Installing the Last Version of IBM OS/2 on the $5 Windows 98 PC

[@MichaelMJD]

Hey everyone! Thanks for watching my latest video. I'd like to thank Dashlane for sponsoring this episode. You can get a FREE 30-day trial of their Premium service by clicking here: bit.ly/2PxXthI

[@Celected]

someone big hack vpns

[@pineapplepizza1941]

How the hell do you have less than 100K subs?! You deserve way more!

[@Leonard_MT]

Can you try the official Microsoft tweak UI on windows 98

[@ebennett3655]

You know what else in NOT convenient? Advertisements in the MIDDLE of a video! Video ruined :/

[@Celected]

@@ebennett3655 just get ad blocker lmao

[@mushroomsamba82]

20+ years ago I never would have expected OS installation to turn in to a spectator sport, but here we are.

[@paulphipps8741]

When we get to `updates` as a spectator sport all will be lost!

[@northof-62]

@@paulphipps8741 Yeah like the OS/2's Fix Packs! The horror!

[@Great3gaming]

@@paulphipps8741 yeah I can imagine that

[@agdgdgwngo]

Maybe in another 20 years he'll be selling out shows.

[@randallstewart175]

As an attorney, I used OS/2 from the introduction of Warp and through the later versions. Compared to versions of Windows sold at the same time, it was faster, took a smaller footprint at a time when disk rive volumes were not unlimited, and was far more stable than Windows. IBM initially tried to market Warp OS/2 as a powerful competitor to Windows at the consumer level. Their effort was a failure because IBM failed to support independent application developers, whereas Microsoft was excellent in that regard. IBM Turned OS?2 into a PC operating system to interface with its commercial networks, particularly in banking. For years, IBM's deal with Microsoft required that Microsoft allow Windows programs to run on OS/2, but when that deal ran out, Microsoft changed its programming to be incompatible, and that was the end of OS/2 as a consumer operating system. I had to abandon OS/2 when Windows became incompatible because my business had to a particular Windows based program. Moving over to Windows 98 was like having to loose 10 years of technical advancement.

[@AmaroqStarwind]

This makes me cry...

[@a4e69636b]

What makes OS/2 better than Windows 98?

[@randallstewart175]

@@a4e69636b I thought I was clear on that point in my 2nd sentence. One additional advantage for OS/2 was its file management system, more flexible and much more open to expansion. That advantage was confirmed by Microsoft when it later launch a new file system which is a virtual copy of the IBM system.

[@a4e69636b]

@@randallstewart175 Sorry, not sure why I asked the question. You were clear. I guess in the end it comes down to available programs. Windows has many and I have yet to see any OS/2 programs ever.

[@randallstewart175]

@@a4e69636b The much better stability of OS/2 was probably its attraction for me, given that it could run all Windows and DOS programs available at the time and mutli-task perfectly; folks today probably didn't experience the frustration of having to use application switching programs on top of Windows. Since Windows through 3.1 was just a management application stacked on DOS (which has no multi-tasking capacity, there was no function. I used the best switching program at the time, and I had it crash about two times a day on average. There were a number of OS/2 specific programs, which were more business related than consumer. Of course, this bias proved to be the weakness of OS//2 in the marketplace. Being an attorney, I had a huge investment of time in developing WordPerfect 5.0 (DOS) files and merge systems, which worked perfectly on OS/2. OS/2 never had a great word processor. For me, another attraction of OS/2 was the relative ease for the user to tune the operation of the program, a relatively impossible task with Windows. IBM didn't support independent applications for OS/2. True believers developed a number of applications, one of the most interesting being a graphics and image processing program of commercial capability, which was easier to use and more stable than anything available for Windows at the time. However, IBM totally failed to support independent developers, whereas Microsoft was famous for the care and support of its independent developers. Game over once Microsoft would no longer license IBM to include Windows emulation in OS/2.

[@TanjoGalbi]

OS/2 is still in use today in many ATMs. I know this as one time I went to get some cash at my local ATM, it crashed and rebooted showing me the OS/2 Warp logo. It shredded my card as it does that at boot to make sure the card slot is clear in case it was a rogue card that made it crash (mine was legit, just bad luck) so even though I was highly annoyed at losing my card I was still intrigued to see it was OS/2.

[@kalijasin]

@Galbi 3000, 😮 WOW!

