks for version 2.0 back in high school on the schools 286 PCs. My 386-25NC with 4 megabytes of memory where really not up for the task. Its successor a Cyrix 6x86 with 32 megabytes of memory ran it like dream.
    I remember that my university put up a pallet with boxes of OS/2 2.1 for Windows, for anyone to grab. I guess it was stock remainders, as Warp 3.0 came out soon after. Never used that one much, but version 4 quickly became my workhorse. It was about that time I joined the Danish OS/2 Usergroup and actually got access to most of the available IBM programs for OS/2, including the server 4.5 (Aurora) with the new 32-bit kernel (Until now the kernel had included some segments of 16-bit code) supporting 64 processors.
    From there I jumped ship to eComstation (Ran fine on both desktop and laptop), which can be described as an OS/2 4.52 bundled with a new installer (very similar to the SUSE installer), new drivers like Daniela Engerts wonderfull IDE DASD driver package, the SNAP Graphics drivers (Based om the IBM GRADD video driver framework) and misc desktop enhancements like xworkplace (Renamed to eCenter) and various programs like a smartported OpenOffice.
    My guess is that ArcaOS is quite the same.
    Christmas holiday 2007 I jumped ship to openSUSE, which I now use for everything today. I must still have the eComstation CDs and ISOs hidden somewhere and the CDs I got hold of in my OS/2 Usergroup days.
    I remember IBM very shortly tried to sell OS/2 as the ultimate Java-platform - IMO yet another mistake.
    That Lotus refused to support OS/2 with Smartsuite did not help much, When they finally launched an OS/2 version of Smartsuite it was smartported and it took a while before it became stable. Especially Word Pro crashed a lot with larger files (Filesizes which Ami pro had no problem handling).
    I remember a quote from one of the Lotus directors which supposedly said that not any of Lotus's market researchs showed a need for an OS/2 version of Smartsuite, so he wished people would stop asking for it.
    Another quote is supposedly from William Henry Gates III, who seemingly once said that the only sleepless night he had was the night before the launch of IBM OS/2 Warp 3.0.

  • @tomhekker
    @tomhekker Рік тому +1

    Great videos, so happy UA-cam recommended them to me a while ago!

    • @brodriguez11000
      @brodriguez11000 Рік тому +1

      Next up, microchannel. Another attempt to take control.

  • @dougbrown4399
    @dougbrown4399 Рік тому +38

    The reason that Windows NT could not be "upgraded" to OS/2 is because OS/2 did not support NTFS (Windows NT file system). Only a clean installation would work, because you would get the option to format the drive or partition to HPFS (the OS/2 file system), which of course means you lose any data stored on the partition.

    • @OpenGL4ever
      @OpenGL4ever Рік тому +1

      No, the reason why you can't upgrade Windows NT to OS/2 is, because Windows NT doesn't run inside a VM86 machine. But Windows 3.1 and its Win16 application do so.

  • @judgewest2000
    @judgewest2000 10 місяців тому +1

    I am completely hooked on your videos!

  • @hyoenmadan
    @hyoenmadan Рік тому +22

    OS/2 for PPC was actually one of the childs from the failed Taligent project venture with Apple. It is based in IBMs version of Mach kernel for their AIX OS. Like Windows NT, it was also built from the ground to support multiple personalities( which one of them was meant to be MacOS (Toolbox API plus SystemOS) and separated and protected application usermode "boxes" just like with MS NTkernel...
    In other words... Basically IBM had for some time their own NT version of OS/2 (if we take in account that MS NT got their kernel not from in-home Microsoft programmers, but from DEC PRISM project, which basically means the upcoming version of VMS which also never was to be). They, also just like NT in their early days of RISC compatibility, had a firmware to tightly match with their OS, in part also thanks to Motorola and Apple efforts, called OpenFirmware (MS NT firmware was called ARC, which interestingly was also used by SGI machines, highly modified and big endian, so it can't run NT). Thanks to Mach/AIX heritage, it also had a more robust filesystem, called JFS, comparable and even superior to NTFS, which didn't catch in stability and feature list up to Win2k3/Vista shipped version of the filesystem.
    It's only downplay? The lack of a "plug and play" ready hardware configuration manager, and still relying on cryptic static text config files for configuration. This also plagued OS/2 all the way to Warp 4 (Both Merlin and Aurora). This makes these OSs pretty brittle to changes in hardware and broad support of cheap hardware.
    In any case, this should have been the real successor of Warp 3. Probably with Warp for PPC IBM again had the keys to rematch Microsoft and Windows NT (Even the upcoming at time Windows 2000). But again, IBM just threw the gold key to the trash. Is a shame Warp for PPC core source code (kernel/drivers/os module libraries etc) got lost in time. Who know and maybe Arca would have done better with them IBM never did.

