LGR Tech Tales - IBM OS/2's Fight Against Windows
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2015
- This episode covers the inception, development, and strive for market dominance of IBM and Microsoft's OS/2 operating system. Join me in LGR Tech Tales, looking at stories of technological inspiration, failure, and everything in-between!
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"Milinda" by Diode Milliampere
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"In a sense, OS/2 never really died; it just sort of languished in purgatory for years, and now wanders around as a zombie being kept alive by various user groups and the occasional ATM."
Perfect, dude.
Shmuh Shmortion its on life support by users
I M I have used the ATM at the bank across the street from the old HQ... it’s the site of a community college now. They offer paranormal studios. Certified Ghost hunting diploma, anyone?
And 100% correct, Banks are the worst at upgrading. Why get rid of that PS/2 model 50 running DOS 3.3, did it break, there is a whole room of them somewhere...just grab another and put in that floppy, it automatically loads the branch sync (or whatever) process. PS/2's never die, not after working for a decade, and floppies 3.5DSDD never forget. Worst case, get that can of air, and for the love of everything holey, take it outside before you blow it out.
a LOT of government systems run in OS/2. They were developed for OS/2 in the 90s and they do the job "just fine", so there's no reason to replace it.
My main problem with OS/2 was that it used function calls with the same names as in Windows, but with the arguments in a different order. A nightmare when I was developing software for both systems on the same project.
I subscribed to OS/2 Magazine back in the day.
Whoa didn’t expect to see you here or have any interest in OS/2
Great video as usual! Just a quick little story to share: in 1994, IBM was present on a computer fair here in Brazil and there was an OS/2 Warp presentation; at the end, they asked for anyone watching to go on stage and tell "five things that are better than Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS on OS/2 Warp".
Well, I was hoping to get an original OS/2 Warp and promptly answered (you know, multitasking, could run "very well" on 4 MB machines, etc LOL) and received my boxed, full copy right there -- it's here with me to this day and I installed and ran for about 2 months on my 386DX 40 Mhz with 8 MB at that time. I liked, well... I remember formatting a floppy while, well, writing a text on some word processor that came with it, all at the same time (wow!) and, on a serious note, it was smooth multitasking, impressive really.
Thanks again mister LGR, keep up this great work (I'm a long, long time fan just a little shy to comment ^_^)
***** That's awesome, and really cool that you still have it!
"Your product's...uhhh...really nice, I suppose? Now gimme stuff! :D"
Thanks for sharing that comment!
I have an original copy of IBM OS/2 1.0 that came on 3 floppy diskettes. I've created images of them that can be loaded into Virtual PC 2004 or 2007. I also have copies of 1.1, 1.3, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0. Any other newer versions were from installing fixpacks which are still available to download. You can still load those copies into VPC 2004 or 2007. And yes, I still develop software for OS/2.... www.os2developer.com
My 486 came preinstalled with Warp 3, "the world's best-selling 32-bit OS" and, ob boy, did it bring that 4MB DX2/66 to it's knees. I'm pretty sure I have the CD somewhere, but I might have re-used some of the floppies.
I really dig your voice. It's perfect for these kind of narrations. You should consider doing a tech tale of BeOS.
Fun fact: Windows NT and Windows 2000 can run text-mode OS/2 applications, and NTFS is virtually identical to the HPFS that Microsoft developed for OS/2. Support for text-mode OS/2 applications was dropped in Windows XP and Server 2003.
Only 16 bit text-mode OS/2 applications... ones which use the OS/2 GUI (presentation manager) will not work.
VWestlife Another fun fact which was missing from the video. OS/2 mostly had drivers only for IBM hardware, thus had problem running on many systems which was the real reason for it's demise.
a default - since both companies worked on the same code - shared code - it can also run DOS in full screen and switch back using the geek-key-combo
@VWestlife I reckon NTFS5, used in Win 6-up, is evolved from HPFS via earlier versions of NTFS.
@@jcantonio9753 There was a Presentation Manager add-on for Windows, but it wasn't all that impressive.
Oh LGR... Consistent quality through the years. I normally care little for things like this but you make them accessible and entertaining!
Thank you!
Good ol' PS/2, the bain of Sony for years having to explain in manuals over and over that PS/2 doesn't mean PS2 and their controllers aren't compatible. :D
But great feature Sir, have you ever considered doing one on the Amiga's OS as well? Amazed how long that's been going on for.
It's possible, sure!
I swear to god, Larry you're on every video I go to from here to The Easter Egg Hunter.
Console peasant problems...
zyrgle
It's really a hyrbid consumer problem. If you only used consoles you probably continued to not use a computer and thus not know about PS/2 until the mid 2000s when at that point computers just came with USB mice and keyboards instead.
If you only used computers and never used consoles you also didn't experience this confusion.
I don't know why Sony bothered. Who is that tech savvy while also being ignorant to the hardware and software?
Joey JoeJoe Jr Shabadoo
Indeed, I was playing on a P733 when the PS2 came out. Had some pretty nice games on it. Mostly FPSes like Blood and Duke Nukem.
The biggest enemy to OS/2 was IBM itself. They mismanaged the operating system so badly, it's no wonder Microsoft Windows was able to catch up and surpass them.
IBM mismanaged their entire personal computer division badly. Their whole guiding principle was, "Well, we dominate every other class of business computing, so why should we go above and beyond for personal computers?" They didn't really realize that the personal computing space was filled with companies that were more agile and more experienced. Say what you will about Microsoft in the 80s, but they knew how to sell microcomputer software and they knew what customers wanted.
@@Longlius Microsoft has never cared about what customers want... they know how to force their software onto people, it's what they're good at. Throughout the 80s and 90s they made contracts with resellers that sure enough got their software onto people's computers, but they also forced the same resellers to sell Microsoft and only Microsoft products, locking out all other companies. They locked DR and IBM out of having any piece of the market, not because they were superior or better at selling their stuff, but because they were unscrupulous and didn't care about the law. But all they got for it was a slap on the wrist long after they had killed the competition. And when MS feels threatened by another software company they don't try to compete, they just buy the company and bury the IPs
If you have to name one problem with IBM, it is their process of having to approve every little thing they do through various levels of management. They could not adapt because as soon as a new thing was approved, it was already obsolete. A German channel called "SemperVideo" made a great video about the bureaucracy within the company, which was the thing to break it's neck in the end.
