[HN Gopher] Gordon Letwin OS/2 Usenet post (1995)
___________________________________________________________________
Gordon Letwin OS/2 Usenet post (1995)
Author : walterbell
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-12-06 04:50 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gunkies.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (gunkies.org)
| orionblastar wrote:
| OS/2 2.X was superior to Windows 3.0 but lacked the apps and
| marketing to compete with it. IBM Client Access/400 for DOS ate
| into the 640K layer and OS/2 used Extended RAM to keep more of
| the 640K for WIN-OS2 and DOS programs. Once Microsoft released
| Visual BASIC for 16-bit Windows, IBM had nothing for OS/2 mode
| like Visual BASIC. Borland had Delphi and Turbo C++ for Windows
| 3.0 but not for OS/2.
|
| OS/2 started as Advanced DOS at Microsoft and IBM, by the way. An
| open-source project called OSFree (OS/3) wants to write OS/2 from
| scratch: https://osfree.org/
|
| At my employer, I had to downgrade OS/2 2.X systems to MS-DOS 6.2
| and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 before OS/2 Warp 3.0 and Windows
| 95 came out. Microsoft also had affordable license fees for DOS,
| Windows, and Office. We had to have everyone on the same OS for
| compatibility reasons and OS/2 lost out.
|
| You can still buy the OEM version of OS/2 here:
| https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/
| cloudsec9 wrote:
| Slight correction - there were some Borland tools for OS/2, but
| after the split MS stopped putting out new tools; but IBM did
| have some interesting compiler stuff too.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualAge
|
| _> In 1992, Apple and IBM cofounded Taligent, based upon
| Pink, an operating system with a mass of sophisticated
| object-oriented compiler and application framework technology
| from Apple. Pink became CommonPoint, the partnership was
| dissolved, and CommonPoint was absorbed into VisualAge
| starting with the Compound Document Framework to handle OLE
| objects in VisualAge C++ 3.5 for Windows. In February 1997,
| the first mass release of Taligent technology came in the
| form of the Open Class within VisualAge C++ 4.0 ... The
| original prototype which led to VisualAge was an attempt "to
| make something like the NeXT interface builder" within the
| Smalltalk/V development environment._
| lproven wrote:
| > IBM Client Access/400 for DOS ate into the 640K layer and
| OS/2 used Extended RAM to keep more of the 640K for WIN-OS2 and
| DOS programs.
|
| Nah.
|
| OS/2 1.x was a native 80286 OS and it used one big block of
| 16-bit RAM. It did not have the concept of "Extended memory"
| (XMS) -- that was a DOS and Windows 3.x thing.
|
| I was working with this stuff at the time, too. :-)
| shrubble wrote:
| This is typical self-serving MS-speak.
|
| What actually happened is that:
|
| a) Microsoft, then a tiny fraction of what it is now, took $400
| million from IBM in co-developing OS/2 and put the profit from
| that money into Windows 3.0 and later NT (funny how developing NT
| cost only a stated $150 million just a few years later and the
| main cost is in software developers)
|
| b) When Windows 3.0 did well enough in the market, MS did what
| they have always done - they figured out how to break their
| agreement with IBM, and take their own stuff that they owned 100%
| and run with it. This is a pattern seen _everywhere_ at all times
| with MS, ever since the Ed Roberts / MS BASIC days in
| Albuquerque.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Bill Gates really was a shrewd businessman, and never had a
| problem with being malignant if it suited his needs. He just
| did his sort of dirty deeds with a friendly facade.
|
| I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to Gary Kildall.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm curious, what did Bill do to Gary?
| frankacter wrote:
| The background is a bit complicated, but the high level is
| that many believe Bill Gates stole MS-DOS from Gary to
| license to IBM.
|
| The nuance is that IBM contacted Bill first, who he
| directed to speak with Gary. While Bill was under NDA, he
| did give Gary a heads up "Someone is coming to see you.
| Treat them well, they are important people." Gary did not
| and missed their visit and IBM went back to Bill.
|
| Bill then bought Q-DOS (a rip off of Gary's DOS) for $75k
| and rebranded it MS-DOS and licensed it to IBM.
|
| There is more to it, but that is the high level.