    • @sdrc92126
      @sdrc92126 Рік тому

      I was so looking forward to Taligent running on Mach

    • @OpenGL4ever
      @OpenGL4ever Рік тому

      Microsoft hired these programmers, so they were inhome Microsoft programmers.

  • @corevamorebolmara1143
    @corevamorebolmara1143 Рік тому +1

    A well researched and presented video.
    I was writing as a freelance journo here in Australia about OS/2 and its associated apps, including OS's like BeOS and RedHat Linux. Later I was intimately involved with eComStation. Your video brought back some great memories, reminded me of how things could have been, and how it all ended. In the end, after all the energy I had put into it, all the great friends and contacts I had made, I called it quits. It was a heart rending moment in my life.
    From there I moved to Linux, initially Mandriva, and am enjoying the journey with open source.
    I class myself as fortunate to have tested and run more operating systems than most. They were exciting times of rapid innovation and ideas.
    It was a unique time in the IT world, and one I was glad to be involved with.
    Keep up the great videos 👍

  • @brianjuergensmeyer8809
    @brianjuergensmeyer8809 Рік тому +14

    I started with OS/2 2.1 (an ungodly number of floppies), and remember getting a free beta of Warp 3. The CD was stenciled with something like "Arrive in Chicago ahead of schedule", with "Chicago" being the development codename for Windows 95. I bought both Warp 3 and Warp 4 first for the stability. And then, with Warp 3, the WPS really came into it's own. The UI did a remarkably good job of getting out of your way and letting you get your work done. I still have a copy of Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2 around here somewhere.
    The funny thing is that I've spent most of my professional life as a programmer. At work, I've had to run the Windows flavor of the day (never 95 or 98, it's always been one of the NT-derived systems for us). It wasn't until XP came along that I thought Microsoft was even in the same neighborhood as OS/2 was 10 years earlier.
    But at home, I moved from Warp to Slackware, then to MacOS during their brief open period, and then back to various flavors of Linux. As far as I can remember, the last version of Windows I ever bought was NT 3.51 (got it for a song as a student, and then got a free upgrade to NT 4 when it became available).
    Oh, and a brief comment about Warp 4's voice entry. If I remember correctly (and this was around 30 years ago, so memory may be a bit foggy), my copy of Warp 4 actually came with a headset/boom mic. in the box. The voice control and dictation software itself was an OS/2 port of Dragon Dictate. It wasn't smart enough to parse continual language: you had to do split.. second.. pauses.. between.. words.. to get it to understand what you were saying. But, once you got used to it (and it got used to you: there was a significant training regimen), it worked remarkably well. Even more so due to what we'd think of today as the incredibly limited hardware available at the time.
    Good times, man.

    • @Yggdrasil42
      @Yggdrasil42 Рік тому +1

      Yes, 22 floppies if I recall correctly. Then the update to 2.11 took another 20 floppies and had to be installed sequentially. 😅

    • @semibiotic
      @semibiotic Рік тому

      There is more. Windows NT was new OS/2 on development. It still have OS/2 API inside ntoskernel32 (called "Native API").

    • @rfvtgbzhn
      @rfvtgbzhn Рік тому

      From what I remember early Windows XP (before around the time SP2, which came out in 2004) was very unstable, on my PC at that time (a Pentium III which dual booted Windows 98SE and XP) it was less stable than Windows 98SE. From what I heared it w

  • @MartinIturbide
    @MartinIturbide Рік тому +1

    Thank you David L. Richard. You were gone on 2019 but I know how much you indirectly contributed to this video. Preserve everything !!!