IBM made their PS/2 not IBM-PC compatible, huge mistake.
IBM didn't want to loose their mainframe cash cow, so the PC/OS divisions were deliberately cash starved. Same old story of unimaginative management clinging on to the only thing they know.
IBM had too many accountants making technical decisions.
I know this is an old comment, but I have to say, this is how GM operates. Their engineers develop a lot of technologies that go on the shelf. Often times they don't even bother to patent it.
I grew up on OS/2 at home, but my father complained all the time about how he ordered an IBM PC at his workplace and IBM couldn't sell him one with OS/2 as it's OS instead of Windows 95.
The stupidity of one company making PC's and OS'es and customers can't even buy an IBM PC with an IBM OS... just f'ing insanity.
It's like a engineer/IT of a bank involving himself in payrolls and taxes.
Funny to read this comment. My father applied to a job in IBM in the 80's, they rejected him because he had no recommendation letters at all although he smashed the exams. He succeded brilliantly in the biggest telecom company in LatAm, he designed and coordinated many transitions from analog to digital architectures specially in Mexico.
IBM... well... they resale stuff now.
That's how the world works now. Blame Edison, who was the Steve Jobs of 100 years before.
In the early 90s I ran OS/2 as my primary OS for a couple of years (versions 2.0 and 2.1). I have many fond memories as well as battle scars! It was quite a trick to get both the (very expensive as I recall) TCP/IP stack and Novell stack to work together peacefully. Many three-disk reboots required to get the system operating again after an errant change.
The deepest scars are probably from the time when my boss asked to have OS/2 installed on his brand new ThinkPad along with the Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2 (see above regarding the IP/IPX pains and multiply by 100 because of the need to make it work with PCMCIA Ethernet and modem cards).
The boss used this config for less than a week before demanding that I reinstall DOS/Windows because OS/2 was “hard.”
I ran a single line BBS in 1993 on DOS which was way fun but I was a poor college student and lacked the funds for a 2nd PC, so my system was tied up while the BBS ran. Enter OS/2! It allowed me to run everything (but full screen DOS games) while the BBS ran, even Windows. I became a fan instantly and even added a 2nd line to my BBS which was way fun. I took part in some Team OS/2 activities helping local people implement OS/2. It really was a better DOS than DOS and better Windows than Windows!
I used DesqView/386 myself. Windows 3.x wasn't very good in handling serial communications as it used cooperative multitasking. DV and OS/2 both used pre-emptive interrupt driven multitasking, hence were much more reliable when running a BBS. Windows sysops were around, but you had to work hard to tune your system so it handled serial communications reliably.
I recall something Jerry Pournelle reported from COMDEX, that IBM was charging for their OS/2 SDK, while Microsoft was giving away their Win95 SDK for free to everyone. Gee, I wonder if that had something to do with Win95's success?
Wow, I had the same experience (like word for word). My BBS was very unstable under windows but ran awesome under OS/2. I tried Desqview and while I could run it, it too was a bit unstable and I got much more use on my 386sx with OS/2. I upgraded and ran OS/2 for as long as I could afterwards but eventually had to go to Windows (and Linux). I found a VM of it about a year ago and was able to boot it up and play with it again for a bit ... comparing my current expectations of technology coupled with my memory of that 'cutting edge' os against seeing it again in the real was jarring.
Same for me, except I wan Desqview instead of OS/2 - I was too poor to buy it while at uni. But a year later when I finally got my hands on OS/2, I had the same success with serial communications as I did with Desqview running Wildcat and Renegade powered BBSes!
All I remember about OS/2 is that my father needed it for work (at IBM), it didn't crash ever, and that it had Mahjongg. Man, I loved that version of Mahjongg. You could make your own boards and everything!
OS/2 was superior in lot of ways compared to the ms window in same timeline. However one frustrating thing which I deem a critical corporate failure is that IBM is very reluctant to come out with compatible driver for other 3rd party software. In a IBM tech meeting they even say it is the 3rd party manufacturer that is responsible to create the driver. Technically they are correct but microsoft is silently working with other 3rd party and providing fundamental built in driver that as time goes by really prove to be plug and play for lot of devices. So I installed windows and have it automatically recognise my sound blaster card, my zip drive and I can be productive on day one. Whereas I installed OS/2 and searching high and low for all the necessary driver. It's a no brainer who will win out eventually.
Yes, very true. I remember having to tweak that config.sys file to get stuff to work. The internet was so limited and i remember how elatesd I was to find that a particular hardware manufacturer actually "online" and I could get drivers. Remember, this was back in the day when www.gm.com or www.toyota.com simply did NOT exist. I loved OS/2 and still love it, but I don't use it anymore.
The list of drivers for enet card is poor really. Better you install on IBM hardware. I intalled once two years ago in an IBM380 Laptop that came with WARP3 at its time (as option).
Very good point. Lots of cool new hardware came out during this time with sharply dropping prices, such as scanners, multimedia cd-rom's and wavetable cards, as well as network, storage, and many other types of things we take for granted these days. They were all suddenly available on the market for cheap... but you weren't going to be able to use them on OS/2 for the exact reason you stated. Guess which OS people decided to use when faced with this conundrum... Nobody cared which OS had theoretical better specifications - useless when you can't even get the hardware you just bought to work with it.
OS/2 driver compatibility is such a frustrating issue that it is often nearly impossible 2 run a clean install unless U R *extremely* careful 2 choose only 100% known-compatible legacy hardware (because new, modern hardware is a complete crapshoot when it comes to OS/2).