[@CasioMaker]

I can second this statement. Older ATM's in my country, specially in small towns or semi-rural areas, still use OS/2 as an OS. They are being phased out tho' with newer machines with Windows Embedded or Linux.

[@romevang]

The financial institution i work for (a very small and regional one in the US west coast) Just phased out their OS/2 ATM's in late 2017-2018. It was sad to see them go because they are way more reliable than the Windows Embedded machines.

[@gentlepersuader]

Definitely better than Windows based ATM machines that I saw with BSOD's in one part of Thailand and was told not to try and use. I took the advice and used one outside a 7-Eleven and the bloody machine ate the card. No BSOD though!

[@AndySmallbone]

At Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest we used os2 for sometime before we moved it all over to NT4

[@bobcat_the_Lion]

I worked with OS/2 for a number of years as a software developer. I think it was meant to be the successor of Windows 3.1, that's why you can still run Windows 3.1 programs (of course, older versions were meant as a successor for DOS). Both the company I worked for, as our customers thought that it was more reliable than even Windows 95/98. Only at Windows NT there became a turning point, but some customers still preferred OS/2 so we even went with with the successor called eComStation (not Workstation as I mentioned earlier). Warp 4 was really stable, we had machines with uptimes of years. Some customers refused to do a safety shutdown for 01-01-2000.

[@thekombinator5833]

Haha I used 3.1 well into the 2000s to type up assignments while my wife used the more powerful P4 for graphics design. I actually still have that 386 computer to this day. It's glorious.

[@itsthesola10]

the successor is called eComStation, basically a security LTS of OS/2 Warp 4 Also I think Windows is the odd one out, not being able to keep a reasonable uptime without slowing down or getting unstable.

[@bobcat_the_Lion]

@@itsthesola10 eComStation, that was the name! What was I thinking of with the name "Workstation"

[@itsthesola10]

@@bobcat_the_Lion to strike through text on a KZbin comment type it with hyphens on each side like .-this-. With spaces around it -gives this- .

[@datashed]

Arca Noae now produces a product called ArcaOS that continues to enhance and support OS/2 on modern hardware, sort of picking up the torch after eCS died off.

[@jdatlas4668]

Fun fact: a lot of what Microsoft built for OS/2 ended up in Windows NT. HPFS is a close relative to NTFS, and a lot of the internal design is similar. Early versions of NT even had a Subsystem that could run OS/2 applications.

[@rainersnookh]

Man I remember having a friend installing both win 3.11 and os/2 on my first ever pc back in 96 maybe. Oh how I broke everything on a weekly basis and my friend got tired of helping me reinstall so I had to learn to do it myself. It set the base for working in IT for about 20 years now. Man time sure flies. Great vid, thank you.

[@eriksiers]

20+ years ago I used a laptop that dual-booted Windows 2000 and OS/2 Warp 4.

[@andysimkin5200]

Michael, If the text is slightly off the screen when installing, on your Dell monitor where the 4 buttons are on the bottom right if you press the left button it will centre the screen automatically

[@Spyd77]

I'm not sure that Michael reads the comment section. I wrote a lengthy explanation of how those kinds of monitors work, and how to avoid those problems and he didn't reply and his videos with this monitor still have some graphic modes with bad configuration. My comment is in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sH27ZKmAnLGXqNk

[@realcartoongirl]

i think he is dont know thius

[@1nikolas]

@@Spyd77 try sending him a dm on twitter he responds there

[@Spyd77]

Michael just liked my comment on the other video.

[@stephanweinberger]

OS/2 was so ahead of it's time! I used it for some time back in the day and really loved it. It even ran DOS games with graphics in a window. On a 486. Mindblowing!

[@meleniumshane90]

Walmart still has OS/2 on their registers. I saw one being rebooted after a power outage and saw the logo.

[@miss_gray]

It's not OS/2, it's another operating system most likely IBM's SurePOS or some other similar software :)

[@meleniumshane90]

Possibly. It was a few years back. I recall seeing IBM and thought I saw OS/2. From some Googling, it's possible it was "Operating System Version 2".

[@procastnator]

OS/2 is still being worked on today, its now called "ArcaOS" Not sure who used that OS though but enough I guess to keep it going.

[@ajax700]

@@miss_gray oh boy... Calling a product SurePOS... IBM stopped being cool in pre-history, if it ever was.