  • @rogerwa123
    @rogerwa123 Рік тому +11

    This was a blast from the past. I attended a Warp launch party at Comdex in LV in what must have been 1994. It was a huge event with unlimited open bar and a top notch buffet. It had entertainers like Danny Gans and a band (don't remember who). And I got so stinking drunk that I almost got on stage with the band.
    At the time I worked for a company that was under the thumb of IBM and they twisted our bean counters to commit to OS/2 across the board and my job at the time was to develop desktop and laptop hw/sw configurations for all our workstations and to recommend the applications to be used on this machines. it was not an easy time.
    From my viewpoint they lost it on the apps. With MS office on the rise, their stability and ubiquitousness, Ami pro and 123 wysigig really just didn't cut it.
    It was an interesting time and i feel lucky to have been part of such a revolutionary time and to eventually see the internet come to be.

    • @apreviousseagle836
      @apreviousseagle836 Рік тому +1

      "From my viewpoint they lost it on the apps. With MS office on the rise, their stability and ubiquitousness, Ami pro and 123 wysigig "
      This is my take as well. The desire for OS/2 to succeed (and hate for MS) was there. But lack of support was far too much hassle, eventually we all gave up on it.

    • @watchm4ker
      @watchm4ker Рік тому

      IBM forgot that creating a computer system grows, or falls, like a spiral.
      The more software there is for a platform, the more users want to use that platform
      The more users buy software for a platform, the more software gets written for that platform.
      Without that initial investment, without that hook of good home and business software to run on an OS/2 system, IBM didn't give users a reason to sign on, and thus didn't give the software companies a market to develop for.
      And so, the death spiral sets in. Less users? Less software. Less software? Less users.

    • @lawrencedoliveiro9104
      @lawrencedoliveiro9104 Рік тому

      Windows became popular from about 1990 onwards because, on the 386 chip, it could multitask existing DOS applications. This didn’t require developers to change their code in any way. This broke the chicken-and-egg situation, where developers wouldn’t write Windows apps because the customers weren’t buying Windows. Once there was a decent installed base of Windows machines, it did indeed become worthwhile to develop apps specifically for it.
      History repeats, and Microsoft is the new IBM. We saw this with Windows Phone versus Android, and again with Windows-on-ARM, which is an ongoing trainwreck because of the exact same chicken-and-egg problem. And no reason for the customers to build up an installed base to attract the developers.

    • @richlobato8664
      @richlobato8664 Рік тому

      Ha ha, I used to go to those comdex shows in las Vegas. I worked for a Minolta dealership in Florida, the largest independently owned Minolta dealership in the world ( IYKUK).
      They wouldn't commit to barcodeing inventory because it would " cost too much" but they would send 2 of us to Vegas once a year and lay ¼ of the service department off for 3 months every October.
      Most staff had been on a 4 year wage freeze and management took a 2% pay cut but they still sent us to comdex.
      Ohh, the booze did flow freely!

  • @jeffyp2483
    @jeffyp2483 Рік тому +1

    wow 1 hour 39 minutes and change and its the continuation of a story! i dont think ive watched any of your videos yet. the channel name got me. i also have been fascinated with os/2 since late 80s/early 90s (mostly 90s, im not *that* old:)

  • @darelvanderhoof6176
    @darelvanderhoof6176 Рік тому +3

    We used OS2 to run multiple television transmitter monitoring programs on a micro channel with a 386, and Warp to run a recording system for NPR distributed radio shows. OS2 worked great.

  • @johnwsimpson3153
    @johnwsimpson3153 Рік тому +1

    Very interesting video. I used OS/2 in my office PC -- software developer at IBM in the 90s, retired 1998. I still have the Warp 4 install CDs, so I'm thinking of digging them up out their storage box and see if they still work, just for grins.
    I worked briefly with Jim Cannavino when he was a young field engineer in Chicago, about 1970. I was a new hire at RTP and inherited a part of the OS/360 Communications Task from someone who had left the company. It was full of bugs. When Cannavino tested it for installation for the customer, it crashed. He detected that I was a rookie out of my depth, and it was an urgent problem, so he came to RTP and tutored me in debugging. It was valuable education.

