6 ms·

There was also OS/2 which was co-created by Microsoft and IBM as the DOS replacement. At IBM’s insistence it was designed to target the 286 protected mode. Bil

by pavlov 3y ago

There was also OS/2 which was co-created by Microsoft and IBM as the DOS replacement. At IBM’s insistence it was designed to target the 286 protected mode. Bill Gates grumbled a lot about that, he would have preferred to wait to use the 386 instead. And he was right because no interesting applications emerged for OS/2 1.x.

bell-cot 3y ago
Given how [cough] successful the 386-specific version of OS/2 was, even after IBM put a load of money and marketing behind it...perhaps the real problem was not the 286's protected mode.
- pavlov 3y ago
  I don't know. MS and IBM wasted several years trying to make OS/2 for 286. If they'd started on a 386-only system back in 1985 when the cooperation was signed, maybe they could have shipped a compelling 32-bit GUI operating system by 1989 and avoided the acrimony that broke the alliance. (Probably not though — the technology choices were only one ingredient in the divorce.)
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    OS/2 for '286 came out in 1987. Then it took them 5 more years to get the '386 version out the door. Vs. tiny SCO was able to get the '386 version of their (Unix-based) Xenix OS out the door in 1987.
    - lproven 3y ago
      This is absolutely true, but the thing is, SCO didn't have to be backwards compatible with a damned thing. Also note that the base addition of Xenix didn't support graphics, or sound, or networking, or come with a C compiler or anything. It was basically a runtime, for text only apps, and most machines only ran a single app. I put in dozens of boxes running Xenix back then. In my world, the bulk of them ran one binary: an accountancy application provided by Tetra Corporation, and we sold one called Tetraplan. SCO Xenix was a wonderful little operating system, extremely resource efficient, and astonishingly stable in use. Some of those boxes had uptimes in years. But that's relatively easy when it's not connected to anything, not connected to the outside world in any way, and only runs a single program. I am absolutely not denigrating Xenix. Xenix was my first experience of UNIX of any kind, I supported it for years, right into the 21st-century for one exceptional customer, and it caused me remarkably little pain of any kind. It was great. But it was not a mass market, general-purpose product.
      - pavlov 3y ago
        The funny thing is that Xenix was a Microsoft product. They originally licensed it to SCO who created the x86 port, then eventually sold it entirely to SCO in 1987. If things had turned out slightly differently, Microsoft's 32-bit OS in the 1990s would have been Unix.
        lproven 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely, and what a different world it would be. OTOH, the GNU project nearly adopted the BSD4.4-Lite kernel. Then Linux would never have happened. Or, if DR hadn't been screwed over by Intel... Or, if Apple aimed the Lisa lower, or the Mac higher... Or, if Xerox knew what it had and successfully sold it... So many "what ifs"...
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        Yeah, but: OS/2 286's backwards compatibility was miserably limited. Xenix selling the networking and C compiler separately was a business decision, not a way to make anything easier for the developers. Running "just one app" was also a business decision. And contrast that Xenix stability with umpteen million other 1980's and 90's computers which did one job, with no network...but ran crash-tastic MS-DOS.
mschaef 3y ago
>At IBM’s insistence it was designed to target the 286 protected mode. > Bill Gates grumbled a lot about that,... And he was right because no interesting applications emerged for OS/2 1.x 286 protected mode wasn't the issue... Windows 3.0 was also largely built around 286 protected mode and it's where most of the interesting PC application development happened for years. OS/2's early issues were really related to the cost of the OS (x2-3 windows), the equipment needed to run it (at least 3MB RAM), and delays in both the networking and GUI capabilities. OS/2 also required a wholesale commitment to use it, due to the lack of a decent DOS story, which is in contrast to Windows (that ran on DOS, more or less).
- garaetjjte 3y ago
  But Windows also didn't have decent DOS story until Windows/386.
  - mschaef 3y ago
    There were a couple things Windows did better regarding DOS when compared to OS/2: * Windows ran on a DOS file system, so data portability was transparent. * You could easily quit Windows to get back to something close to whatever DOS environment you had before. * There was a runtime version of Windows that could be packaged with applications (Excel mainly, iirc) to make it possible to sell Windows apps to DOS users. * Windows had support for LIM/EMS (which users might already have to run large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets). None of this was a great way to run DOS apps under Windows, but it did make it easier to transition from DOS to Windows slowly, without a wholesale jump, and the risk that entailed. It was easier (and cheaper) for a DOS user to experiment with Windows than it was with OS/2. The lower barrier to entry is worth a lot.
- lproven 3y ago
  You are getting cause and effect backwards. > 286 protected mode wasn't the issue... Yes, it was. I evaluated OS/2 1.0 professionally, when it was new; did you? The 286 protected mode was an issue, because it meant that OS/2 could not multitask dos applications — exactly as Concurrent DOS could not on the shipping 286 hardware. > Windows 3.0 was also largely built around 286 protected mode Not really, no. 1. Windows 2 had an edition built around 286 protected mode. This was nothing new for Windows 3.0. The problem is that the 286's protected mode didn't deliver anything that was very useful for dos applications, and in the 1980s, DOS applications were the sole driving factor behind the PC industry. In fact, Windows/286 actually delivered one main benefit: you got an extra 64 kB of RAM. That was it. It wasn't really worth having. Windows 2 also had a 386 edition, generally known as Windows/386. That delivered the core functionality that was the useful thing in the 386 in the 1980s: hardware assisted multitasking of DOS applications. 2. You cite Windows 3.0, but that's not relevant to a discussion of OS/2 1.X, because Windows 3.0 is what happened as a result of OS/2 1.X. OS/2 1.x was a 1980s product. Windows 3.0 came out in 1990, a few months after OS/2 1.2. Windows 3.0 happened in response to the failure of OS/2 1.X, and OS/2 1.X failed because it ran on the 286 processor, when it should've run on the 386 processor — as Microsoft wanted. Windows 2 was able to multitask dos applications, in software, but the problem with doing it that way is that they all had to fit into 640 kB of RAM. And by the late 1980s, a single DOS application barely fit into 640 kB! Windows 3.x was able to multitask DOS applications as well, and it could do it on 8086, on 286, and on 386. The difference is that on a 386, each DOS application got it own 640 kB. So if you had 4 MB of RAM, you could multitask a whole bunch of them. And it sold because the single same edition ran on all three processors, so you didn't have to choose which one you needed in advance, and buy the right product. The one product did it all. And if you upgraded the hardware, you got the additional facilities, with that same copy of the software. (Remember, no product activation in those days!)
sacnoradhq 3y ago
OS/2 had both MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.x compatibility, first by running a copy of Windows in a VDM and then later through integration. OS/2 was also very damn stable. 286 protected mode was bug-ridden and lacked features. 386 protected mode fixed most of them to make it more stable and usable.