[@kerryw123]

I know the logo you are talking about here, it's the IBM SurePOS as a system. The IBM SurePOS logo comes up on boot before loading the OS. Most likely running Windows POSReady 👍 I used to sell these a few years ago and every single one worked flawlessly considering they were nearing on 15 years old.

[@djross95]

I used (and loved) OS/2 back in the day. IBM's abandonment of this fine OS was criminal.

[@commentarysheep]

The five-dollar PC is basically an inside meme at this point. Like imagine running TempleOS on this PC!

[@ltxr9973]

As cool as that would be, isn't this a 32 bit PC?

[@aldebaran0_]

@@ltxr9973 yeah. Would need to recompile it for 32 bit to get it working but the rest of the OS uses jit compiling so there won't be other issues with it

[@turnip5359]

Glow in the dark

[@xSnakeBerryx]

@@turnip5359 You run the over, thats whatcha do.

[@marcp.]

This is simply amazing for a mid/late 90s operating system !

[@DavidWonn]

I kind of regret dumping OS/2 2.x from an IBM PS/2 that was thrown away from a prior job. It currently quadruple boots MS-DOS 6.22 (with Windows 3.0 & Workgroups 3.11), Windows 95, NT 3.51, and 4.0, but I’m hoping someday to add some version of OS/2 back on there.

[@davidleespicer5457]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I worked at IBM in Boca Raton and helped create OS/2 Warp.

[@datashed]

I ran OS/2 Warp v3 as my daily driver OS for many years, and my dad ran OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 before that. It was a great community to be a part of, and I still keep multiple OS/2 machines around.

[@Alex_Off-Beat]

The supermarket I used to work at used OS/2 on their cash registers until like 2014!

[@cyberp0et]

That would not need an antivirus nowdays :)

[@chillpumkin]

Great video as usual :D Btw, I would absolutely love a video on the history of OS/2 and its history with Windows!

[@mjdxp5688]

As would I.

[@titomarifrancisescano7046]

One thing I like about OS/2 (used 3 Warp before) is that it can run virus-infected DOS program and it will work as it should be expected to function and the virus won't run havoc on you and your machine. And the chess game is quite good. And it is also voice-command capable as far back as 1994

[@aeonjoey3d]

I used to love OS/2's UI, for the time, it was pretty ahead of it's time in a lot of ways that Microsoft would later, much much later, emulate - e.g. those 3D renders everywhere, gradients, skewmorphics, very obvious UI cues for clickable content vs static content, isometric faux 3D icons, folder hierarchy indicators, hell the system tray/taskbar even

[@BoyoOfficial]

I used to work at a Captain D's with IBM touch screen registers and OS/2 was the most responsive OS I've ever seen. 20 year old technology but it still holds up to this day.

[@SecurityDivision]

Funny thing is that some ATM's still run this today and banks need OS/2 developers to make and support software for it :) There are some remote management systems where banks use to update or configure ATM's automatically. They are de facto standard and usually licence and certification bound with a government institution. So that means if you want to do operations with cash, you need to have this certificate. And well - OS/2 and some of the management systems have that. So they are allowed to run on ATM's and deal with cash operations. Some ATM's actually boot to like Windows 10, but then they start a VM with OS/2 and now this VM interfaces with the ATM :)

[@ДимитърТасев-р9п]

A useful feature that I found out a long time ago: If you press the plus button on the monitor it will resize the image so that it isn't cropped.

[@396TurboJet]

I remember. The *config.sys* file felt like it was a thousand lines long and some OS/2 guru deciphered it all and posted it on his bulletin board (remember those?). I had a binder just for that documentation. Saved me more than once. I thought the Windows registry was a better way to handle that. Either way, OS/2 Warp was pretty good for it's time.

[@nigelcooper1191]

Do a history of OS/2 very soon please! Your one of my favourite youtubers by the way!!!

[@keithmcwhan8613]

Netscape Composer wasn't a text editor. It was a simple web page creator allowing you to add images, text, tables, lists etc and create inline style sheets and save them for use on your web site. It tried to be WYSIWYG but you could drop into the source code of the page, make changes and then pop back to the preview/WYSIWYG editor. I used it a few times in the '90s to quickly knock something together for the company I was working for at the time.

[@mdamaged]

4:03, the word you're looking for is "exceeds", not "succeeds".

[@macoud12]

In another timeline, we may have all been using OS/2 on our PC's.