  • @robertsteinbach7325
    @robertsteinbach7325 Рік тому +6

    Lotus Notes pushed me into OS/2 and then I became one of the OS/2 "go to" guy with a BBS group because the BBS Sys Admins loved that OS/2 ran multiple DOS sessions. The OS/2 thing died out around the same time as the BBS era.

  • @0tt0z
    @0tt0z 11 місяців тому +1

    Just stumbled upon your channel via this video. Well done! You have a new subscriber.
    BTW, im also enjoying the stories in the comment section.

  • @JustinEdwords
    @JustinEdwords Рік тому +7

    I ran the freeware os/2 workplace shell on top of windows 3.1. It was pretty cool to have right click functionality

  • @MisterSixty
    @MisterSixty Рік тому +1

    Excellent! Thank you for the video.

  • @Pralix2000
    @Pralix2000 Рік тому +7

    A couple of things from my experience. I started using OS/2 2.0 back in my college days. OS/2 2.0 was terrible. I went through many levels of support at IBM going over the issues. Eventually, we had a call with some very high level people at IBM. They asked what I wanted to do, so I quoted their EULA about providing a working copy of software and the remedies. I got them to give me a copy of OS/2 2.1 to replace 2.0. Things got much better after that. IBM had this program where they would distribute CD-ROMs of sample OS/2 apps and tools on a regular basis to universities. I talked the Dean of the Computer Science program into requesting these CD-ROMs. They got them and held one for me. The rest went out to students and teaching staff and were gone very quickly. I bought every version (After 2.1) of OS/2 until IBM pulled it from the market.

  • @Perceptified
    @Perceptified 8 місяців тому +1

    Closing out with an editorial from OS/2 professional was a really nice, poetic touch. I come away from this thinking about the whole story as a tragedy - where many people with good intentions, skills and hard work fail to achieve what rightfully they should have in light of external circumstances, many of which were themselves not maliciously created, but rather the product of not understanding the situation.

  • @majormojo
    @majormojo Рік тому +18

    I used OS/2 for the better part of a decade. The voice dictation in Merlin actually worked pretty well, but you needed probably an extra 8-16 MB of RAM for the system as a whole usable with dictation activated. The voice macros were fun, but the biggest issue was that it could not really “discover” very many actions. So you had to manually record the actions and the voice command. I set up a number of OS/2 systems for physicians who would use it to dictate notes during an exam and to manage patient photos taken with specialized optical devices. Windows was not yet up to the standard of multitasking and reliability required in a medical environment at that time.

    • @jominor
      @jominor Рік тому +2

      You’re dead on. I managed to get 32mb at the time. Made a big difference.

    • @BillyBobDingledorf
      @BillyBobDingledorf Рік тому +1

      Thank you. I was remembering that it did work, but couldn't remember the restriction. Memory.

    • @GrocMax
      @GrocMax Рік тому +1

      it worked much better with a high-end sound card (Turtle Beach) along with that extra SRAM and RAM in the x86 days.

  • @98of99
    @98of99 Рік тому +2

    Very very well done, only thing was missed was a mention of TeamOS/2.

  • @BuildWall
    @BuildWall Рік тому +3

    Another great documentary. Your channel is a gem.

  • @neurosp
    @neurosp Рік тому +1

    I love your videos, they are most informative and researched videos that I’ve seen so far. Other creators just copy and paste another videos.
    Good job.

  • @DanFloodCanada
    @DanFloodCanada Рік тому +6

    I like you're content. I miss OS/2- I was a junior IT nothing at GE during this time. Loved OS/2, but could see that Windows would take over.

