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Os/2 warp compatibility

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gerrydoire

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Aug 25, 2008
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I was once very much into OS/2. That was some time ago.

I have a 486/66 that has OS/2 Warp on it, and it's very sluggish, 8 megs of ram, 16 bit VGA.

Without wasting alot of time, money and effort, what are the limitations in
compatibility of OS/2 Warp 3/4, going past the 486 and ISA computer era.

Any feedback on those who might have experimented with this old OS on Pentium,
PCI and later technology would be great.

One experiment I did try, I did an image of the OS/2 hard drive, then recreated the
image onto a DOM chip, 512meg, the OS booted then an error came up saying it couldn't
start the HD, could be any number of reasons, the 16 bit IDE CARD, drivers?
 
8 megs is a bit tight for OS/2. I typically go with between 32 and 64 megabytes. Unfortunately, a patch is needed to work with more than 64MB on most hardware.

I generally use a S3 PCI video card. The S3 driver works with OS/2 v3 with the hardware I have tried from Pentium (90 MHz) through Pentium III (600 MHz). The default IBM drivers are rather sluggish.

Try installing directly to the imitation hard disk. The image probably has the drivers needed for the real configuration which differs from the configuration you are using. OS/2 was not very good at handling changes to the hardware.
 
I've got a 4 gig warp 4 FP14 hdd I've swapped around a number of machines varying from a 486DX2/66 through to a celeron 900 with 64 to 256 megs of ram and scitech display driver, seemed to work ok.

Here's a link to get over the 64meg ram issue http://www.os2site.com/sw/upgrades/pcram.html

Probably just need updated drivers for the DOM. One of the Danis drivers might be the way to go http://www.os2site.com/sw/drivers/harddisk/index.html If is was me I'd be trying to install from scratch though.

The good people over at http://www.os2world.com/ have a wealth of knowledge. It'd be worth popping over there for advice as well.
 
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Yup, I've run OS/2 Warp 3 on a P3 with a bit of fiddling.

However--be prepared to add drivers as needed. I had to do most of my fiddling with display drivers to get beyond 640x480.

P1 systems should be a walk in the park.

You should also review the stuff on the OS2Site.com tips section.

It's not exactly a plug-and-go affair, but it can be done.
 
Going to "TRY" installing OS/2 Warp on a Pentium 1, the motherboard has 16 bit slots as well
as AGP and PCI, I don't expect it to work, but hey!!

I need 16 bit slots because I have a Matrox Illuminator 16 and drivers and software made
specifically for OS/2.

:)
 
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That's a good start. Do keep us posted. It's nice to see folk experiment with OSs that are'nt the standard fare. There is a dedicated Pentium section where your trials and tribulations can be documented ;)

For what it's worth I've got v3 Connect on a 486DX2/66. Mind you it has a wopping 16megs ram.
 
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I imagine you could probably get a good feel for what you're in for installing it under an emulator like VMWare server or Virtual PC (or one of the others). Most likely they'd emulate a newer processor core. I believe I had it working on a P4 or AMD Athlon before but yes it took some patches for the hard drive size and memory which I had to modify the install floppies before it was happy.

Keep in mind the newer version (spin off?) is EcomStation although not IBM controlled.
 
OS/2 Warp 4 works fine in VPC '07. I do feel that real hardware is more fun as you get to troubleshoot the random problems (like not wanting to partition a disk larger than 6 gigs).
 
I downloaded Ecomstation, an OS/2 variant that apparently is still being updated to some degree.

I plan to try my OS/2 software and hardware on it, the hardware is a specialized 16 bit ISA video card.

The computer I'll be using, a AMD K6/2 350 which has 16 bit slots, PCI slots and a AGP Slot, rocky rolly!!

I'm no computer Xpert, but I do have some clues here and there lol.

When I put in the 16 bit card, which is a Matrox Illumniator 16, a full length card. It uses no
IRQ's but it does use memory space, the computer would not boot, soo delving into my long lost
memory of how this shit works, I figured the memory this old card is using is probably interferring
with something, so going into the BIOS, I noticed ISA MEM Block Base, once I changed that,
the computer would boot.