To its credit, OS/2 Warp ran beautifully on a custom-built baby-AT rig I threw together yrs ago specifically 4 running legacy software--
CPU:
Intel Pentium Pro (150MHz)
Memory:
64MB EDO SIMM RAM (16MB x 4)
Video:
ATI MACH64 SVGA PCI-bus card (4MB video RAM onboard)
Audio:
Creative Labs SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA card (jumpered, non-PnP)
I also had a full-hardware 56K V.90 ISA-bus faxmodem plus an Adaptec 2940 (?) PCI-bus SCSI controller card installed @ some point, just 2 see if they'd run under OS/2 -- & they both did, quite smoothly.
From what I've heard, there were comparable issues w/ running PCs under Windows NT 4.0 & even Win2000 (tho they're nowhere *near* as bad as OS/2 compatibility issues nowadays).
One way in which it was superior was memory management. At the time (1993) we had a database program that would only run bullet proof under OS/2 v3. OTOH driver support was a nightmare BUT there was good communication with IBM help staff. I remember getting binders full of diskettes full of patches via FedEx overnight.
OS/2 was a great time - was my first OS. I have every copy in a box, with diskettes, manuals, warranty cards, etc. Love for it will never die.
It will never die, because everyone still uses it. Windows as we know it today is an evolution of Windows NT, which was developed on OS/2.
OS2 2.1 was like 23 diskettes. then the service pack was downloading 23 disk images and building the 23 diskettes, then loading the 23 disks service pack after the 23 disk install.
Everytime a machine had a dirty shutdown, it had three diskettes to unlock the file system.
Changing monitor resolution took several diskettes
trap errors! trap errors! trap errors!
unable to buy installed on IBM equipment purchased directly from IBM
I spent a week backing up and installing WFW 3.11 on my company network after we got fed up with it.
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος what are those?
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος thanks for the explanation man! very interesting!
damn those were complicated times lol
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος i am 17 :)
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος i really like reading stories like these!
talking to a man who knows about computers more than i ever will lol.
i got my very own PC 3 years ago i think. it was a Pentium E2140 1.6GHz, 2 gigs of RAM, and a nvidia geforce 8400 gs.
a year later i built myself a q9400, 8GB DDR2 RAM, and a 750 ti.
i am a newbie, but i have some knowledge about PC's. (i usually have to fix family stuff lol).
I like old computers.
From the oldest parts i have, i built a PC with a sempron 2800+, 512MB RAM and a geforce MX 400 64MB.
i know its not really retro but i like to mess with it and sometimes play old games from that era (battlefield 1942 for a example)
Sorry for long text and my bad English, i am from Croatia :)
@BASIL!!!!! Βασίλειος I forgot to say, i love original Doom! Its such a old game but i can't get enough of it.
Have you played Doom when it got out?
Funfact: The internal IBM business support ticket system used OS/2 until two or three years ago. Of course, as a virtual environment on Windows machines, but still running on OS/2 with all the command line tools and everything. When you were working as a 2nd level support OS/2 was your bread and butter. ;-)
Back in the late 90's, IBM mainframes were still using OS/2 to IPL (reboot) ;-)
kingneutron1 And I can confirm into the early 2000s as well.
It should be noted that Blue Lion was still in BETA when LGR made this video, however, there is now a fully updated and supported version of OS/2 available today called ArcaOS from Arca Noae LLC.
You finally added background music! I've seen your editing skills grow considerably since you took off.
Finally? My videos have had background music since day one back in 2009! Glad you find things have improved though
I haven't been watching you for that long, but there are lots of voiceovers in your [recent] videos that had no background music. Maybe sometimes you do and sometimes you don't?
***** Every video of mine has background music, except on rare occasion :) It's not always all the way through, but is consistently used in the intro and outro. The only times it's not used is when I'm showing footage of a game, because I want the sounds of the game to be heard instead!
Lazy Game Reviews That's pretty much what I meant. I hope you didn't take this the wrong way, I think you're great! I'm way into retrocomputing myself. :)
Nah, nothing taken the wrong way, just clarifying :) Glad you're enjoying the vids!
Lazy Game Reviews one of the few channels were the comments are just as enlightening, informative and well balanced as the videos themselves. Kudos to both the creator and the audience.
I recall back in the early 1990s that the IT guys at my place of work were getting so frustrated with the instability of MS Windows, especially when it came with the network PC apps, that they considered going to OS/2. But, they decided against it because of potential compatibility issues with running MS-Word and Excel at that time.
So OS/2 became Windows NT, that became Windows 2000 and XP... That became Vista, 7, 8/8.1 and 10.
Yea Bill was right about this being the most important OS in the history
***** Lol. NT Technology. Don't you just love redundancy?
Windows Version numbers are also quite interesting. (Not the public names, the actual version numbers of core components you see behind the scenes.)
I remember using NT 4.0 for a bit, which, superficially looks almost identical to windows 95, but of course is something quite different underneath.
(I dual booted them for a while. NT 4.0 was so much more stable, but DirectX support never got past 3.0, so... Not much fun if you're into gaming)
I never actually checked at the time, but it's reasonable to assume that had files with a version number of 4.0...
Windows 2000 is 5.0
Windows XP 5.1
Windows Vista 6.0
And what I'm staring at right now is Windows 7 - aka. 6.1
So, to be more specific, windows 7 is Windows NT 6.1
Also interesting to see these OS versions that are considered 'minor' versions...
If you take the version numbering literally, XP is just a patched build of Windows 2000.
And Windows 7 is Windows Vista with some improvements...
I guess once upon a time they would've actually used these version names directly though.
After all, NT 4.0, Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 were all things...
But... Windows 6.1 probably wouldn't sound as good for marketing purposes when it's immediate predecessor was 6.0, and nobody liked it... XD
That does make me wonder though. Internal consistency would make windows 8 be windows 7.0
That's not at all confusing, now is it? XD
KuraIthys
If we think, Windows had only 3 or 4 major overhall (under the hood).
The 1.0 untill 3.11 was the same Windows but evolved. Then 95 untill ME as well. Then 2000 and XP.. And FInially Vista untill 10 is the same too.
