4 ms·

It's an SDK release that also contains the operating system which never shipped. Looking at the eBay photos, the whole thing is 26 floppies.

by pavlov 3y ago

CodeCompost 3y ago
I wonder if the floppies still work.
- rwmj 3y ago
  If they've been stored correctly they should do. The things that kill floppies are magnets (obviously) and damp/mold.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Suppafly 3y ago
    Even when floppies were the primary removable storage, they'd randomly go bad.
- twooclock 3y ago
  You'd be surprised! Cleared my childhood house recently and got a box of floppies. Only 3 out of about a hundred were unreadeable! Had much worse results with my old CDs. Go figure...
- scruffyherder 3y ago
  I have to admit, that I was surprised when they all came back good! We already had the SDK on 3 1/2" disks, so we could compare the contents. Oddly enough all the executables, libraries and headders are a match but the helpfiles have a different CRC, despite being the same timestamp, and size. I've installed it on 86box, and then converted the boot disk from 5 1/2" to 3 1/2" inch so I could install it on VMware and my IBM PS/2 model 80. That's another surprise I thought for sure the PS/2 drivers would be missing from the 5 1/4" disk version, but they were there! On VMware the AT version of the PS/2 mouse driver locks the system up, but I copied the one from 6.123 and it works fine. Although there is no MS-DOS sessions working. Also as a follow up on my 'dont waste money on a math co-processor' if you have the 'passthrough math' on 86box the dos sessions misbehave big time. Using the softfloat option for more accuate floats results in working MS-DOS. - Turns out OS/2 betas really did rely on a FPU!
flomo 3y ago
There used to be a guy around here who had an incredible fixation on this. I tend to believe him that Microsoft OS/2 2.0 probably did ship to some limited extent through OEMs. However, MS and IBM were already getting "divorced", and this may have been a token part of the settlement. A year later, MS shipped Windows NT.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Windows NT didn't ship until July 1993, a full three years after Windows 3.0. The OS/2 interregnum was quite long. All those years Microsoft was still selling their 16-bit OS/2 1.3 because their server software (including SQL Server) ran on that platform.
  - flomo 3y ago
    Apologies for lack of background info leading to confusion. Microsoft and IBM had a joint development agreement for many years. When they "divorced" in 1992, they both retained rights to DOS 5, Windows 3.0, and OS/2 2.0. Microsoft had NT, which was a multiuser system, unlike OS/2. Plus it had an OS/2 1.3 layer, specifically so you could migrate SQL Server. So after the divorce, MS obviously didn't promote OS/2, because they had a better thing coming.
    - lproven 3y ago
      FWIW WinNT was based on OS/2. There were 3 editions of OS/2 planned: OS/2 1.x, 16-bit, for the 80286 OS/2 2.x, 32-bit, for the 80386 OS/2 3.x, portable, for RISC and other CPU families When MS and IBM split, IBM kept 2.x and Microsoft got 3.x. It hired Dave Cutler and his team from DEC and gave them OS/2 3.x to complete. It was built on the Intel i860 RISC CPU, codenamed N-Ten. So this version was codenamed OS/2 NT. Windows 3 was a big hit and Windows 3.1 even bigger, so OS/2 NT was renamed Windows NT. Much of the world still runs it.
      - wil421 3y ago
        There’s a fantastic interview on YouTube with Dave Cutler. It’s 3 hours long but there are a few 10 minute highlight clips on the same channel. https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=Pqvm2XYwrYxNLutR https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=Pqvm2XYwrYxNLutR
lproven 3y ago
I wrote this story. Clearly I needed to make that part a lot more obvious. :-(

It's an SDK release that also contains the operating system which never shipped. Looking at the eBay photos, the whole thing is 26 floppies.

by pavlov 3y ago

It's an SDK release that also contains the operating system which never shipped. Looking at the eBay photos, the whole thing is 26 floppies.

CodeCompost 3y ago

I wonder if the floppies still work.

rwmj 3y ago
If they've been stored correctly they should do. The things that kill floppies are magnets (obviously) and damp/mold.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Suppafly 3y ago
  Even when floppies were the primary removable storage, they'd randomly go bad.
twooclock 3y ago
You'd be surprised! Cleared my childhood house recently and got a box of floppies. Only 3 out of about a hundred were unreadeable! Had much worse results with my old CDs. Go figure...
scruffyherder 3y ago
I have to admit, that I was surprised when they all came back good! We already had the SDK on 3 1/2" disks, so we could compare the contents. Oddly enough all the executables, libraries and headders are a match but the helpfiles have a different CRC, despite being the same timestamp, and size. I've installed it on 86box, and then converted the boot disk from 5 1/2" to 3 1/2" inch so I could install it on VMware and my IBM PS/2 model 80. That's another surprise I thought for sure the PS/2 drivers would be missing from the 5 1/4" disk version, but they were there! On VMware the AT version of the PS/2 mouse driver locks the system up, but I copied the one from 6.123 and it works fine. Although there is no MS-DOS sessions working. Also as a follow up on my 'dont waste money on a math co-processor' if you have the 'passthrough math' on 86box the dos sessions misbehave big time. Using the softfloat option for more accuate floats results in working MS-DOS. - Turns out OS/2 betas really did rely on a FPU!

flomo 3y ago

There used to be a guy around here who had an incredible fixation on this. I tend to believe him that Microsoft OS/2 2.0 probably did ship to some limited extent through OEMs. However, MS and IBM were already getting "divorced", and this may have been a token part of the settlement. A year later, MS shipped Windows NT.

pavlov 3y ago
Windows NT didn't ship until July 1993, a full three years after Windows 3.0. The OS/2 interregnum was quite long. All those years Microsoft was still selling their 16-bit OS/2 1.3 because their server software (including SQL Server) ran on that platform.
- flomo 3y ago
  Apologies for lack of background info leading to confusion. Microsoft and IBM had a joint development agreement for many years. When they "divorced" in 1992, they both retained rights to DOS 5, Windows 3.0, and OS/2 2.0. Microsoft had NT, which was a multiuser system, unlike OS/2. Plus it had an OS/2 1.3 layer, specifically so you could migrate SQL Server. So after the divorce, MS obviously didn't promote OS/2, because they had a better thing coming.
  - lproven 3y ago
    FWIW WinNT was based on OS/2. There were 3 editions of OS/2 planned: OS/2 1.x, 16-bit, for the 80286 OS/2 2.x, 32-bit, for the 80386 OS/2 3.x, portable, for RISC and other CPU families When MS and IBM split, IBM kept 2.x and Microsoft got 3.x. It hired Dave Cutler and his team from DEC and gave them OS/2 3.x to complete. It was built on the Intel i860 RISC CPU, codenamed N-Ten. So this version was codenamed OS/2 NT. Windows 3 was a big hit and Windows 3.1 even bigger, so OS/2 NT was renamed Windows NT. Much of the world still runs it.
    - wil421 3y ago
      There’s a fantastic interview on YouTube with Dave Cutler. It’s 3 hours long but there are a few 10 minute highlight clips on the same channel. https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=Pqvm2XYwrYxNLutR https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=Pqvm2XYwrYxNLutR

lproven 3y ago

I wrote this story. Clearly I needed to make that part a lot more obvious. :-(