| tomcam wrote:
| Minor corrections: Gates bought Q-DOS for $50k and Tim
| Paterson, who wrote it, was happy to sell at that price
| and never felt ripped off. I worked with Tim at Microsoft
| and asked him about these points myself.
| ido wrote:
| That doesn't sound that malignant?
| canucker2016 wrote:
| The story I've read on the net is, (mostly from
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-rise-of-dos-how-microsoft-
| got... and https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-
| pc-history-part-... and following parts and https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_syst...) :
|
| IBM visited Microsoft about the computer languages and
| apps for their new PC. When IBM asked about an OS as
| well, Bill Gates, following the gentlemen's agreement
| that MS had with Digital Research, deferred to Digital
| Research, telling IBM that they should go to Gary Kildall
| at Digital Research for an OS. Bill Gates gives a vague
| heads-up to Gary Kildall about a meeting with some
| important people soon.
|
| There's a lot of she-said-he-said about the initial IBM-
| Digital Research meeting. Gary wasn't there at the start,
| his wife handled the meeting. In the end, Digital
| Research treated IBM as just another OEM - if IBM wanted
| CP/M, they'd pay the same royalty rate as any other OEM.
| The IBM folks weren't keen on paying a royalty per OS
| license installed. Plus, their Project Chess PC didn't
| use an 8-bit CPU. They'd need an OS that could run on a
| more recent CPU (16-bit or more), And they needed it fast
| - Project Chess was going to ship in one year, so Digital
| Research had less than one year to get a 16-bit OS
| shipping. Gary Kildall wouldn't commit, so IBM walked
| away empty-handed.
|
| IBM met with Microsoft again and mentioned that IBM
| hadn't signed a deal with Digital Research. If there was
| no OS, there would no IBM PC and no revenue from
| licensing MS-BASIC et al. One of the Microsofties
| mentioned that they knew of an OS for the Project Chess
| PC, Intel's 8088. Did IBM want it? IBM said yes.
| Microsoft offered to act as a go-between or IBM could
| deal directly with the new OS company. IBM told Microsoft
| to handle everything.
|
| When it came down to paying for the OS, PC-DOS, Microsoft
| offered several options:
|
| - per PC license royalty
|
| - flat fee for a non-exclusive license with unlimited
| installs
|
| IBM chose the flat fee, which meant less accounting work
| over time, but we all know what that "non-exclusive"
| would enable - PC clones.
|
| IBM would charge a relative pittance for their PC-DOS,
| $40. Digital Research came through with CP/M-86 for the
| IBM PC, but they were charging much more, almost $200
| more, and shipped six months after the IBM PC launched.
| IBM paid $45K to Microsoft for PC-DOS, so after the first
| 1,125 PCs, PC-DOS revenue was pure profit for IBM.
|
| Digital Research finally relented and lowered the price
| of CP/M-86 after one year, but IBM released the IBM XT
| and PC-DOS 2.0 with support for hard disks,
| subdirectories, etc.
|
| But a couple of months before either of those events, an
| app written in assembly language was released for PC-DOS
| - Lotus 1-2-3.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| One other thing to note is that QDOS only existed because
| SCP[0] needed an OS for their own 8086-based computer and
| CP/M-86 was basically vaporware.
|
| [0] Seattle Computer Products, not a front for the SCP
| Foundation
| WalterBright wrote:
| Gary's DOS is also quite similar to the PDP-11 operating
| system.
|
| I tried using CPM-86 for a while, and gave up on it. It
| was clearly inferior to MS-DOS.
|
| Nobody has ever been able to show a sequence of code in
| MS-DOS that was ripped off from CPM.
|
| Gary got first swing at the bat for a deal with IBM.
|
| > Bill then bought Q-DOS (a rip off of Gary's DOS) for
| $75k
|
| It was $50K. Some years later, Microsoft paid him a few
| million dollars more to settle any potential future
| claims Tim might have made.
| shrubble wrote:
| Tim Paterson has basically said that he bought a book on
| CPM and then renamed the API calls for QDOS. For instance
| (hypothetical example) if CPM had "OpenSerialPort" then
| Paterson might have created the same API but named it
| "SerialPortOpen". Note I'm not saying that Paterson did
| anything illegal.
|
| This is an interesting video but I am not able to
| determine what series it is from: https://dai.ly/x2xzxzo
| it does have interviews with Gates, Ballmer, Paul Allen,
| Tim Paterson, and Jack Sams of IBM etc.
