What to do with old OS/2 stuff... (1 Viewer)

[Francois Caron]

Note to admins, I hesitated to put it in the computer section because I don't even know if this antique even qualifies for it!

Pictured here is much of our current collection of books and software related to IBM's OS/2 operating system.





Not pictured is a cabinet containing various software CDs and a couple different versions of OS/2 Warp Server. We also have IBM DOS 1.0, but the 5¼ inch floppies are so old that they're now unreadable.

We haven't touched this stuff in a couple of years, and we don't plan to go back to it now that the last client still running an OS/2 version of our software has had their support terminated last year. Before we throw all this stuff in the garbage, does anyone here want this piece of history?

You must supply your own truck.

 

[Philip Hamm]

That is awesome! OS/2 was a great little OS!

 

[Paul McElligott]

Send an e-mail to the guys at the TWIT podcast. They could probably find someone to take it off your hands.

 

[Francois Caron]

Oooo! TwiTs! Thanks! I'll try that! It should make for an interesting Podcast!

 

[Scott Merryfield]

We still have our own collection of OS/2 manuals and disks at work, too. We pitched most of them, keeping just a couple of copies for nostalgia. We also pitched our Netware manuals and software (we were not a big Novell shop, though, so we didn't have much).

I'll trade you an IBM 3174 cluster controller service code manual for one of your OS/2 Warp manuals.

 

[DonRoeber]

Donate it to the library?

 

[LewB]

I'm an IBMer and remember when they gave all of us the OS/2 operating system for our personal use. I think it contained 30 some odd diskettes !

IBM still uses OS/2 on the laptop that controls it's previous generations of large (Enterprise) servers.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i have nothing to add to the thread francois, but just wanted to wish you a happy 36th year of membership on the htf.

CJ

 

[Francois Caron]

We may still have that edition. At the time OS/2 version 1.2 came out, CD-ROMs were still not mainstream yet. And when OS/2 Warp 4 came out, bootable CD-ROMs didn't exist yet. You still needed three floppies to boot the computer before it began the installation off the CD-ROM.

OS/2 did help us out a lot. Microsoft was still trying to make Windows NT a mainstream corporate product when we released our software package on OS/2. With a single PC, we could AUTOMATICALLY weigh wood chip delivery trucks on industrial scales, following the vehicles on and off the scale, ensuring the scale was properly zeroed before every operation, and recording the weight of the vehicle along with other pertinent information from a terminal. The automation component was so efficient in the days of the 286 processor (more specifically an IBM PS/2 Model 80), running two scales at the same time, both with trucks on them, would only use up about 4% of the total CPU power. Today, we can't even be sure how much CPU power the automation actually consumes; it hardly affects the CPU at all.

 

[Mort Corey]

But you have a gargantuan operating system to make up for it......multi gigabytes for an operating system???? Who'd a thunk?

Mort (who still has workable 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 IBM DOS manuals and disks...plus the 1981 IBM PC to run 'em)