Research Stream: OS/2 1.0 Explorations

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This is an upcoming set of streams to document the early versions of OS/2 including the IBM, Microsoft, and Extended Edition. The goal is to create a baseline summary of everything OS/2 is and was intended to be. Unfortunately, there's relatively little surviving from the OS/2 1.x era, and even less of the 16-bit console era.

Exploring OS/2 1.0

As Microsoft (and likely IBM) strongly believed in dog-fooding, the goal is to create example environments representing what is known about how they used. Microsoft originally made OS/2's software development kit available to

Microsoft Developer on OS/2

Microsoft used OS/2 fairly extensively in-house as it was an early adopter of the 80286, and OS/2 was used to develop itself, and Windows NT, as well as several well known applications such as Word for Windows. In effect, OS/2 is a fairly solid development platform, and provides a lot more flexibility and customization than DOS of the era.

The goal is to create an example VM with the following components

  • Microsoft OS/2 1.0 running on a 80286
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Multiplan
  • Microsoft C Programmers Workbench
  • OS/2 SDK 1.0

I would have included a mail client, but there doesn't appear to be any good preserved period correct ones.

Internally, among other things, Microsoft used the M editor, originally for DOS, with an OS/2 port being made as SDKED, which is important since OS/2 1.0 doesn't ship with an editor. SDKED should be on the SDK, but even a DOS copy of MEP should be used if needed.

For good measure of the following third-party applications. These should be 8088 based, and period correct from 1985-1988ish.

  • WordStar for DOS
  • Rogue

IBM Powered Business

While Microsoft saw OS/2 as the future, IBM wanted it as a more advanced operating system for the 286. While IBM intended it for use on their own line of PCs, they did sell Extended Edition to partners that included two, and then three major apps.

  • IBM SQL Server (which is used as the basis for non-mainframe DB2 today)
  • Communication Manager, for interfacing with other IBM machines
  • LAN Server, which was a NetBIOS server, and domain master - It wasn't in 1.0, but check when it was added.

By and large, OS/2 was a very threadbare environment, with the most advanced built in app being the E editor, and very few third party applications. OS/2 had very high system requirements for that time period, and while it needs to be backed with research, it stands to reason that IBM was mostly catering to very high end power users, as well the small and middle business groups who were on the IBM PC already.

Things To Test

Here's some various bits to test:

  • Absolute minimum hardware configurations
  • DOS/Backwards Compatibility
  • Windows 1, 2, and/or 3.x Compatibility

Stream Questions and Answers Notes

To be cleaned up a bit (and probably need to add wiki box) 

34:39 - Installing Windows 1.0
56:00 - Installing Word 5.0A - DOS
1:10:00 - Multitasking Example Word/WordPerfect
1:12:00 - Multiplan(ish)
1:24:00 - MS C
1:47:00 - Don't Install System Upgrades
2:07:00 - Windows 3.0 Installation
2:31:00 - Install IBM OS/2 Extended Edition
3:10:00 - Actually installing IBM OS/2 Extended Edition
3:31:00 - Install Communication Manager
3:37:00 - Install Database Services
3:50:00 - Introducing OS/2
4:00:00 - Tutorial on Multitasking
4:13:00 - Tutorial on Database Manager/Query manager
4:20:00 - Starting  Query Manager
4:35:00 - Trying QM/DM with 8 MiB of Memory
4:50:00 - Experimenting Low Memory

-- Things Discovered:
Windows 1.0 didn't work doesn't work under OS/2 1.0 DOS Box, but WIndows 3.x does

MS C 5.1 talked about creating a patch for IBMBIO (DOS specific file), using patch, with following notes
 - Hex Offset 1432
 - 1A -> 1C

End result broke the system entirely, might have not done it correct.

(Original comments)
 - OS/2 Patch in MSC4 talks about booting from floppy
 - OS/2 patch patches IBMDOS.COM?!

Microsoft Link/2 - 1987 Copyright

Microsoft included branded linker for OS/2; might work with DOS compiler than understands segments.

IOPL is set the YES natively on OS/2 1.0 on MSFT/IBM

CONFIG.SYS is drastically different between IBM/MSFT

Installer is drastically different from IBM/MSFT

Dates:
Microsoft OS/2 Unbranded - 12-15-1987
Tandy OEM - 4-11-88

Windows 3.0 SETUP.EXE has a family mode binary?

86Box seems to have problems with IBM 286 - worked with NEC BIOS - but unclear as to why

IBM/Microsoft Differences
 - Installer Drastically Different
 - IBM version starts to Progream Selector/MS version starts to command line

12 OS/2 Program Limit - Base Memory

Alt-Esc on OS/2 1.0 was the equivelent of Alt-Tab

DOS program is suspended when out of focus

IBM C/2 programming language (probably related to CSet/2)

Database Manager is exceptionally slow ...

DM requires exceptional amount of memory

Was the multitasking in IBM OS/2 exceptionally slow?

512 kb of XMS is the actual limit of how low it can go ...

---

Follow up stream topics:
DESQView
TOPView
- IBM PS/2 Memory SIMMS

Questions To Answer

  • What was OS/2 1.0 like to use?
  • Was OS/2 a decent development platform?
  • What were the absolute minimum requirements to use OS/2 without Presentation Manager?
  • Is this an upgrade from DOS (especially Multiuser DOS 4)?
  • How does this compare to Xenix, or other PC Unix and Unix-likes of the time?
  • What problems were visible here that were only obvious with hindsight?
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