Category Archives: OS/2

OS/2 on ThinkPad 850

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The ThinkPad 850 was no ordinary ThinkPad. It was IBM’s high-end portable multimedia workstation, built around a 100MHz PowerPC 603e processor, with a list price of $12,399 (February 1996). The ThinkPad 850 was originally slated (see IBM announcement letter 195-176) to … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2, PowerPC | 18 Comments

Why Won’t IBM’s MSPS201.SYS Load?

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Recently a minor mystery resurfaced. When IBM’s OS/2 1.2 SE is installed on any “normal” system (either physical or virtual) and the PS/2 mouse driver is installed (the typical choice), the mouse won’t work: The MSPS201.SYS driver is intended for … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2 | 8 Comments

Detecting an Empty Drive… Or Not

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Detecting an empty drive with a NEC uPD765A or compatible FDC is theoretically easy using the ‘drive ready’ signal. In practice, the drive ready mechanism is completely unusable on IBM PCs and compatibles due to the way the FDC is … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, PC hardware | 16 Comments

OS/2 2.0 LA and “Large” IDE Disks

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Attempting to boot OS/2 2.0 LA (Limited Availability) on many systems built in the last 20 years often results in the following crash: The trap screen claims there was an exception (Trap 0 or division overflow) in device driver A:, … Continue reading →

Posted in IDE, OS/2 | 4 Comments

The Oldest OS/2 Executable In the Wild

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Michal Necasek

While researching the history of Microsoft’s segmented-executable linker originally called LINK4.EXE, I came across an OS/2 executable that was publicly released almost a year before the first OS/2 SDK was shipped, and many months before OS/2 was even announced. In … Continue reading →

Posted in DOS, Microsoft, OS/2 | 16 Comments

OS/2 2.1 National Language Versions

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Michal Necasek

IBM’s OS/2 2.1 (1993) was shipped in a number of national language versions (NLVs). At the time, the US version of OS/2 was the “master copy” and all NLVs were derived from it.  There were two major classes of NLVs: … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2 | 7 Comments

OS/2 Beta CDs (1994 and later)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Over time, IBM released its share of OS/2 betas. In the early days, betas were distributed on floppies, but by the time OS/2 Warp was in development, things had shifted towards CDs. After all, the choice was between one or … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2 | 6 Comments

OS/2 Easter Eggs

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Michal Necasek

The 32-bit version 2.0 of OS/2 contained a hidden Easter egg with a flamingo, a boat, and development team credits. The Easter egg could be invoked by selecting the desktop (either the background or a folder) and pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+O. This … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2 | 11 Comments

Master Builders of OS/2

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Michal Necasek

The MS OS/2 videos exhibit has now been completed with the addition of two PDF documents. These are scans of two fat three-ring binders that were handed out to attendees of the Microsoft OS/2 Developer’s Conference in New York City … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Microsoft, OS/2 | 11 Comments

OS/2 for PowerPC Tidbits

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Michal Necasek

In December 1994, IBM shipped the first beta version of OS/2 for the PowerPC to selected developers. This beta included the PowerPC operating system as well as Intel-based cross-development tools that ran on OS/2 2.11 or Warp. The operating system … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, OS/2, PowerPC | 8 Comments