|
| Tim Paterson appears about 5m50s into the video and
| directly states that he had a book on CPM and used that
| as the basis.
| achairapart wrote:
| He has been asked his whole life if was true that he was
| out flying his plane when IBM representatives showed up at
| his office.
|
| https://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bill-
| Gates...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That doesn't answer the question, of course. It doesn't
| sound like Gates did anything wrong or even questionable
| here.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to Gary
| Kildall.
|
| You mean try to encourage him to take a good deal and instead
| Gary blew it? How is that Bill's fault in any way?
| nradov wrote:
| R&D funding provided by IBM wasn't classified as "profit". The
| Windows NT code base didn't use much from OS/2. In the end OS/2
| was mostly worthless garbage to be thrown away; it had some
| good functionality in a few limited areas but was essentially a
| "local maximum" and had no viable path forward. If anyone
| wanted to turn OS/2 into a viable modern OS they would have had
| to start over from scratch.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Can you be a bit more explicit in describing what the
| problems were? I don't immediately see why that wouldn't
| apply way more to Windows at the time. I did not use OS/2
| much, but.. I did write some communication software so that
| we could work on a remote computer (this was via X.25, which
| was the option at the time for companies staying connected),
| and that was easy. Modern, I would say. Thread model easy to
| work with. I wrote a DMA driver as well. Again, a great API
| to work with, and overall a good experience. The user
| interface (GUI)? Any problems? A roadblock for the future?
| Can't really remember how it worked, but again - compared
| with Windows (even NT, which came about later), I can't
| recall anything "worthless garbage" with no path forward.
| pavlov wrote:
| It sounds like the grandparent poster is maybe talking
| about OS/2 1.x, which was definitely hamstrung by 286
| compatibility.
|
| But OS/2 2.0 was practically a 32-bit rewrite of the entire
| system with a new GUI too. It certainly was competitive
| with the first versions of Windows NT.
| nradov wrote:
| The most fundamental problem with OS/2 is that it wasn't
| designed as a multi-user OS from the start. It had some
| multi-user functionality but there were core architectural
| problems that made it impossible to move forward without a
| complete rewrite.
|
| On the UI side it also had a single input queue. Which was
| such a stupid design decision that I can't imagine what
| they were thinking. Fixing that would have also required a
| major rewrite.
| cloudsec9 wrote:
| I'd disagree that OS/2 was "worthless garbage", as MS would
| keep using it for several generations for their server/LAN
| OS.
|
| I'd argue that OS/2 2.x was pretty much a ground-up re-write,
| as OS/2 1.x had been written for 16-bit 286 protected mode
| and not the 32-bit 386 protected mode which the next version
| targeted. IBM did insist that the new version run all of the
| 1.x 16 bit stuff, but like DOS and Win 3.x mode this was done
| through some virtualization if memory serves.
|
| The big hurdle OS/2 faced was being memory hungry at a time
| when memory prices were still high and when the installed
| base had less then half of the required amount by default.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| To be fair, OS/2 could be run on less-beefy hardware that
| would've choked on NT 3.1.
| caspper69 wrote:
| It wasn't just memory requirements that hurt OS/2. I'd
| argue one of the biggest hurdles was IBM couldn't stop
| being IBM for even one second to do any reflection on the
| realities in the PC market. They still thought they were
| going to have a renaissance with 386 PS/2 systems for
| goodness sakes.
|
| And man were they expensive. $195 for OS/2 2.0. That's
| about $434 in 2024 dollars, and the PS/2 systems that ran
| it best started north of $2k if memory serves. No one
| outside of corporate and the biggest enthusiasts were
| shelling out that kind of money for "a better DOS than DOS"
| ( _cough_ Desqview _cough_ ) or "a better Windows (3.1)
| than Windows (3.1)" ( _irrelevant_ and not that impressiive
| imho).
|
| Love them or hate them, Microsoft has always been good at
| hitting the 75th percentile, aka "good enough" and "cheap
| enough". They proved (conclusively) that customers will put
| up with a mountain of shit if you cost half of what your
| competitors do. Plus they knew how to make ISVs a lot of
| money too. IBM just couldn't get it's head out of it's ass,
| I mean the 1960s.