[@stanleybowman-hood6194]

Or would they adopt the windows name or Os/10 Copyright ibm and Microsoft

[@OrtadragoonX]

Hell who knows Amiga and Atari ST would have stuck around. We may have apple M3 power amigos

[@deleatur]

OS/2 was amazing! Now I can say at that time OS/2 was like a sort of bare metal "hypervisor": You could run DOS apps and Win 3.1 (in real multitasking) and if they crashed, your OS/2 system was still running, undefeated... all in only 8MB of RAM. It took at least 10 years to a Windows version to be toe to toe, sort of, with OS/2; that is, Windows XP... which needed 256MB at least to run barely, let alone to run some virtualization.

[@melonhead122908]

It’s such a shame that this can’t be open sourced due to all the legal copyrights. It would be interesting to see how this OS would evolve in the modern Open Source wild.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

Windows was originally just a graphical user interface for DOS, and not really a full-blown operating system as such. On the other hand, OS/2 was supposed to be the "successor" to DOS, ie. a completely new operating system. That's why Microsoft didn't originally see any conflict here.

[@rudolfdvoracek]

Remember exactly installing OS2 version 4.0 in Windows 95 partition. OS2 came with itself boot manager and predicted approximately 5 MB of free space after installation. Suddenly installation ended up in cycling several screens and showing error dialog containing a message that drive C: either failed or it's damaged. There was just one interactive element. Button labelled "OK". After another few cycles reset was done. OS2 installer has been rewriting the beginning of the second, extended partition where I had all my data. Finally, Norton Disk Doctor and DiskEdit saved my life.

[@zsoltboczen5231]

I used OS/2 Warp in an FMCG company to run a DOS based ERP and some Windows based extensions. The reason why I ended up using it was that OS/2 was a lot more stable than Win3.1 and stability kinda makes sense when we run an ERP. :)

[@UnkyjoesPlayhouse]

os2 warp was wonderful, it was the first "internet" friendly OS out there. I used it for over a year back in 98 :)

[@Milnoc]

I programmed and ran a fully automated truck weighing system on this thing. It read sensors and controlled traffic lights, got the weight from the scale indicator, zeroed the scale when an arriving truck cut the sensor, did the data entry on a dumb Digital ASCII terminal with barcode reader in 16 glorious colours, printed receipts with bar codes on an Epson dot matrix receipt printer, saved all of the data in an IBM DB2 database... Today, the same system has been converted to Windows and runs under Windows 10 with Microsoft SQL Server, and has been expanded way beyond its original design specs (now takes pictures of the trucks and reads RFID tags off the trucks and trailers to fill in that data automatically). But the scale automation component still has much of the core code I had written some 25 years ago. If anyone has old OS/2 programs developed with VisualAge C++ they would like to convert to Windows with minimal headaches (not entirely headache free though -- you will need to fix some of the code), we've converted the IBM Class Library C++ SDK to work with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, 2013 and 2015, and even created our own SQL precompiler that creates ODBC compliant code that works with our object oriented ODBC C++ SDK. You can find it at oclenh.com . We *had* to do all of this retrofitting. There was simply too much code to convert from OS/2 to native Windows. It was much easier to create libraries that did all of the conversion of the original code to a format Windows could comfortably handle than it was to rewrite absolutely everything from scratch.

[@AmaroqStarwind]

Windows NT originally had an OS/2 subsystem with support for OS/2 applications, and it also supported OS/2's filesystem. However, this was removed, possibly for copyright reasons.

[@seanc.5310]

Ahh the good old days of Mosaic and Netscape... those chunky toolbars and icons make me want to write about it on my geocities page (complete w/ page visit counter of course)

[@philpots48]

Nice to be reminded of why I liked OS/2. I used OS/2 from 2.2 to warp 4.52, subscribed to a mag. I have Arca Noah in Virtualbox on Mint 20.1

[@josephnorris4095]

The OS/2 era is back when I actually loved using the Operating Systems themselves and found the applications as secondary to it. I sure do miss those days, I loved the Amiga 500 as well.

[@whatisfzeroanymore2nd]

That multiple Taskbar setup *needs* to be in Windows, honestly. That's so awesome.