  • @maximilianoadl
    @maximilianoadl Рік тому +1

    Thanks for your work. The channel is great. I've enjoyed every episode I've watched so far. Keep it going ;)

  • @ash-cn2oh
    @ash-cn2oh Рік тому +7

    In the late 80ies I was into development of a SCADA system which needed preemptive multitasking and a GUI, so OS/2 was an obvious choice from a technical viewpoint - no Windows NT or Linux back then. PC Unix like SCO would have been too exotic for our customer. It worked well, but in hindsight it was painful to depend on an underdog of an OS. I ended up porting parts of the system to Windows NT - from "Microsoft Developer Network" I had some special documentation and tools for that purpose.

  • @jfiosi
    @jfiosi 11 місяців тому +1

    Home user. If I remember correctly, I installed OS/2 Warp on a 386DX connected to an HP Laserjet 4 with a genuine Postcript SIMM. Shocked when I hit print and the paper started coming out almost that second! Loved OS/2 and cried when it was discontinued. This from a long-time computer user - Trash80, CPM, DOS (3 types), Windows (from v.1 I think), Linux, Solaris, BeOS, Mac, etc. Hated IBM for what it did to slowly kill a great OS. Despised Microsoft for ... everything.

  • @MarkM430
    @MarkM430 Рік тому +3

    In the mid 90's I recommended and deployed PC hardware and several copies of OS/2 Warp 4 to a customer who owned a trucking company. I had preinstalled his OS and programs and was hoping to spend about a few hours onsite tweaking his network connectivity and adding passwords and such. The customer had read or heard about the voice control feature so I I went ahead installed and setup the voice control feature on the front desk PC. This was a became cumbersome and time consuming as I'd not done it before and had to read through the instructions and setup. After about an additional hour of working with the client, setting up the voice command software and recording the voice prompts to open a few programs and "print" the current document, we found out that this only worked for the ONE user voice you set the whole thing up on. The voice recordings didn't work for anyone else. I should have known, but it didn't occur to me until we actually tested it. Disappointing to say the least, after explaining how "cool this could be" to have it fail. Oh, and 3 months later we went back and installed Windows NT because the new version of his $10,000 trucking software didn't work in OS/2. It was my 1st big IT consulting failure... pretty crushing. I don't think I ever recommended an IBM product again.

  • @SuperColdLemonade
    @SuperColdLemonade Рік тому

    Fantastic documentary! Keep it up! Just subbed =) Stumbled upon this via "The Net" documentary and just letting autoplay do its thing. Originally started from a night with the awesome Cathode Ray Tube Guy which talked about "The Net" ...
    I'm cleaning my subs and recommendations from garbage and am very delighted so far to have come across this niche channel with presumably high quality content =) ty
    I tried OS2/Warp on my 486 DX2 66 back in the day. I liked it, however although I was programming I was too involved in the Windows ecosystem and did not have any use for the productivity software and stuff on OS2. I was mostly a gamer, hacking some ASM, Turbo Pascal, C/C++ with Win32API and OGL, later DX into my Borland, Watcom and .... IDE ...
    I came across a box via a friend of my fathers who was a freelance IT specialist, with many computers and many software boxes and connections ... I loved it ... he also gave me a Windows 95 disc with some additional software and it was a holy grail for me back then =)

  • @edfromnc7660
    @edfromnc7660 Рік тому +3

    I was one of the OS/2 loyalist home users in the 90's. As a member of the Triangle OS/2 User Group, I remember asking why OS/2 wasn't going to support Win 95 apps, I was told it was simply that IBM wasn't interested in OS/2 anymore since they were moving away from being a hardware and software company to being a service company. They couldn't make enough money on OS/2 since once you set it up, it just ran forever. Selling a service contract for support of NT was far more lucrative since you had to have techs on site for the constant maintenance. Looking at IBM today the hardware and software divisions are gone and all they do is consulting work now, it was prophetic advice in 1996....

  • @stonetic2515
    @stonetic2515 Рік тому +1

    Fascinating and well-researched video. Most people would find this topic monotonous and arcane, but pc enthusiasts who were around at the time will find it informative and nostalgic.

