More MS OS/2 2.0

Over the last few weeks, two “new” pre-releases of OS/2 2.0 have been found in ancient warez archives.

The first is OS/2 2.0 build 6.64, released in early April 1990:

In general, this build is not substantially different from the MS OS/2 2.0 Pre-Release 2 (build 6.78) from June 1990.

The READ.ME file on the installation floppy opens with the following:

README for OS/2 SE Version 2.0                IBM CONFIDENTIAL
Driver 6.64 - shipped 04/06/90

Driver 6.64 is the third scheduled monthly update of OS/2 Standard Edition
Version 2.0.  This is an update of the BASE Operating System, the ToolKit
and the Languages.

Sadly only the base OS has been preserved, not any of the development tools.

As the READ.ME file suggests, this pre-release was part of some kind of closed beta program run by IBM which shipped monthly updates.

It is unclear if IBM even distributed these builds on floppies; it is quite likely that some or most customers received floppy images electronically. If IBM did ship these betas on floppies, they were likely fairly nondescript disks, not intended for any kind of wide distribution.

Build 6.64 is as of this writing (June 2024) the oldest surviving pre-release of OS/2 2.0.

MS OS/2 2.0 PR3

From the other end of the spectrum is Microsoft OS/2 2.0 Pre-Release 3, build 6.123. This pre-release is from February 1991 and it was the last (third) Microsoft beta of OS/2 2.0.

Build 6.123 has been seen before, in a curious packaged IBM release from April 1991. But that box only contained the base OS, not any of the development tools.

The warezed archive of Pre-Release 3 includes the entire disk set, very similar in content to the recently archived MS OS/2 2.0 Pre-Release 2: Base operating system, Toolkit, Languages (Microsoft C and MASM), networking, and debug support.

Several disks (notably the installation floppy) were archived in the form of TeleDisk images, easy to convert into raw floppy images. However, most disks were stored simply as ZIP archives; this makes it possible to restore fully functional but not quite original floppies.

One obvious change from Pre-Release 2 was a graphical Toolkit installer which set up the entire development environment including the 32-bit C compiler and assembler:

Once the Toolkit is installed, everything is in place: Development tools, sample programs, online documentation (in both QuickHelp and INF format).

The installer sets up all the necessary environment variables in CONFIG.SYS, creates desktopp groups, and after a reboot, the development system is ready to go.

As is apparent, the look and feel of this build doesn’t quite look like anything else. It somewhat resembles Windows 3.0, but doesn’t really look like either OS/2 1.2/1.3 or like the released OS/2 2.0.

Here’s the development system in action:

A 32-bit debugger (CodeView) was included as well:

I believe the Microsoft C386 compiler version 6.00.054 is the version that IBM kept shipping as part of the OS/2 DDK until the end of OS/2.

The development system in Pre-Release 3 appears significantly more polished than Pre-Release 2, while the base OS doesn’t really look all that different.

The networking components (LAN Manager client) do not install cleanly, just like in the PR2 beta; however, this time a README file told users what to do—rename several networking related DLLs in the \OS2\DLL directory, so that the networking setup is not confused into thinking that networking is installed already.

Unfortunately I was not able to get the networking going, unlike the PR2 beta. All attempts ended up in the OS crashing. Whether the networking actually worked in the PR3 beta is an open question.

All in all, this is quite a find—a year ago we had no MS OS/2 2.0 pre-releases, and now we have two out of three (Pre-Release 2 from June 1990 and Pre-Release 3 from February 1991). I’m sure there is more out there.