|
| And for the record, I salivated over OS/2. I scored a beta
| of 2.0 when I was 14 off of a BBS associate. I had an IBM
| laser printer, IBM typewriters, an original IBM PC. I
| thought back then that IBM meant quality (and to be fair,
| it did).
|
| But they didn't _get it_ and Microsoft did. Windows 95 had
| pizzaz and hype, the CD had Weezer 's Buddy Holly video
| (video!). They were working to get games running right
| under 95. They were courting all of the biggest application
| vendors. They were _doing shit_. IBM? Too busy being IBM.
| 20after4 wrote:
| OS/2 had true preemptive multitasking, which couldn't be
| matched on Windows systems until Windows 95. Far from
| worthless garbage, it was one of the only systems available
| that could do true multi-tasking on cheap PCs, at least until
| 95.
|
| I used OS/2 Warp to run a 2 node BBS on one PC in 94-95 time
| frame. The only other OS (that I'm aware of) which had that
| capability was DESQview1 and that lacked any sort of GUI.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Windows NT 3.1 which shipped in July 1993 supported
| preemptive multitasking.
| dfawcus wrote:
| There were many available in that timescale.
|
| QNX DR Concurrent CPM which became Concurrent DOS DR FlexOS
| PC-MOS
|
| I seem to recall seeing a few others advertised in
| magazines at the time.
|
| As to DESQview, it had DESQview/X as an addition.
|
| As to unique bits, what OS/2 had was memory protection, but
| then so did QNX and FlexOS, I'm not sure about PC-MOS.
| t43562 wrote:
| It was garbage while Microsoft was working on it. That NT
| wasn't garbage is due to it's being written by people from
| VMS who knew what they were doing. IMO.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| The culture clash between IBM and Microsoft is evident from
| several postings by Raymond Chen:
|
| - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220426-00/?p
| =10...
|
| - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240514-00/?p
| =10...
|
| - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240827-00/?p
| =11...
| t43562 wrote:
| That reminds me of when I briefly worked for IBM - an
| unpleasant corporate culture. I don't think it has
| anything to do with the end results, however. i.e. good
| people still ended up working for them.
|
| 1.2 was problematic and 2.0 worked. 1.2 was Microsoft and
| 2.0 was IBM. From what I have read the NT team didn't
| want any of the MS OS/2 developers - this is just memory
| - and it was related to perceived code quality or
| something like that.
| giamma wrote:
| Link to a post I wrote some time back about OS/2 and some of
| its nice and unique features
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33107065#33119146
| zvrba wrote:
| Microsoft hired Dave Cutler to develop WinNT. Prior to that, he
| worked on VMS.
| mtkd wrote:
| It might be the Showstopper book or similar one, but I seem
| to remember Cutler's core team on NT was less than 10 devs
| shrubble wrote:
| DEC sued Microsoft once they read the Windows NT Internals
| documentation, due to its similarity with VMS : https://www.t
| echmonitor.ai/technology/dec_forced_microsoft_i...
| ssrc wrote:
| Yep, if you have in one hand "Inside Windows NT" by Helen
| Custer (or one of its successors, "Windows Internals"[0])
| and on the other "VMS Internals and Data Structures"[1]...
|
| [0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/sysinternals/resources/win...
|
| [1]: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/training/
| matrix12 wrote:
| VMS++ == WNT
| msh wrote:
| Well if OS2 had succeeded we would have PC's controlled by the
| OG evil tech monopoly which have had their business dealings in
| far worse things
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust) than
| microsoft ever did.
| t43562 wrote:
| ... what does that practically matter to people living in the
| Microsoft era?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Perhaps as evidence we need anti-trust because we cannot
| rely on happy accidents like IBM allowing an upstart
| frenemy to thrive.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Two notable examples:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
|
| and Windows for Pen Computing vs. Go Corp.'s PenPoint as
| written up in:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
| wvenable wrote:
| It's funny constantly see a kind of revisionist history where
| IBM is the misunderstood underdog with the superior technology
| that was destroyed by the big bad Microsoft. When in reality
| IBM is this poorly managed monstrosity that was terrible at
| software development and destroyed their PC market share trying
| to take back the PC standard and make it proprietary to them.
| shrubble wrote:
| It's more like an opportunistic, willing to be sleazy,
| smaller company grew into a very large one by continually
| taking underhanded advantage of _anyone_ in their path.