It has been along looooooooooooooong time since I messed with this old stuff, I once had two
of these Matrox boards plus the on board VGA all running together under OS 2.1, and it
rarely ever crashed running day and night, speed wasn't a concern, the cards play back
static images 512x480 NTSC, no animation or anything, used for public broadcasting.

The Ecom OS seems to support a lot of modern stuff, lets see how it handles my old
stuff thrown in on top of it :D

From the OS/2 2.1 config.sys file:
DEVICE=C:\ILLUM2.SYS DC00 E 12

This is the video card being used:

http://th2r.no-ip.info/th99/I/M-O/51039.htm

In their day, these cards were about $3,000 each, the pro board which I also have, was about $4,500.

Photos:

a.jpgb.jpgc.jpgd.jpge.jpg
 
I ran into alot of quirks, the board was not woring well in a AGP or PCI or both - motherboard.

Mind you, the quirks could of been solvable if I had vaster knowledge of OS/2 and the board itself.

Going to go down a level to VESA...
 
I have a working P1 100mhz mobo (SiS chipset) with 4x PCI and 4x ISA(16) (some are shared) with 32mb ram I would be willing to donate (including shipping) to the effort if it will help. I eventually plan on trying to do ecommstation on my P1-233/mmx so I can run my old WWIV BBS on it, so I would definitely be interested in the results. PM me if you want the P1-100.
 
I've installed both the original E-comstation demo and OS/2 warp 3/4 on a Dell Optiplex GX110 about ten years ago for S&G's. Dell still supports the OS/2 drivers for that particular machine on it's website. That's probably the fastest non-IBM machine that you are going to find with factory support, topping out with a Socket 370 1 Ghz P3 and 512 MB sdram (i810e chipset). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) this machine doesn't have an AGP slot, so graphics are going to be somewhat limited, but there are lots of PCI slots on the minitower.

IIRC, I did have to perform the install for Warp 3 with less than 64 MB of RAM, despite the Machine's BIOS having an OS/2 memory setting
 
The Thinkpad T30 had OS/2 Warp 4 support I believe, as I remember IBM having a OS/2 Drivers section for it. Being a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 it should run quite well, I wanted something faster than Windows so I had Debian on the one I was using.

I feel like trying to get OS/2 Warp 4.52 installed on one of the 2 Dells I have here, a Precision M60 and a Latitude D600, gives me an excuse to use the last 2 CDs and get more :p.
 
gerrydoire said:
It has been along looooooooooooooong time since I messed with this old stuff, I once had two
of these Matrox boards plus the on board VGA all running together under OS 2.1, and it
rarely ever crashed running day and night, speed wasn't a concern, the cards play back
static images 512x480 NTSC, no animation or anything, used for public broadcasting.

The Ecom OS seems to support a lot of modern stuff, lets see how it handles my old
stuff thrown in on top of it :D

From the OS/2 2.1 config.sys file:
DEVICE=C:\ILLUM2.SYS DC00 E 12

This is the video card being used:

http://th2r.no-ip.info/th99/I/M-O/51039.htm

In their day, these cards were about $3,000 each, the pro board which I also have, was about $4,500.

Photos:

View attachment 8982View attachment 8983View attachment 8984View attachment 8985View attachment 8986
Click to expand...

Just curious, what for do you use such a video card today in your OS/2 setup?
 
Compgeke said:
Coolness factor.
Click to expand...

Yes, I get that. But the "play back (of) static images 512x480 NTSC (...) for public broadcasting" seems like an untenable goal nowadays...

I mean, hell you can use today a 386 Xenix machine with a modem to communicate using dial-up and UUCP with other computers also on a dial-up line (that you have set up yourself, for example in your country house, for the shake of it, AND IT WILL WORK), but "public broadcasting of NTSC" does not look like a hobbyist achievable thing to me...
 
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