[@xnonsuchx]

OS/2 was very common in a lot of point-of-sale systems and similar use systems in the 90's to early 2000's. And I believe only 3 was kinda marketed to everyone while 4 ended up only being marketed for business use. I remember there being a demo of OS/2 Warp 3 having 2 instances of DOOM or DOOM II running multiplayer on one machine to show how it could handle multi-tasking. By they way, Composer in Netscape Communicator is an HTML editor, not a plain text editor.

[@adgarza]

Michael, your Drive B is the same as Drive A. MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows give the option to use the same drive unit as A and B so you can switch diskettes and don't lose context.

[@timsteryt]

Came here to say the same. Glad I read first. 👍🏻

[@jdebultra]

I used it from version 1 to 4. I even have the latest Arca Noae version loaded on an old build.

[@manw3bttcks]

You can install ArcaOS OS/2 which is from a company that has a os/2 release with improvements for modern h/w (like GPT disk support and disk support above 2TB)

[@jbountalas]

I owned Warp versions 3 and 4. I remember installing v3 with the 40 diskettes. That seemed crazy, even at the time. OS/2 had so much potential, but MS won the marketing wars. The one thing about OS/2 that is not hype, it ran DOS and Win 3.1 programs better that Windows did. It was pretty much bullet proof. One reason why a lot of ATM machines were OS/2 based.

[@stonent]

I bought "OS/2 for Windows V2.1 years ago" It was an upgrade from 3.1 to OS/2. It was cheaper because it didn't have a 3.1 license with it. I had to make the entire floppy install since it didn't support my 1x Mitsumi CD-ROM at the time. It ran like crap on my 386sx with 2MB RAM. 2MB was the requirement, 4MB was the recommended amount.

[@WalnutSpice]

Had one of these exact PCs, pulled it from the recycling center. Caught it on fire somehow a week ago. Changed nothing, booted it up and the Quantum Fireball turned into a literal fireball, and not the good get you lit kinda fireball Addition: There's a cool OS/2 replacement shell for Windows 3.11 online that's fun to play with.

[@davinp]

I've briefly used OS/2 warp when the community college I attended decided to install on the computers in the library instead of Windows 95. OS/2 may have been better than Windows 3.1, but then when Microsoft released Windows 95 that changed the way we compute. Windows 3.1 was simply a graphical shell on top of DOS meaning it was not a complete operating system. Windows 95 is a complete operating system and is easier to use then OS/2 warp

[@joshpayne4015]

I was a beta tester for OS/2 Warp version 4. I forget how, as a consumer, I got hooked up with IBM to be one of their beta testers. I reimaged my home computer, deleting Windows, to install OS/2 beta and make it my daily driver for 2 months. I provided feedback to them on things I found, and when the final version ultimately shipped I was pleased to receive a free retail copy for my efforts. What I wasn't pleased about was to find that NONE of the bugs or issues that I reported in my 2 months of testing were actually fixed or addressed in the shipping product. In the end, while I appreciated the stability that OS/2 provided, my work life and everything I needed to do so more conveniently on Windows, so having the OS/2 overhead just to be able to run Windows made no sense. If there had been more OS/2 native applications for the consumer space it may have been more compelling, so ultimately the free retail copy of Warp went into the trash can and I moved back over to Windows. C'est la vie.

[@cleverlyblonde]

If you really want to blow your mind, is when you use DDE between a Windows program and a native OS/2 application, like create a chart in Excel and paste link it into DeScribe, and then update the Excel sheet and watch the chart update in DeScribe...

[@acmild]

11:00 Is that LGR Thrift soundtrack heard playing in the background?

[@Wizardofgosz]

I ran Warp back in the day, and it's funny because at the time IBM warned against installing on Gateway machines because they had a slight incompatibility with their BIOS.

[@MichaelMJD]

Ha! That is funny. Well it’s a good thing it works on my system.

[@iamgermane]

OS/2 came with some neat stuff including a Word Processor, etc...

[@henryluebberstedt7819]

Gosh, I was a real OS/2 fanboy back then. Switched from Win 3.0 to Warp 3 in 1993. It was like a revelation. Object oriented workplace shell, light tables, sound files played right in the folder without opening an application just by double click. Templates and work folders, long file names. One could move a folder plus subfolders from one partition to another and all links to this folder and its content stayed intact. It was the first OS with an "internet connection kit" - Mail-Client, Bowser, Archie, Gopher, Telnet - right out of the box. In 1993! MS finally caught up with Windows 7....