|
| Ed Roberts of MITS/Altair, STAC, Wang (OLE, lawsuit resulted
| in MS investing in Wang), DEC (VMS, lawsuit resulted in DEC
| receiving money), to list just a few.
| wvenable wrote:
| Whether or not you spell Microsoft with dollar sign it
| doesn't make every other company the hero.
|
| History has turned OS/2 into some kind of folk hero rather
| than the bloated, mismanaged, expensive, buggy mess that it
| actually was. And Microsoft's technology was superior if
| the job of an OS was to actually run software on computers
| of the time.
| shrubble wrote:
| I didn't spell Microsoft with a dollar sign and I didn't
| portray OS/2 as a folk hero of computing.
|
| So your responses don't seem to be addressing the issues
| I raised.
| wvenable wrote:
| "What actually happened is that..."
|
| Dismisses the entire article which, as far as I can tell,
| is pretty factual.
|
| Admittedly I used your comment as a jumping off point for
| that observation about recent OS/2 commentary even beyond
| this particular topic on HN.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Soooo... how much do you know about the history of IBM?
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > Microsoft, then a tiny fraction of what it is now, took $400
| million from IBM in co-developing OS/2 and put the profit from
| that money into Windows 3.0
|
| The timing didn't happen the way you're describing it. There
| are numerous accounts of the tale of how David Weise and Murray
| Sargent got Windows running properly in protected mode as an
| unauthorized, personal side-project.
|
| https://news.microsoft.com/2000/09/10/i-found-a-cool-little-...
| munchler wrote:
| OS/2 was so far superior to Windows in 1992 that it wasn't even
| funny. Nevertheless, my company gave up on OS/2 and we had to
| port our Smalltalk application to Windows 3 instead. Someone had
| to explain segmented 16-bit addressing to me, and I was totally
| appalled.
|
| Fortunately, Windows 95 came out a few years later with the Win32
| API and I pretty much forgot about OS/2 after that. I still feel
| a bit guilty, though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In that year I finally migrated from a Timex 2068 to a 386SX PC
| at home, I could have bought a PC with OS/2 and decided against
| it.
|
| It would have required additional 1 000EUR in todays money on
| the bank credit, to get a PC with OS/2, instead of one with DR-
| DOS 5/Windows 3.1.
| invalidname wrote:
| The gist of it: IBM botched the "extend" part of embrace and
| extend. OS/2 was better but not by enough to migrate and stay. It
| had no "killer app" that drew the crowd and developers kept
| targeting Windows which OS/2 supported.
|
| Also IBM f*ed up the OEM deals. OEMs preferred Microsoft which
| wasn't a direct competitor in the PC business.
| cloudsec9 wrote:
| By the time OS/2 came out, IBM wasn't a serious competitor for
| most OEMs -- they were high end, so were mostly competing with
| the likes of Compaq.
|
| The big issue that no one is mentioning is that OS/2 needed 8MB
| of RAM to run decently, preferably more, but this was when most
| machines were 2-4MB and extra RAM was still a big cost.
| invalidname wrote:
| 100%. I ran it on 4mb and IMHO it was fine but it did need
| 8mb to shine.
| lproven wrote:
| > OS/2 needed 8MB of RAM to run decently,
|
| That's OS/2 2.
|
| OS/2 1 is the one that flopped, and nobody had 286 computers
| with 8MB of RAM.
|
| Hell, the IBM 286 PS/2 machines shipped with 1MB and they
| cost $6-7K in '87-'88!
| lproven wrote:
| Nope.
|
| You're thinking of OS/2 2.
|
| OS/2 1.x is what flopped and OS/2 1 didn't run Windows apps
| _because there were no Windows apps worth a damn yet._
| invalidname wrote:
| I am talking about 2.0 which was the IBM product mentioned in
| the post. 1.0 was still a joint product with Microsoft prior
| to the split.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| When I was a student, around 1992-93, I did shift work for
| a few months in an MS production facility in Dublin. When
| it was slack I got assigned to degaussing floppies - most
| of them were "Microsoft OS/2 Version 1.0" install media. I
| never kept any for posterity :/
| lproven wrote:
| You can download it here if you're nostalgic. ;-)
|
| https://winworldpc.com/product/os-2-1x/10
|
| No, I get your point, and in that position I'd have
| wished I kept a set, too, but it was not lost to history.