by pavlov 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago

Given how [cough] successful the 386-specific version of OS/2 was, even after IBM put a load of money and marketing behind it...perhaps the real problem was not the 286's protected mode.

pavlov 3y ago
I don't know. MS and IBM wasted several years trying to make OS/2 for 286. If they'd started on a 386-only system back in 1985 when the cooperation was signed, maybe they could have shipped a compelling 32-bit GUI operating system by 1989 and avoided the acrimony that broke the alliance. (Probably not though — the technology choices were only one ingredient in the divorce.)
- bell-cot 3y ago
  OS/2 for '286 came out in 1987. Then it took them 5 more years to get the '386 version out the door. Vs. tiny SCO was able to get the '386 version of their (Unix-based) Xenix OS out the door in 1987.
  - lproven 3y ago
    This is absolutely true, but the thing is, SCO didn't have to be backwards compatible with a damned thing. Also note that the base addition of Xenix didn't support graphics, or sound, or networking, or come with a C compiler or anything. It was basically a runtime, for text only apps, and most machines only ran a single app. I put in dozens of boxes running Xenix back then. In my world, the bulk of them ran one binary: an accountancy application provided by Tetra Corporation, and we sold one called Tetraplan. SCO Xenix was a wonderful little operating system, extremely resource efficient, and astonishingly stable in use. Some of those boxes had uptimes in years. But that's relatively easy when it's not connected to anything, not connected to the outside world in any way, and only runs a single program. I am absolutely not denigrating Xenix. Xenix was my first experience of UNIX of any kind, I supported it for years, right into the 21st-century for one exceptional customer, and it caused me remarkably little pain of any kind. It was great. But it was not a mass market, general-purpose product.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      The funny thing is that Xenix was a Microsoft product. They originally licensed it to SCO who created the x86 port, then eventually sold it entirely to SCO in 1987. If things had turned out slightly differently, Microsoft's 32-bit OS in the 1990s would have been Unix.
      - lproven 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely, and what a different world it would be. OTOH, the GNU project nearly adopted the BSD4.4-Lite kernel. Then Linux would never have happened. Or, if DR hadn't been screwed over by Intel... Or, if Apple aimed the Lisa lower, or the Mac higher... Or, if Xerox knew what it had and successfully sold it... So many "what ifs"...
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      Yeah, but: OS/2 286's backwards compatibility was miserably limited. Xenix selling the networking and C compiler separately was a business decision, not a way to make anything easier for the developers. Running "just one app" was also a business decision. And contrast that Xenix stability with umpteen million other 1980's and 90's computers which did one job, with no network...but ran crash-tastic MS-DOS.