[@wolfkindom-barry]

"Nothing ever works the first time" I can say that's true from first hand experience

[@millenniumtree]

The very first time I saw Windows 95 in person (in a computer shop), I asked the guy if it was OS/2 Warp. I had seen neither, but knew that OS/2 looked better than Windows 3.11, so that's what I thought it was.

[@louistournas120]

We had OS/2 on some computers when I was in university in the late 90s. I don't remember much what we did with it but I do remember thinking that it resembled Win 3.1 :)

[@DaletonaDave]

That blue OS/2 Warp screen in the thumbnail got my attention. That's what the CNC router I run at work still uses...

[@bsandey]

I remember back in the day, I have Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (WFW) and OS/2 Warp 3 (without Windows - You used your install of Windows). I remember that in order to use WFW to be used in OS/2, you have to install that first (on FAT drive), then OS/2. But to take it a step further, I got it working with HPFS by doing that, then creating a backup, wipe the system clean and install OS/2 (without Windows) on HPFS drive, and restore the backup with WFW installed, and you get both on an HPFS drive.

[@wskinnyodden]

Just for reference, HPFS is technically the grandfather of Windows NTFS.

[@MichaelRoehr]

OS/2 was something I wanted to try back when I was running a BBS back around 94-95! It was one of the few OSes that could multitask properly with those damn serial ports so you could run multiple instances of something like PCBoard on one machine.

[@PCWindowstechguy]

Good video MichaelMJD and I'm still trying to install IBM/os2 on VMware.

[@PCWindowstechguy]

Sorry IBM

[@ComputerTech95]

@The New Baris Berat Balci ibm is a technology company who made computer's

[@PCWindowstechguy]

But they made the os2 operating system

[@vault13dweller15]

For os/2 Virtual box is better than VMWare. VMWare has quite a few problems running os/2.

[@PCWindowstechguy]

Oh ok

[@BandanazX]

OS/2 version 3 was the only relevant version. It was the version that was a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows. It was great for multitasking DOS stuff. But once Windows95 came out, along with native 32bit applications for Windows, that ended any need for OS/2. And I used OS/2 daily from version 2.x EE to 3. Good times dialing into 2 BBS's at the same time using Telemate and my ISDN and analog modems simultaneously.

[@jesse7631]

I always thought OS2 / Warp was pretty advanced for its time. Nice video Michael!

[@realLuisGiordano]

Netscape Composer was a bundled WYSYWYG HTML editor, much like FrontPage Express in the IE4 days

[@frisbeepilot]

On Netscape Communicator, "Composer" was an HTML editor. It was decent; you could whip up a simple page pretty quickly, and customize the HTML code to your liking later on. Obviously professional web designers wouldn't use it, but hey, you wanna slap something up on Geocities real quick, Composer was just fine.

[@egmccann]

OS/2's biggest enemy wasn't MIcrosoft, it was IBM. It had its own divisions fighting against it (the hardware side making deals for WIndows, etc.) Not to mention schizophrenic support - making a game kit but not supporting it, not getting USB support... it was frustrating. OS/2 could do stuff *then* WIndows can't do *now* (Shadows, for instance, are *so* much more powerful than shortcuts, for instance.)

[@alpcns]

A good and enjoyable review of a, even today, very impressive, responsive, stable and good-looking OS. Thanks for sharing!

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

I’m pretty sure Msft and ibm worked on os/2 warp as a joint venture until msft decided to do what they always do, and pull support only to launch their own internally grown system that was fully owned by msft. NT still had some references to os/2 on it’s configured files and other obscure prompts. In the split they essentially told ibm to take a hike. The great thing about os/2 warp is that it has bullet proof multi tasking. It ran several phone voicemail systems that were multi trunk systems on cheap hardware. I suspect the multi tasking core that was developed was what msft was really after to run on windows nt kernel with dec alpha and intel systems. If you see the jump in reliability and multi tasking fluidity on nt 4.0 it was due to os/2 development. Remember, before that windows was based on dos which was task switching 16 bit base and not true pre-emptive multi tasking like os/2.

[@MadameSomnambule]

I swear, the POS computers at my local Lowes used to have OS/2 Warp installed on it, I remember looking at the monitors and wondering why it looked so different from the Windows 98 pc I had at the time.