|
| FWIW a beta of _Microsoft_ OS /2 _2.0_ was found earlier
| this year and I wrote about it.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/trying_ms_prerelea
| se_...
|
| Yes, _Microsoft_ 32-bit OS /2 _two_ , not a typo.
| lproven wrote:
| OK, just checking.
|
| My point is, Letwin was wrong: it was not the apps that
| sank OS/2.
|
| The 16-bit version killed its changes, and that _did_ have
| some big-name native apps.
|
| And it didn't need 8MB -- although it would not have
| objected.
| peutetre wrote:
| > _Standardization is a big plus in the computer field. You 're
| much better off having thousands of products and vendors
| compatible with a single standard, even a mediocre one, than
| having dozens of products, one or two each for each of a dozen
| fragmented standards._
|
| A lesson North America decided to relearn the hard way for EV
| charging. Europe got it right.
|
| North America's eventual EV charging future is CCS charging with
| the J3400 plug. But it's still got a ways a go with wasted money
| on adapters and retrofits in the meantime.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Originally I 'd planned on posting this on Aug 24"_
|
| For context, Aug 24, 1995 was the release date for Windows 95. It
| was a huge deal back then. Microsoft was spending hundreds of
| millions on marketing, which was unprecedented in the software
| market.
|
| OS/2 fans had seen the writing on the wall. Everybody already
| knew what the new 32-bit consumer Windows was like because it had
| been in beta testing for years.
|
| (Things moved more slowly when a large-scale software release
| meant manufacturing millions of floppies and CDs, putting them in
| shrinkwrap boxes, and shipping them to retailers. No online
| patches either because Windows 95 didn't even include a web
| browser. So it just had to work on millions of PCs out there.)
| canucker2016 wrote:
| OS/2 2.1 had included a copy of Windows 3.x for users to run
| 16-bit Windows programs at the cost of IBM paying Microsoft for
| a Windows license. Later versions of OS/2 could use user-
| installed versions of Windows, which helped IBM avoid paying
| for a Windows license.
|
| Since Win95 used Win32 APIs, unavailable to Windows 3.1, 32-bit
| Win95-apps couldn't run on OS/2 at all. So that spanking new
| version of Office 95? Not on OS/2.
| lproven wrote:
| > Win32 APIs, unavailable to Windows 3.1
|
| "I think you'll find it's a little bit more complicated than
| that."
|
| Windows 3 _could_ run Win32 code:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s
|
| It's still out there:
|
| https://winworldpc.com/product/win32s/130
|
| It's a good way to get the old tiny fast Freecell on Windows
| 11. The FREECELL.EXE binary in Win32s runs fine on Windows 11
| x86-64. (And on Arm64 come to that.)
|
| And OS/2 could run Win32s:
|
| https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Win32s
|
| ... At least until the final version, 1.30c (IIRC) when MS
| found a way to nobble it so OS/2 couldn't run it any more.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Nitpick: Win32s was limited, and missed a lot of
| functionality. From the linked Wikipedia article:
|
| The "s" in Win32s signifies subset, as Win32s lacked a
| number of Windows NT functions, including multi-threading,
| asynchronous I/O, newer serial port functions and many GDI
| extensions. This generally limited it to "Win32s
| applications" which were specifically designed for the
| Win32s platform."
|
| There was a MS knowledge base article with the long list of
| limitations, archived here:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110524062145/http://support.m
| i...
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Not a commercially viable target for most companies. Win32s
| was a stopgap for Win32 support for lower end machines when
| only WinNT was around. Once Win95 arrived, Win32s's days
| were numbered (along with 16-bit Win 3.x).
|
| If you're designing a Win32 app for Windows 95, are you
| going to stick with the Win3.1 look and feel? No. You're
| redesigning your UI to look like a native Win95 app.
|
| Where are your testing resources targeted? Win32s? Nope.
| Win95 only.
|
| Well maybe if Win95 sales are slow, you'll do more testing
| on Win32s...
|
| Then you read https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsofts-
| windows-95-softwar...
|
| People lined up to buy Win95 at midnight on release day?
| [Before Harry Potter book and iPhone releases] Commercial
| consumer Win32s support died that day.
