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 Microsoft originally made OS/2's software development kit available to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 Mail (either native OS/2 or DOS version)
  • Microsoft C Programmers Workbench
  • OS/2 SDK 1.0

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.

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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