  • @freddan6fly
    @freddan6fly Рік тому +4

    I was a developer at that time (mid of 1990:th) and gave up on OS/2 after a hardware update that killed the installation and almost made me lose my all my SW files on the same disk. A hard lesson learned, and I started backup my files. I managed to install on another hard disk, and managed to copy all my files over to some kind of FAT file system. At that time Windows NT 3.51 was much more stable, a really good development machine.

  • @cosmotraumatika7474
    @cosmotraumatika7474 Рік тому +1

    Incredible research and presentation. I launched one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Midwest US and remember being so impressed with OS/2 but its terrible TCP/IP handling killed it off as a viable contender for so many.
    Fun fact: in 2013 a major financial processor who embossed snd processed credit cards for over 60% of the world was still running OS/2.
    When you spend $5 million a piece on credit card embossers in the late 90s that are controlled by OS/2 systems, you run them until they die.

  • @johnpenner5182
    @johnpenner5182 Рік тому +1

    this was a great overview of a solid operating system. lots of excellent details. thank-you for producing this.

  • @dreamtripper2
    @dreamtripper2 Рік тому +3

    Congrats on this excellent video! The amount of research needed for achieving such a long and comprehensive work is surely daunting. I couldn't stop watching because the story is so good. Just one question: Did you consider producing several shorter videos instead of a long one?

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому +5

      I’m very glad you enjoyed it, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! 😃
      I did consider breaking it into two videos, however I decided against it because I wanted to tell the entirety of the OS/2 story post JDA collapse, not tell only part of it and have yet another one of my series hanging out there waiting to be finished 😜

    • @dreamtripper2
      @dreamtripper2 Рік тому +2

      @@AnotherBoringTopic Thank YOU for taking the time to make the video! :D

  • @rbpalmer1
    @rbpalmer1 Рік тому +2

    Thank you for the “reminder”!
    OS/2 was the last reliable and efficient desktop system I have used (maybe today’s LINUX systems are comparable).
    I managed a software development environment for mainframe programs running on OS/2 (after the split with Microsoft) on PS/2 machines.
    While Windows 1:11:24 could run for as much as a week before crashing or grinding to a halt, the only times I needed to restart OS/2 was when I needed to plug in a new expansion card - as much as 7 months at a time. Native tasks always ran fast and Windows task crashes never took down the OS.
    When Windows NT came out, I was given a new machine with double the CPU speed and double the RAM - and everything ran slower than half the speed as on OS/2.

  • @ItsEdSilha
    @ItsEdSilha Рік тому +5

    I worked for IBM as a field engineer during the time of OS/2 and I always knew in my heart that Windows NT would end up being the dominant force and OS/2 would be a footnote in history.

  • @dijoxx
    @dijoxx Рік тому

    Thank you for the wonderful video and all your efforts. May I suggest that you keep the lengths much shorter (say 30 mins) and split your future series into multiple parts?
    It would make it easier for us to follow and probably drive up your views and engagements as well.

  • @jominor
    @jominor Рік тому +9

    I used OS/2 2.1 to 4.0. I can tell you, the VoiceType dictation and voice control worked pretty darn well. Even more so when you consider the HW of the era.
    You had to train it to your voice, but you could launch apps, move and resize windows, launch macros that acted as automations. Ultimately, it was gimmicky, but it did work.
    Dictation had accuracy in the low 90% range I believe.
    Java was atrocious on the system. I tried a Java version of a Corel(I believe) word processor. No good. Netscape was okay.
    It was my last version before switching to NT 4.0.

  • @magnum333
    @magnum333 Рік тому +2

    High quality documentary, as always

  • @mikesiemens8672
    @mikesiemens8672 Рік тому +9

    I worked with OS/2 in the mid-to-late 1990's. Not sure which version but I think it was Warp. From a user's perspective, I thought that having to manually install TCP/IP support at a time when Windows 3.11 ,and then Windows 95, had TCP/IP baked in while the Internet was starting to have major mainstream acceptance was a big reason that users bypassed OS/2.

    • @andywolan
      @andywolan Рік тому

      I recall a friend in IT telling me that back in the day. He couldn't believe how easy it was to setup.