[@CyberDragon256]

That was a really smooth, almost Linus Tech Tips like transition to the sponsor

[@johncate9541]

There was still a pretty large OS/2 community on the old AOL forums in the late 1990s, but as Win32 applications became more and more prevalent, I think most of the OS/2 enthusiasts gave it up and adopted Win9x instead. Because OS/2 was developed at the same time as Win 3x, it was, as this shows, completely compatible with the Win16 APIs. I believe it was possible to make Win32s run on OS/2, but Win32s was a kludge even on 3.1. I can't imagine it did very well on OS/2.

[@HouseOfFunQM]

Microsoft seriously should've dropped Windows for this. So much more usable, or maybe it's just aged better than Windows 95...

[@TheSulross]

it needed a higher res screen to look better Haiku, which is based on the mid to late 90s OS, BeOS, has a retro look but it actually looks rather pleasing today. The higher res displays that came later on help out a lot. The other thing I didn't like (OS/2 or Win3.x/WinNT) was the backward slash vs forward slash for file path separator - and driver letters. The Unix-style file system conventions are much better than the hold over to MS-DOS that both Windows and OS/2 stuck with.

[@stormweaverr]

this channel wouldn t be this channel without that pc

[@azmax64]

I remember the old machines I had way back when. Usually asked at startup if we were sing Windows or OS2. I never knew what OS2 was. Now I do.

[@azmax64]

Sing=using. Love the ability to edit typos on youtube. Stellar.

[@RobertDeloyd]

I'm downloading Warp OS right now... I like the old stuff. Never did get to run Warp back in the day because most computers at the time came out with Win 95 already installed :)

[@TanjoGalbi]

You never knew PC's with a single floppy drive treated it as both drives A and B?! It means swapping disks a lot when you have software accessing both drives at the same time but it is a common feature to most PC operating systems and some non PC systems like the Atari ST or the Amiga (The Amiga does not label drives as A and B so you can actually swap as many disks as you need open in the OS).

[@ciach0_]

Thank you for uploading a video. This operating system is something else. It's something else.

[@rebeccaschade3987]

I was actually an OS/2 user back in the mid 90's. I used OS/2 Warp 3 on my 486, and later for a while on my Pentium 120. It was amazingly much better than Windows at the time, but unfortunately, there was some shortage of software for it, especially for a young teenager living in a small town with no computer stores etc. Never any OS/2 freeware or shareware on magazine cover disks, stores only selling a few games for DOS (at the time), and highly limited access to new drivers etc, so eventually, I had to swap to Windows 95.

[@Xerdar36]

OS/2 was not a bad OS...

[@shadowopsairman1583]

Better than W10

[@ambien2595]

@@shadowopsairman1583 legit

[@tomservo5007]

@king toaster11 terrible? I was able to download files from a BBS at full speed in the background while having Lotus 1-2-3 or other apps running. Have you used Windows 3 before?

[@Xerdar36]

Tom Servo I agree... it was one of the first OSs that was good at multi tasking.

[@jcordoneable]

I remember installing it back in the days of Windows 3.1. My God was OS/2 more stable! Unless you actually used it back then, it's hard to understand the improvement it actually was. Especially considering that Windows 3.1 didn't have preemptive multitasking while OS/2 did. Now, along with Windows (all versions), OS/2 is a relic of its time.

[@ThomasKrul]

As a Unix and Amiga user back in the day, OS/2 Warp was the closest we got to intelPC OS perfection... well, until NT which was at least fast.

[@attrakt_]

looking forward to get a retro pc for old experience.

[@Pilotgeek]

Look around at friends and family. Someone might just have an older system they want to get rid of for cheap / free.

[@dartsma464]

Why do OS2 multitask so well? In my memory it especially do things like formatting floppies a lot better than newer OSes like Win NT, 2000 and XP

[@GBlastMan]

it could be great to have a video that talks about the story behind OS/2 and Microsoft and IBM developing it and all that jazz, i really dig this old style of OS like how i always liked the old Gnome Linux with all that stylized GUI and very 90's style overall.

[@MichaelMJD]

Yeah it’s an interesting story for sure! Definitely want to cover it at some point

[@mrkattm]

you never mentioned OS/2 SOM, the system object model that associated programs and data files instead of using file extension also another big feature was shadows of files vs copies of files.. it was definitely ahead of its time

[@TheJuggtron]

Funny that some of the functionality in OS/2 didn't appear until XP or even Vista. To a certain extent we really haven't recovered from the Wintel monopoly of the 90's.