In fact people found many things from 7 at 8 that we can't acess but is there (like the full aero transparency and even the classic theme . So they litelary with 7, 8 and 10 are just adding stuff to the Vista Kernel and Base.
***** Huh. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I obviously didn't check windows 8, because I haven't seen much of it...
I just assumed from the past trend it would be something new.
Guess not.
Which shouldn't surprise me as much as it does I suppose... XD
Also, if they've really done that with Windows 10, that's hilarious... XD
Personally, I'd argue that the addition of 386 protected mode support in Windows 2.0 was at least as significant as the switch from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95....
Unix was the most important OS in history full stop no argument.
Bill Gates knew the future was in software and IBM laughed at him when they signed the licensing rights for MS-DOS. IBM thought the future was in hardware. Same thing with Xerox, why would anyone want to use a mouse? (Here Steve Jobs, you can have this design.)
Honestly, a mouse on a photocopying machine is absurd. I'm happy they dump this technology in the wild.
@@vandeputalexandre244 The mouse was not made for photocopiers, Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) which developed way more than photocopiers was about research of modern technologies, not just stuff to add to a photocopier, among them the concept of a GUI, something we can't live without today.
The mouse was not invented by Xerox, but they did have a computer with a GUI and the mouse was the best way to interact with it.
I'm aware of that. It's a joke on a 5years old youtube video. Why are you so serious?
@@vandeputalexandre244 Oh don't worry about it then.
But just in case someone thinks you were serious.
Someone seen 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' I guess... ;-)
In high school around 1996 I had my dads thinkpad running Os/2 and it was pretty awesome.
I loved OS/2. I remember the first time I ran Doom and Heretic side by side in separate DOS windows. Just having the ability to open hyperterm and do other things was a huge benefit. I worked at a Software Etc in the 90s and the IBM rep in the area would come in and talk OS/2 on occasion. He gifted me a couple full box versions with Windows support. Installing it was... difficult but if you managed to find the magic hardware formula it was incredible.
Bill Gates was right about OS/2 being the most important operating system, in a way. Since most PCs in the world today are running some variant/descendant of Windows NT and NT was based on OS/2 code, you could say it has quite a legacy.
+fountainhead Let's also not forget that Windows XP based most of its code off of NT, and look how long that system lasted.
I think you have your history mixed up. OS/2 1.0 was its own creation, not based on Windows 1.0 code at all. Microsoft did a majority of its OS development on Xenix, not OS/2 or Windows. OS/2 1.1 through 1.3 had a GUI similar to Windows 3.0, but only because Microsoft did the GUI development and Windows 3.0 GUI was based on OS/2 so that users would feel comfortable switching. Windows 3.0 was not an operating system, just a GUI on top of DOS. OS/2 was a complete and integrated operating system. OS/2 was developed first and Windows was its own product. OS/2 source code is closed, how would you get to look at it to compare it to Windows? If you had access and knew what you were talking about, you would probably change your tune.
Ez Sit I got it wrong, my mistake. Also, I didn't bother reading your entire comment since I already figured out the actual history of OS/2 w/ Windows a while back. Also, what do you mean by tune? ...Do you mean tone?
Sorry, "change your tune" is just an expression to mean change your story. :)
NT is not based on OS/2 code. That is incorrect.
In the good old days, when I still had the energy and resources to experiment with everything PC related, I attended a pre- OS/2 launch at a local IBM sales office. The demo was pretty cool, and to make things even cooler, attendees were offered free copies of OS/2 when it was released.
Fast forward a couple of months and my copy of OS/2 arrives. These were the days when software had to be installed on 3.5 inch diskettes, and the installation of OS/3 required a boatload of disk swapping.
Bottom lines: the initial release offered little, other than dos multi-tasking. It never captured enough market share to attract software developers. OS/2 Warp, while improving Windows support, failed to nail it, and more often than not, unless IBM focused to supporting specific Windows apps, its Windows support was far too glitchy. And as for games requiring sound card and advanced video card support...forget it.
While OS/2 was less likely to crash, than early versions of Windows, it seemed to be of little over all value to me, as a hobbyist.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
I wouldn't want to use Warp 10. Do you know what happens when you do?
You turn into a giant salamander. :P
Janeway/Paris babies!
OuroborosChoked you would Occupy Every Single Point in the Universe simultaneously (and YES, I DID pull this straight from the TNG Technical Manual) and you would accelerate Human Evolution to the aformentioned "Giant Salamander" stage. (and yes, I have watched that Voyager Episode)
OuroborosChoked Yes I know. Just look at me.
digitalrailroader corrected: "Every Single Point of Sale in the Universe simultaneously"
Wow, I totally forgot about that episode lol.
Wait, windows NT(what more or less went on to become the windows we use now days) started out as os/2. Wow I learned something today.
I missed OS/2... Other than the WPS UI crashing, the OS itself is uber solid... I didn't experience the same amount of smoothness in operation until I finally upgraded to P IV- hyperthreading. And I was using 486DX4-120 back then...
OS/2 is similar to Latin - is still around and used today and makes the base of our modern language!
So Vatican is Latin's WarpStock.
@@MegaZsolti LOL
I remember having a computer in my elementary school's computer lab that ran a very early version of OS/2. It was the first time I ever saw DOS before, since I grew up using Windows 98 and 2000.
My late father worked on the code for OS/2. Brings back lots of memories.
Its rather sad that in tech, who wins isn't the one with the best software, but who has the OEM contracts it seems.
Or hardware, for that matter. Witness the Commodore Amiga back in the mid-80's. While they sported 4000 color graphics, a true preemptive multitasking OS, and stereo sampled sound, most PC's had 16 colors, single tasked DOS, and a beeper speaker. ;)
Commodore had the problem that they rested on their laurels.
The A1200/A3000 should have had a HD floppy, VGA output and maybe even some form of simple 3D acceleration to ease some of the heavy math for the main CPU. Remember that the SuperFX chip came out just some months later in the Starfox cart for the SNES.