    • @BillyBobDingledorf
      @BillyBobDingledorf Рік тому +3

      You have it backwards. OS/2 2.x made you buy TCP/IP separately, but at least you could (not an option for consumer Windows). Warp had the TCP/IP stack built in. Meanwhile Bill Gates was calling the Internet a fad.

  • @edwinconcepcion1135
    @edwinconcepcion1135 Рік тому +1

    Great Video! Excelente presentación! Thank you for that.

  • @denniseldridge2936
    @denniseldridge2936 Рік тому +4

    I was a tech working for an IBM PC/PS/2 dealership in the late 80's-early 90's. I was made aware of IBM's internal tensions between the powerful "big iron" divisions and the lowly small systems people. From what I could tell, it was all about the internecine warfare between the mainframe guys, the minicomputer division (AS/400 et al) and the microcomputer initiatives. Now, my shop was actually a subsidiary of the local IBM AS/400 agency (technically frowned upon by IBM, but this is Bermuda).
    I therefore got to see that the upstart PC division from the get-go was seen as, first, a silly annoyance that drained funds from the more 'serious' divisions, and as it gained traction in offices, as a bit of a threat to the mainframes and minicomputer sales as users were now able to do word processing and increasingly sophisticated spreadsheets without begging for time on the million dollar dinosaurs in the basement. My dad is a great example of that; he worked in a law firm, and wanted a system that simply notified him and his staff when certain business deadlines came due. He approached the IT manager requesting such a system, very simple to implement, but was given a host of stupid excuses why it would tie up so many resources and time and... My dad simply got a wobbly Wang PC (it was a Wang shop) and did it all on Lotus 123, no minicomputer required.
    The PC and later PS/2s were seen as little more than somewhat more intelligent terminals for the bigger iron systems, evidenced by the number of terminal emulation hardware and software suites available.

    • @AcmeNewsLLC
      @AcmeNewsLLC Рік тому

      I used to work with OS/2 on a PC card inside an AS/400. Skills I will *never* use again.

    • @hc3d
      @hc3d Рік тому

      I never heard about Wang PCs until a UA-cam video essay about Wang by Asianometry . Look it up, it is interesting.

  • @jbountalas
    @jbountalas Рік тому +1

    Thanks for this great documentary. I was an OS/2 user and fan, but Windows was the juggernaut, one that IBM just couldn't seem to overcome. This falls under the 'What might have been' category, for sure.

    • @AnotherBoringTopic
      @AnotherBoringTopic  Рік тому

      Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!

  • @jeffherdz
    @jeffherdz Рік тому +11

    When IBM bought Redhat Corp. I thought that this was the worst thing that could of happened to Redhat as a company. It turns out I was wrong. And the blunder of leadership continues at IBM. Redhat has announced that the company will lay off about 4% of it's workforce. While parts of the company have decided to Unionize against IBM. All of this is being done while not one of the IBM upper management has (or will) take a pay cut to save this one time profitable company. I HATE IBM !!!

    • @emuhill
      @emuhill Рік тому +1

      Meh. Redhat has always been working at cross purposes in the Linux community. It still is under IBM. Lennart Poettering and his SystemD is evedence to that. Let IBM slowly kill off this cancer to Linux.

    • @KameraShy
      @KameraShy Рік тому

      The IBM stupidity continues in the next generation with the decision to (essentially) kill CentOS. Long live Rocky and Alma Linux!

    • @mardus_ee
      @mardus_ee Рік тому

      Tech layoffs in United States are not limited to IBM.

  • @CarlosPerezChavez
    @CarlosPerezChavez Рік тому +2

    Amazing research and presentation. Thank you for this video!

  • @jackphillips3512
    @jackphillips3512 Рік тому +3

    Great video. OS/2 was a good operating system but it NEVER was for the masses. 99% of users never needed what OS2 provided - even in corporate environments. In the late 90s, I used it an insurance company on a few machines that ran some internal, custom written software that had issues that were solved by OS/2. Eventually, they just moved it to Windows NT due to the lack of available support for such a small user base within the company. Ironically, this was also the last time I saw use of the Lotus Smart Suite, eventually owned by IBM.

