offer - OS/2 for the PDP-11

[madodel]

Michael B. Brutman wrote:
> 
> I'm confused about this whole thread.  I really thought that there was 
> another entire OS/2 operating system (not from IBM) that people were 
> talking about.

There was only one OS/2 and that was from IBM, unless you also count the 
early versions released as Microsoft OS/2. ;-)  Some people wonder into the 
OS/2 Usenet groups thinking it has something to do with MacOS or even 
Windows 98 Second Edition sometimes.

IBM officially killed the publicly available OS/2 line off as of a year 
ago, but they had been trying to do so since 1995.  There is an OEM release 
based on the last IBM release (4.52) with significant enhancements, called 
eComStation, which is now at version 1.2 but a 2.0 release is in testing. 
It is not Open Source and every copy sold requires a license fee to be paid 
to IBM.  It exists primarily to provide support to the many OS/2 based 
systems that many companies still run because they can't find anything to 
replace them. IBM did open source the OS/2 JFS source, but that was 
originally written for AIX, so it was a good fit for porting to Linux.

> 
> The early versions IBM OS/2 ran on the 80286 processor.  Later versions 
> required a 386 processor.  There was an effort in IBM to put it on 
> PowerPC derived boxes - I know people who worked on that, and was 
> actually jealous that I didn't get on that project.  (In retrospect that 
> was not such a bad thing.)

I have an IBM PC Power Series 830 box here with OS/2 for the PPC on it.  it 
will eventually end up in the MARCH computer museum in New Jersey.  It 
boots OS/2, which is neat but there isn't much one can do with it other 
then look at it.  There were a few minor applications ported to it, but 
there are no printer or network drivers that I have found.

Supposedly all the money IBM pored into the Taligent/WorkplaceOS/OS/2 PPC 
project was one of the reasons leading to the eventual killing off of the 
OS/2 x86 development.  I know there were in reality a lot of reasons for 
finally pulling the plug, but I wonder how much IBM lost on that project.

> 
> How on earth does something like IBM OS/2 ever get ported to a PDP-11? 
> That doesn't seem feasible.  I'd have thought that I would have heard of 
> such a thing before this thread.
> 

Good question.  That is why I seriously doubt that such a thing existed, 
but as was pointed out NT was ported to several different platforms 
including the PPC, Alpha, MIPS and even SPARC from what I have read, so I 
guess anything is possible.  There is Linux on the IBM mainframe now-a-days 
also.  Who would have imagined that a few years ago.

There was a rumor for years that IBM had win32 applications running under 
OS/2 Warp in their labs but never released the feature.  Now you can do 
that to a limited extent using an open source product called Odin, which 
was based on IBM's original work which was called DAX and Open32. 
Supposedly IBM never released it because Microsoft kept changing the win32 
API making a reliably workable product impossible.  They used it instead to 
port Lotus Smart Suite to OS/2.   That was one instance where the rumors 
were true.

Mark


-- 

  From the eComStation Desktop of: Mark Dodel

  Warpstock 2007 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada: http://www.warpstock.org
  Warpstock Europe - Valkenswaard close to Eindhoven, the Netherlands: 
http://www.warpstock.eu


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