Then there was the problem that Amiga was a more or less closed ecosystem, much like the Apple Macintosh, and nobody could easily create clones.
So in the end it was the almighty price, future-proofness and extensibility that won.
I totally agree with you - but this is the part that sucks: I had a friend who worked as a 3rd party programmer for C= - in fact, a few of his tools were actually used by them for software testing.
He told me that the AGA chipset was ready to go YEARS before it was actually released, as C= saw no need to step up their game. So by the time they produced the 1200, the spec for that machine was years old already - and they rushed to production without modification.
Of course, by that time, they were having problems paying their bills, so even if they had thought of upping the original spec, they had no money with which to do so.
So, you're right. But C= really didn't want to be in the Amiga business, and this is key: Because they didn't UNDERSTAND it! They would have rather continued building machines like the PC-10, a nice PC clone, but it didn't sell well for them.
Amiga was a much harder sell... Except it wasn't. They simply didn't 'get' what they had. Much like how XEROX didn't understand the importance of the ground-breaking GUI technology they had developed many years before.
Yeah, Commodore were actually working on the AAA chipset (a more complete overhaul of OCS/ECS, with better audio, much greater bandwidth, faster copper, chunky mode etc.) from around 1988, and had working silicon in 1992-93 when it was canceled after years of neglect, and AGA was rushed out as a stopgap (basically ECS with 2 more bitplanes). With proper R&D and budgeting, we could have had better systems than the A1200/4000 in 1990 - 91.
Sadly, all the wrong companies "won" in in the 90's, and the whole industry suffered. The PC platform was a mess of incompatible standards (and even when things were supposed to be compatible, stuff often didn't work), Windows 3 and 9x were horribly unstable and buggy, and the whole architecture was so inefficient that you needed tons of memory and CPU for even the most basic tasks. Eventually the problems were sorted out, but it wasn't until Windows 2000 or perhaps even WinXP that Windows became "superior" in all areas, IMO.
Excellent as always. I really liked the fact you used period specific logos for Microsoft as well, nice touch! I've got a boxed copy of OS/2 2.1 in storage, 20+ disks, long install, takes up an enormous amount of disk space when compared to win3.0 or even win3.1, but nonetheless it was a good little OS for its day!
Thank you. This jives with all my memories of happened. I'm STILL a fan of OS/2!
Man, you're somehow able to make entertaining and informative videos of topics that I'm not usually too interested in.
Great work! You're one of my favorite Tubers!
OS8 would have a Start menu. Just sayin'
Ghost81 Haha, I have no doubt.
Ghost81 All I see are a set of unorganized tiles. *:* D I personally just set up batch files to fulfill some Menu functions (namely for shutting down and restarting my machine).
Elround4 There are plenty of third party apps made in some chinese sweatshop that replicate the start menu, but none of them are actually decent. I just resorted to making a folder on my desktop with shortcuts to my programs.
Well done microsoft.
Elround4 See, I actually prefer the tiles (if only they were smaller and you could create expendable catalogs tho) makes it more clear for me as I mostly use the applications from the first screen whoich would normally be on my deesktop.
Start menu? Tiles? Folders? Shortcuts? Terminal + a launcher like Rofi or Dmenu is all I need. Looks cleaner too.
This is such a cool series.
At the beginning when he makes that gag about “What if IBM won ?” I would like to live in that timeline
Classy intro! I was just watching your old DOS game reviews and this intro just shows how far you've come as a video editor!
I was a beta tester for OS/2 Warp. Every single 'bug' or issue I reported, though acknowledged, was not fixed in the shipping product. When they sent me the complimentary copy of the final shipping product in the mail, I threw it in the trash and never looked back.
Why the heck did they bother with beta testing?
If U tossed it,
HOW would U know it wasn't in the Final Shipping Product?!
There's a lot of last minute adjustments made on products,
before they go out the door.
@@theRealLANman There is this thing called a change log.
@@theRealLANman Between the last adjustment before release and the release has to be quite some time for the disk-manufacturers to create the copys. In the old days there couldn't be "Day-0 Patches", because there was no WiFi and even just some small amount of bandwith over the telefone lines. It would be considered to be a "flaw" and a "this will never catch on" product. Did you try to load a CD (around 750Mib at that time) over 56kbit/s
Any chance we'll ever see a vid of the rise & fall of GEOS at any point in the fututre?
That MCA bus IBM desktop with the small monitor on top was my first PC. I used to buy shed loads of the things (cheap ex EPOS/ATM) and flog them as cheap word processors. Indeed late 90's my flat was full of the things. Many had only had DOS installed to run EPOS software. Some OS/2 ATM's. The banks and big retail bought big blue back then!
Great episode and one of my favorites from the Tech Tales series
Love this series, keep up the great work?
David Halligan Doing my best!
why do i find this stuff so interesting ?
old things are more interesting than new things
Windows Xp is more interesting than Windows 10
sushi dream nah... I think lgr just makes incredibly boring stuff very interesting
Because like the rest of us you are a geek who's also interested in the old stuff.
Hunter Rodrigez im one year late, but bc of his sexy voice
I have a fixation with old tech, love learning about how these things developed. I've been binging on LGR for a few days, this is simply the best one. Well done sir, I salut you.
Jeez these tech tales videos are good. I watched a bunch of your stuff before but I subscribed because of these.
OS/2 was technically superior to the DOS based Windows systems. In 1994 when I went to buy a Gateway system to 'play' with OS/2 - it came with Win 3.0 - period. Mickey Soft basically forced PC sales companies to bundle their crap with the hardware. Billy and company later got in trouble for doing it, but, by then, the damage was done.
M$ prime strength is 'good enough' software with super strong contracts. Do not forget that Billy's daddy was a contract attorney.
The only good thing about PC/MS-DOS is that the WHOLE machine was wide open to an assembler programmer like me.
The company for which I was working in the mid to late 80's was a TI reseller. I wrote a program to fully emulate a TI-931 terminal that used interrupt driven RS-232 comm that would run at 19.2 on a stock 4.77 Mhz PC. It worked far better than the emulator that TI itself produced.