  • @peterlevasseur1496
    @peterlevasseur1496 Рік тому +1

    What a thoughtful and thorough breakdown. I appreciated your balance take.

  • @JimKJ3N
    @JimKJ3N Рік тому +22

    I ran OS/2 from roughly 1994 to 2005. The first Microsoft OS I used at home was XP, having skipped over every Windows version before that. It's a genuine tragedy what IBM did with (and to) OS/2. 😓

    • @FreihEitner
      @FreihEitner Рік тому +3

      Amen to that. The first version of Windows I considered to be even vaguely comparable to OS/2 Warp 4 was Win 2000 -- it had the technical power but lacked OS/2's better object-oriented user interface. I still ran eComStation alongside Win 2000 for a couple of years before dropping both of them for MacOS X which was orders of magnitude more powerful (a true UNIX but one where you never _needed_ to use the command line because of Apple's famed user-centric design) which was using truly visionary graphics capabilities (which would not begin to show in Windows until Win 7).
      I still have fond memories of my years running OS/2 as a home PC user from 1994 to 2003.

    • @memovilmx6239
      @memovilmx6239 Рік тому

      and is now doing to RHEL

  • @pablotorres6997
    @pablotorres6997 Рік тому +1

    Fantastic! Your video allowed me to understand the history of what could have had a major industry and business impact. Imagine it successful and Microsoft not existing today.

  • @teckyify
    @teckyify Рік тому +5

    The book "Showstopper" contains a lot of details about the development of os/2 (by Microsoft). The fact is that the architecture of os/2 was outdated when they started to design Windows NT with Dave Cutler.

    • @klausschmidt982
      @klausschmidt982 Рік тому +5

      The book also describes how initially NT was intended to be the foundation for NT OS/2 or Portable OS/2 giving NT an OS/2 personally. When Microsoft saw the success of Windows 3.0, Gates and Ballmer secretly directed Cutler and his team to shift their focus on Windows while officially saying they were still working on the OS/2 personality to keep IBM happy. Only later in 1990 they confessed the true nature of NT to IBM which was the final straw for them.

  • @DavidTangye
    @DavidTangye Рік тому +1

    I was a big fan of OS/2, and loved its OO desktop and robust true multi-tasking kernel. It was significantly better than Windows. However it's biggest fail was that when NT (3.51?) came out it included TCP bundled, whereas for OS/2 it was a $450 add on. So you could get either NT or OS/2 for about $100, but your OS/2 system was a standalone box, whereas your box running NT could be networked, to your printer, to a file and database server, or whatever. This was a huge issue for us software developers and professional users. So I ran OS/2 from 2.0 to Warp, then reluctantly moved to NT 3.1 and/or Win95. Within 3 years I jumped to Linux, and have never looked back.

  • @marksterling8286
    @marksterling8286 Рік тому +3

    I was working in the it department at the head office for a large steel company, i we had a bunch of lotus notes servers that ram on os/2 servers. I remember updating the ibm model 95 servers with token ring networking cards and using netBui and netbios network protocols. It was ibm top to toe. By 1996 I had moved the servers onto windows nt server with compaq proliant on 100mb/s Ethernet on TCP/IP and os/2 was gone

    • @martinlebl631
      @martinlebl631 Рік тому +2

      Lotus Notes kept OS/2 around for a lot longer than it would have stuck around otherwise. Even when the desktop clients moved to windows, the Lotus Notes server stayed OS/2 for much longer.

    • @marksterling8286
      @marksterling8286 Рік тому +1

      @@martinlebl631 totally agree, when I upgraded the notes servers we kept them on os/2 mainly because our clients were still them using mostly netBui and netbios protocols but also it was ibm hardware (model 95) ibm software (lotus notes owned by ibm) ibm network protocols (token ring netBui & netbios) so the thinking went must be ibm os. Nt3.51 made some headway but once nt4 came out we were off to the races.
      I had a friend that worked at a retail bank os/2 got a longer life because of bank systems especially ATMs