[@manw3bttcks]

Believe me OS/2 when it first came out was painful to install because it was entirely on 1.44M floppies and you had a ton of them in the box it came in. You had to load floppies one by one and it took quite a while. I tried every OS2 version from 2.1, then 3, then 4. When the CDROM version came out like shown here it was so much better to install, just those two floppies and then you'd load the CD

[@KaraokeDuov2]

I have a suggestion. There are video's all over the net for game emulation and some of those include DOS games. How about doing a video showing some DOS game play with that IBM OS? Grab some floppies and load em up. I think that would be cool.

[@tomcox2490]

Is that Jeff Goldblum narrating? I used OS/2 Warp 4 at a small automated test manufacturer in the early 2000s.

[@lapasty1]

I used OS/2 3.0 red pack and 4.0. Having WIn-OS2 was a nice feature for users, but at the same time it was a curse for OS/2, as software vendors had less necessity to make applications for OS/2...

[@youreperfectstudio4789]

Os2 was friggen awesome especially compared to win 3.1

[@MichaelMJD]

Yeah it’s a cool OS for sure!

[@r0kus]

Yes, I would be interested in a video about OS/2 and its history. IMO, Microsoft pulled one of the biggest back-stabs in tech history. For years they, including Bill Gates himself, were publicly stating "OS/2 is the future." Thus the major application developers like Lotus, WordPerfect, Corel, etc, spent millions developing OS/2 versions of their software. Meanwhile, Microsoft didn't spend a dime making OS/2 versions of its applications. They were all undergoing Windows development exclusively. So when Microsoft finally did announce they weren't backing OS/2 any more, no one but them was ready with their business apps. The final insult was from IBM itself. One week before the Windows 95 release, IBM officially announced OS/2 would no longer be under active development except for maintenance. They folded rather than competed, even though OS/2 was the superior product. I believe part of IBM's actions here was due to an internal civil war. IBM in the USA was made up of a hardware group and a software group, and they didn't always see eye to eye. For example, IBM Thinkpad portables could not be bought with OS/2 pre-installed. The software group even ran two-page spreads in the major computer magazines, imploring customers to "Demand OS/2 on your next portable.". I tried, called the IBM store, but they wouldn't sell me a Thinkpad with OS/2. I told the salesperson about the ad, and she just replied, "Yes. We wish they hadn't done that." It wasn't long after that the IBM shut down their software group in Florida. The hardware group leadership probably chose to screw the software folks because their golf club partners told them having two major business operating systems competing would be inconvenient. --- a disgruntled OS/2 supporter

[@Mtik333]

For obscure systems like this OS/2 maybe some dumb test like running Doom would be a good feature in videos?

[@jdebultra]

I played the DOS version of it in a full screen DOS session. OS/2 had a very comprehensive setting adjustments for the DOS program.

[@AngelaTheSephira]

"Problem Determination Tools".... I need these.

[@notsocc]

I'm trying this on an old Sony Vaio laptop. Did you have a long wait from the blue warp screen at 5:06 to the screen at 5:08? Mine seems to have frozen at the blue screen but not sure if I should have been a little more patient and waited? Great videos. Seems Warp was indeed ahead of windows in terms of usability at the time.

[@MichaelMJD]

I had that happen with Warp 4.0 but was able to get it to work using Warp 4.5.2.

[@DavidSolimano]

I have OS/2 2.1 on floppies, and installing it is . . . very exciting, like watching paint dry. Getting Warp on CD was fantastic.

[@egbront1506]

You forgot the best bet. Getting to diskette number thirty-whatever and then the next one was faulty. Great waste of an hour sitting by the computer.

[@DavidSolimano]

@@egbront1506 I had blocked that out of my memory but you have restored it 😂

[@rd946]

Back in the day, I ran a 2-line Wildcat! BBS on OS/2. Good times.

[@ziiofswe]

I used 2.1 for a while, that came on a bunch of diskettes... but Warp 3 was mainly on CD. I remember because they handed them out like candy. I think I still have a whole bunch of them in a box in the basement somewhere... Therefore I imagine Warp 4 would've been primarily on CD too... (But the source files on said CD's may still have been floppy disk images, of course.) Warp 3 Connect (with network support) costed extra though.

[@EzraPedersen]

You can create the floppies from the images on the CD-ROM. I did that back in the day, because OS/2 installation did not like my Aztec CD-ROM.