Amazing that Microsoft, a company about 1/1000 the size of IBM, could push IBM around like that!
Robert Z The strength of Microsoft has always been their contracts not the quality of their software. Gates' father was a contract attorney. I am posting this on a Mac. Only use Windows when there is no alternative.
mike klaene And IBM didn't have any contact attorneys? Nor did they have any experience with contacts?
IBM failed with OS/2 because of their culture.
Obviously IBM did have contract attorneys - but somehow they let M$ get the best of them.
Even at the DOS level, M$ pushed that standard as being MS-DOS not PC-DOS. There were quite a few systems like the Texas Instruments PC that ran a version of MS-DOS but was not PC-DOS compatible because it had both a different BIOS and used a different communications micro-processor.
OS/2 would only run on IBM hardware whereas M$ made versions of NT on several hardware platforms including the DEC Alpha.
On the other hand almost all of the first generation bank ATM terminals ran on OS/2 because it was both more secure and reliable.
In the end, Microsoft just out marketed Windows with Windows for Workgroups, Win95 and Win98 - all when NT and OS/2 needed heftier, more expensive hardware AND with the lock in of the manufactures as I mentioned in my first post.
mike klaene OS/2 wasn't used because it was more secure.
And what was different about the TI BIOS?
Microsoft, who didn't have hardware, created MS-DOS and licensed it to hardware vendors (including IBM). IBM asked Microsoft to create it. IBM chose to rename it, for marketing reasons, to PC-DOS.
Also remember that OS/2 was developed by IBM and Microsoft, with Microsoft's Gord Letwin as chief architect.
Do a review of DESQview and Quarterdeck in general!
Great to see another Tech Tales, all very interesting so fa and already looking forward to the next one!.
ESP brand Emissions analysers in the state of Georgia used OS/2 Warp until around 2011. I always got a kick out of seeing that OS/2 Warp boot up screen. It made the hardware seem that much more out of date.
Windows NT 4 source code proves NT indeed is a fork of OS/2. BetaArchive has some interesting info to say the least.
That is total BS, the Windows GUI architecture is totally different to OS/2.
Hey man, great series! I stumbled upon one of the episodes when looking for videos about Digital Research. I was pleasantly surprised to see you used two of my photos in this episode! Namely that of the IBM PC and the PC XT. I would really appreciate it if you would also correctly attribute the pictures. Other than that, great series on very interesting topics! Ruben
Sure thing, to what person/website would you like me to attribute them to? The photos were found on Google Images, so sourcing things properly can be a bit tricky. I went ahead and linked your channel in the video description though, excellent stuff :)
Thanks! I posted them on Wikipedia, because there were no proper images of those machines. You can attribute it with "Ruben de Rijcke". I love it that my material could contribute to your video!
Bit belated, but you used quite a few photos from the OS/2 Muesum, and one of the unreleased OS/2 Warp for PowerPC product which was a huge failure.
Still enjoyed the video though :)
These "Tech Tales" videos are always so fascinating. Thank you for making them.
I remember OS/2. When my step dad were buying our very first PC, he asked the clerk which was better. Because of that, we go Windows 3.1 instead lol.
The clerk cheated you. You could make a decent case that Windows 95 and its successors were better than OS/2, due to better application support, but back in the Windows 3.1 days the only thing Windows had over OS/2 was pricing.
I had no idea that Windows NT was basically OS/2.. interesting. :) Thanks!
Yeah me too :) I wasn't surprised though, once he explained the MS/IBM deal, my first thought was "Bill probably stole ideas from the OS/2 project" LMAO. What a shyster XD
NTFS is based on OS/2s HPFS. So every windows user today is using a OS/2 technology in that respect as well.
sinephase Bill never had an original idea.
zyrgle
What was Basic based on/stolen from?
sinephase
Admiral Grace Hopper was the 'grandmother' of Basic.
Patanting software that was previously shared was Bill's sole contribution.
See also: Bill Gates 'open letter to hobbyists': en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
PLEASE do a video on GEOS! I thought that was an amazing OS on the commodore64 considering the 64k memory limit
I've used OS/2 Warp 3 a few times growing up. Had it (and WFW 3.11) on an IBM PC 300. Cool to play with, but I gave the computer to a friend, as I had not only an Acer desktop and by that time Acer laptop
I was pushing OS/2 right up to the moment NT 3.51 came out. It was just easier to convince people to go from DOS to NT than to an IBM thing.
I paid $5 to beta test OS/2 Warp.. :) It was fun, and very good, but I switched to Linux.
That is pretty cool!
Microsoft "ownership" of OS/2 allowed then to keep existing code for OS/2 3.0 which became Windows NT.
Wow I feel a sense of nostalgia every time I watch these videos. All of the tech I use to enjoy has pretty cool back stories. He does a really good job laying it all out too. Definitely glad I subscribed to this channel.
And I was just watching your video on Sim City for the OS/2 just yesterday. Sweet!
Wait, so the NT kernel was based off of some of the joint efforts between MS and IBM at the time?
It's more of a shared ancestry, at this point. Think of it in the same way that Windows Me could trace its ancestry back to CP/M (by way of Windows 95 and MS-DOS), but the intervening tweaks and modifications had ultimately turned it into something very, very different.
Indeed it was in the early days. There were even OS/2 error codes when NT failed to boot or crashed in some instances. NT 4 did eliminate most of that though and was a complete rewrite.
Syphist Prime if you look at version 3 (Warp), Windows 95 looks very similar. Warp was released before Win 95.
Not really, no. Some of the higher level code, maybe. But the NT kernel has nothing to do with OS/2, and is technically superior in pretty much every way.
Nope. Different group of people entirely.
What if OS/2 became the dominant operating system instead of Windows?
Hard to imagine! But OS/2 is a great topic to look back on
ua-cam.com/video/wQdK9owqVd0/v-deo.html
Lazy Game Reviews GeoWorks was a better environment too had it fizzled out!