mschaef 3y ago

>At IBM’s insistence it was designed to target the 286 protected mode. > Bill Gates grumbled a lot about that,... And he was right because no interesting applications emerged for OS/2 1.x 286 protected mode wasn't the issue... Windows 3.0 was also largely built around 286 protected mode and it's where most of the interesting PC application development happened for years. OS/2's early issues were really related to the cost of the OS (x2-3 windows), the equipment needed to run it (at least 3MB RAM), and delays in both the networking and GUI capabilities. OS/2 also required a wholesale commitment to use it, due to the lack of a decent DOS story, which is in contrast to Windows (that ran on DOS, more or less).

garaetjjte 3y ago
But Windows also didn't have decent DOS story until Windows/386.
- mschaef 3y ago
  There were a couple things Windows did better regarding DOS when compared to OS/2: * Windows ran on a DOS file system, so data portability was transparent. * You could easily quit Windows to get back to something close to whatever DOS environment you had before. * There was a runtime version of Windows that could be packaged with applications (Excel mainly, iirc) to make it possible to sell Windows apps to DOS users. * Windows had support for LIM/EMS (which users might already have to run large Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets). None of this was a great way to run DOS apps under Windows, but it did make it easier to transition from DOS to Windows slowly, without a wholesale jump, and the risk that entailed. It was easier (and cheaper) for a DOS user to experiment with Windows than it was with OS/2. The lower barrier to entry is worth a lot.
lproven 3y ago
You are getting cause and effect backwards. > 286 protected mode wasn't the issue... Yes, it was. I evaluated OS/2 1.0 professionally, when it was new; did you? The 286 protected mode was an issue, because it meant that OS/2 could not multitask dos applications — exactly as Concurrent DOS could not on the shipping 286 hardware. > Windows 3.0 was also largely built around 286 protected mode Not really, no. 1. Windows 2 had an edition built around 286 protected mode. This was nothing new for Windows 3.0. The problem is that the 286's protected mode didn't deliver anything that was very useful for dos applications, and in the 1980s, DOS applications were the sole driving factor behind the PC industry. In fact, Windows/286 actually delivered one main benefit: you got an extra 64 kB of RAM. That was it. It wasn't really worth having. Windows 2 also had a 386 edition, generally known as Windows/386. That delivered the core functionality that was the useful thing in the 386 in the 1980s: hardware assisted multitasking of DOS applications. 2. You cite Windows 3.0, but that's not relevant to a discussion of OS/2 1.X, because Windows 3.0 is what happened as a result of OS/2 1.X. OS/2 1.x was a 1980s product. Windows 3.0 came out in 1990, a few months after OS/2 1.2. Windows 3.0 happened in response to the failure of OS/2 1.X, and OS/2 1.X failed because it ran on the 286 processor, when it should've run on the 386 processor — as Microsoft wanted. Windows 2 was able to multitask dos applications, in software, but the problem with doing it that way is that they all had to fit into 640 kB of RAM. And by the late 1980s, a single DOS application barely fit into 640 kB! Windows 3.x was able to multitask DOS applications as well, and it could do it on 8086, on 286, and on 386. The difference is that on a 386, each DOS application got it own 640 kB. So if you had 4 MB of RAM, you could multitask a whole bunch of them. And it sold because the single same edition ran on all three processors, so you didn't have to choose which one you needed in advance, and buy the right product. The one product did it all. And if you upgraded the hardware, you got the additional facilities, with that same copy of the software. (Remember, no product activation in those days!)

sacnoradhq 3y ago

OS/2 had both MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.x compatibility, first by running a copy of Windows in a VDM and then later through integration. OS/2 was also very damn stable. 286 protected mode was bug-ridden and lacked features. 386 protected mode fixed most of them to make it more stable and usable.