+Naveek Darkroom then Windows 3.0 would be the final version of the Windows platform, and merging Windows/OS/2 into one entity. Windows 10 would be OS/2 10, I guess, however IBM would give up their OS/2 stuff later on to M$. Or, if IBM, then we'd have a IBM product
It wouldnt have lasted. ms probably would have sabotaged os/2 from within and reiterated windows 3.x into NT getting us back to the current timeline. ms is like the one ring that doesnt share power. They have a long history of being part of something (opengl, apple IIe programs, java, dreamcast etc) then coming out with their own competing product.
Wouldn't Windows 10 be OS/10, Arutz?
Nice article and well articulated, keep up the good work man!
Excellent job, much enjoy your "tech tales" series
Os/2 warp came on an ibm ps/2e. Runs kinda slow on a 486slc2Downside imho of the ps/2 lineup is that they are underpowered compared to clones that are cheaper. I also hate their way of handling the bios settings and their startup disks. Ugh not to mention XGA lacking vesa univbe support.
ATM's running a OS from pre 2000. Yea I'm sure they got top notch security no questions asked and no worries lol.
Security through Obscurity
Probably still more secure than the massive number of ATMs currently running Windows XP. To my knowledge, XP is the most abundant ATM OS in current active use, despite it no longer being supported. Since updating their ATMs usually requires a hardware upgrade as well, many banks have decided that the potential security risk will still cost them less than upgrading their machines and have put off doing so.
Clockwork Bard Windows XP embedded is still supported! Some automats still run Windows NT, I doubt that's still supported.
Billy H. DOS was 100% secure. It wasn't connected to anything.
MsLia32 So how could we play over LAN then? Of course DOS was used with networks and the internet!
Great video as usual. I remember evaluating OS/2 in 1993 for a studio regarding game development. On a final note, I recommended to go with NT instead.
I worked at IBM in 1992 and saw first-hand how they screwed up any possible future for OS/2; first by neglecting driver support for third-party hardware and then by designing an object-oriented desktop metaphor where icons that represented files didn’t directly manipulate those files, so you could do things like move or delete the icons without moving or deleting the files which they represented. This caused enormous user confusion and frustration as well as high staff retraining costs, since other popular windowing operating systems such as Windows or MacOS didn’t operate that way
Windows NT was created from OS/2. And all modern versions of windows are Windows NT versions. Doesn't that mean that we, in a way, are all (almost) running OS/2?
Only in the same sense that people who used Windows Me were running CP/M. Modern versions of Windows are descended from OS/2, but they diverged from each other a long, long time ago.
I'm going to guess that the rise of Linux in the 90s and into the 2000s didn't help OS/2 either. Many of those ATMs and special use machines are all running embedded Linux now.
Today, the vast majority of cash machines worldwide use a Microsoft Windows operating system, primarily Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Embedded. A small number of deployments may still berunning older versions of the Windows OS, such as Windows NT, Windows CE, or Windows 2000. www.quora.com/Which-operating-system-do-ATM-machines-use
I remember using OS/2 at my mom's work as a kid back in the early 90s. She was a stock broker and there were a bunch of Win NT machines but I was always curious about the computer in the corner than no one used. Back then I never knew what it was but I now know it was OS/2. I prollay screwed up trades with my fiddling around with it so much. :P
I still have my 1993 IBM Aptiva Multimedia PC that runs Windows 3.1 and also has OS/2 Warp. I always loved Warp, but it would often take forever just to load into it. Still runs to this dqy...will have to mess around with it for the nostalgia factor. Had such great software and games...actually that whole PC had great games. Cyberia, Descent, Jack Nicklaus Golf, Jump Start K and 1, etc. I think the PC was pretty advanced too. I believe 75MHz Pentium, 12 or 16 MB's RAM, Quad Speed CD drive, 1 GB hard drive, 1 or 2 MB Trident onboard video, and floppy.
What PCB is that in your title sequence? I really want to know.
Samuel Doye It's a random 386 motherboard I had lying around!
Thank you.
Lazy Game Reviews
Thought so. That's a Math Co-processor socket next to the LGR logo isn't it? I will always remember that the SX in 386SX stands for sucks .
C U R R E N T Y E A R
I love all your content man. Thanks for putting out these awesome videos!
Fantastic video. Very interesting, keep up the great work.
Hey if your going to do Operating Systems I think it would be interesting to look at the rise of Linux.
+Sarah Anne That would be a great idea. Maybe a history of Unix in general, including the more recent arise of Linux, BSD and OS X too.
@BASIL!!!!! The pumpin' Seagull I'm sorry, but...
ua-cam.com/video/kb2T8hWRu8g/v-deo.html
What does the cast of the M*A*S*H tv show have to do with IBM?
"Suicide is painless, compared to configuring a PC..." :P
It was common during the 1980s to use celebrities in computer advertising. It got the product visibility. Alan Alda did a series of ads for Atari computers. Here's the best one, IMO:
ua-cam.com/video/zjiic3XHrU8/v-deo.html
The Fouth Doctor sold Prime Computers
ua-cam.com/video/iJeu3LCo-6A/v-deo.html
+Lazy Game Reviews Great vid about OS/2, I remember playing around with it in my school Lab, at home I was using NT 3 and DOS of course. And actually, to date, IBM is not only left the PC market, it also left the x86 server bundle to the now independent Lenovo (IBM part cut loose) and it only focus in RISC processors and mainframe tech...amazingly enough!!!!
Sweet! Even though not much changed, I still love it! Maybe one day you can do a head-on comparison video between OS/2 and Windows, and maybe demonstrate OS/2 running both DOS and Windows at the same time. That's it's OS/2's strongest point, really: being able to multitask with different operating systems on such a large scale. Anyways, keep up the good work!
I'm still waiting for the promised video story where good guys actually win and not fail terribly like with Amiga, 3DFX, OS/2 and many others. Why do only bastards like EA, Microsoft and Oracle win? It's not fair! :'-(
LastofAvari Linus Torvalds will win in the long term :-)
armorgeddon
He already has.
MrChofee Not on the desktop sadly. Other areas yes.
It's not always that simple. EA WERE the good guys back when they started. They turned into bastards much later on.
It'd probably be interesting to trace how EA went from being a rebellion against Atari's mistreatment of it's programmers, and about the rights of game developers to be given credit for their work, and somehow turned into this giant all-consuming publisher that comes close to representing the very same thing they started out rebelling against...
The name Electronic Arts wasn't just chosen for ironic reasons. It actually held meaning back when they started...
I guess that they now call themselves EA instead might be worth stopping and thinking about for a second...
It really does make you wonder what happened though. How did Electronic Arts the game developers rebellion turn into EA the evil giant megapublisher?
That would have made a good video. A good point there! =)
OS/2 t-shirt pls.
Hjälte Björkdahl Hehe, I'd love to have one. I should make one.
Duuuude. If you do, make sure to show it off.
Lazy Game Reviews I want see that how does it looks like.
The peak of my geekness was getting Windows 3.0, OS/2 Warp and Linux to triple boot on a 386 back in the day.
Love the video, brings back old memories, grew up using os/2, dos and Windows since my father worked for IBM
Yet another tale of Microsoft ascending in the industry by stabbing in the back people who trusted them.
Before this video, I thought I had never used OS/2, but you've made me realize I have, dozens of times.
maybe you'll make video about linux someday?
MrKulanz I think that would require several videos simply because of the breadth of information that is out there. It would be something to see something about the evolution of unix.
***** MrKulanz No need for several videos at all, I mean heck, I'm condensing 30+ years of history into 8 minutes in a lot of my videos. And yeah, Unix and Linux are possible subjects for someday. Really, anything tech-related is.
Lazy Game Reviews
great :)
Lazy Game Reviews I've gotta say, I'd love a video or dozen on them.
MrKulanz Lazy Game Reviews I think covering Linux is a great idea! You could talk about the founding of GNU, the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate, the famous IBM superbowl commercial, and so much more!
I was a huge fan of OS/2 back in the day, and really loved using it. I even named my cat "Merlin", not after the wizard but after IBM's internal code name for Warp v4.
My only real complaints about it were that getting DOS and Windows apps to run could involve a lot of guesswork to get the settings just right, and the driver support was just terrible. Still, I'd like to take a peek at that alternate universe where OS/2 dominated and Windows is the historical footnote.
I'm learning so many things about stuff that I didn't think I needed to know. I love it!
I remember OS/2 crashing more often than Windows ME actually.
do a tech tales on linux
RIGHT!
Yes a tech tales on Linux is overdue.
Cool stuff! My family takes care of an old man who worked for IBM back in the 60's. He helped supervise the first use of computerized scoring in the Olympics and the tracking of all American aircraft's. He just turned 88 and still going strong.
Very good info and vid production. Thank you!
Windows 95 was actually just a melding of both Windows and DOS. Before you had to install DOS first and then Windows was installed on top of it. Windows 95 was not really a multi-task OS as only one program could actually execute at any one time. Microsoft put out Windows NT which was actually the OS/2 kernal with the Windows API stuck on the front end. This became the basis for Windows 2000 then XP and so on up to the Windows 10 that we have today.
IBM continued to use OS/2 with its big hardware. The Processor controller on the mainframe systems such as the 9672 was actually a laptop running OS/2. IBM eventually abandoned OS/2 and started using LINUX with the Z/9 systems around 2005. The other thing that IBM stuck with for a long time as Token Ring networking which was used instead of ethernet.
This is incorrect. One of the three big features advertised with Windows 95 was that it was a "true" multitasking OS (the other features were its plug and play hardware support and long file names). By that, they meant it used preemptive multitasking (which had already been used by the Windows NT line) as opposed to the cooperative multitasking used by earlier versions of Windows. The difference is that, with cooperative multitasking, there's no OS-level coordination: it's left up to each individual process to cede processing time to other processes. A badly designed program can, therefore, devour all the available CPU time and bring everything else to a screeching halt.
Preemptive multitasking allows the OS to properly coordinate among all running processes, and to preempt a resource-hungry program from consuming all of the CPU's time and assign it to other processes. Windows 95 emphatically did support preemptive multitasking, which it inherited from Windows NT 3.x and OS/2 before it. The exception is that programs originally written for DOS or Windows 3.x were designed with cooperative multitasking in mind and couldn't be reliably preempted by the OS. So when running legacy 16-bit DOS/Windows applications in any of these OSes (Windows NT 3, Windows 95/98/Me, or OS/2) they're all assigned to a single process. That process itself can be preempted by the OS, but the OS can't manage tasks within that process. So a badly coded Windows 3.1 game should play nicely with native Windows 95 or OS/2 programs, but may butt heads with another badly coded DOS game running at the same time.
Later versions of the Windows NT family could get around this limit by assigning each legacy 16-bit application to its own process, but I'm not sure when this was introduced (I know it was possible by the time of Windows 2000, at least). But if you want to be really pedantic, you don't have a true, 100% preemptive multitasking version of Windows until the 64-bit version of Windows XP. And only then because 64-bit versions of Windows dispense entirely with the 16-bit subsystem, meaning you literally can't run old Windows 3.1 or DOS programs on them in the first place. But, realistically and for all practical purposes, Windows 95 and its successors were all true preemptive multitasking systems that simply offered a mostly transparent way of handling non-preemptive multitasking-friendly legacy programs. As did Windows NT and OS/2 before it, and, for that matter, Mac OS X after it (Mac OS classic remained strictly cooperative multitasking up through the OS 9 line). But even cooperative multitasking systems allow more than one program to "actually execute at any one time": those system just relied on the programs playing nice with one another, a sort of computer version of the honor system.
I just want to know who the hell thumbs downs these videos?
Cool stuff Clint. Love these videos!
Thanks for the new Tech Tales, excellent series. Made my Friday! :)