|
| So running Win95 apps on OS/2 2.1 running Win3.1 running
| Win32s DLLs wasn't going to be a supported platform for
| software companies.
|
| IBM didn't want Win32 apps. They wanted OS/2 PM apps.
| block_dagger wrote:
| Remember two spaces after every sentence? The good old days.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| That nonsense should have never happened to begin with. I'm
| glad it's not common now.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| How do you feel about the loss of the long s?
| Timwi wrote:
| A travesty.
| Koshkin wrote:
| That, &c.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| As an oldster, I have to force myself to not use two spaces, so
| I don't reveal my oldness to the youngsters. Once space still
| looks weird to me.
| layer8 wrote:
| Two spaces always put me off typographically in monospace.
| The sentence-ending dot plus a single space already create a
| much larger gap visually in monospace than in proportional
| fonts, and with an additional space it just becomes
| ridiculous. It would be fine in proportional font I guess.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >As an oldster, I have to force myself to not use two spaces,
| so I don't reveal my oldness to the youngsters. Once space
| still looks weird to me.
|
| People make weird claims that two spaces was from typewriter
| days to keep them from jamming or something, but honestly two
| spaces is so much more readable and it's annoying that web
| things and work processors try to remove them.
| lizknope wrote:
| I always do that when I type. It's just normal to me.
| Hilift wrote:
| In August 1995, OS/2 was already dead. Windows NT 3.1 was already
| released in 1993, Windows NT 3.5 in 1994, and NT 3.51 (Daytona)
| around the same time as Windows 95. Those NT releases eventually
| replaced Windows 9x entirely. IBM wasn't even focused on the real
| product because they were rope a doped into making the world's
| worst character-driven graphics UI.
| lproven wrote:
| Yes, but mostly no.
|
| Yes, OS/2 was dead software walking by then. That is not a big
| revelation: it is the central theme of this email, and it was
| only a year before the last ever major version of OS/2, Warp 4,
| released 25 September 1996.
|
| So, yes, we know that.
|
| What is more interesting for me is that Letwin's post misses
| the real point -- he mentions it, then moves on, not realising
| he just stated the core problem -- and that you seize upon a
| trivial, minor point of the message.
|
| > rope a doped into making the world's worst character-driven
| graphics UI.
|
| What?! _NO!_
|
| That was TopView. That was a whole decade earlier. It was
| before OS/2, before Windows 1.0, before this story even
| started. Forget TopView.
|
| TopView: March 1985 Windows 1.0: November 1985.
|
| The _only_ thing that matters about TopView is that it inspired
| DESQview, and that is entirely irrelevant to OS /2.
|
| No, it's not about UI at all.
|
| The real domino falling that killed OS/2 wasn't that OS/2 2.x
| ran Windows apps. That's a red herring. It's true but it was a
| symptom of the decline, not a cause of it.
|
| The reason why is trivial to work out without deep knowledge of
| the history, so I will parenthesize it.
|
| (OS/2 2.x didn't get native apps because it could run Windows
| 3.x apps.
|
| This means: All the important stuff was on Windows.
|
| This means: Windows was already dominant.
|
| This means: a good version of Windows was _already out_ when OS
| /2 2.x appeared.
|
| In other words: OS/2 2.0 followed Windows 3.0.
|
| This means: OS/2 _had already lost the battle_. The war was
| already won.
|
| Why? Because OS/2 1.x had flopped.
|
| Why? Because OS/2 1.x was limited to the 16-bit 80286.
|
| So? So because OS/2 1.x flopped, Microsoft launched a product
| that fixed the key weakness of OS/2 1.x. That was Windows 3,
| which _ran_ on 286 machines but _the same binaries_ ALSO ran on
| 32-bit 80386 PCS, and used the hardware to give better
| multitasking of the market-dominating DOS apps _than OS /2_.
|
| Win3 beat OS/2 1.x, because OS/2 1.x was crippled, so it
| flopped, allowing Windows to gain the upper hand.)
|
| The really important bit of Letwin's post isn't what he thinks
| it is.
|
| (And it's definitely not that footnote about text-mode UIs.)
|
| The really important bit is not Windows apps; it's why Windows
| was able to gain that dominance.
|
| It is this part:
|
| << The miscalculation came about with the 386 coming out sooner
| than we expected. [...] When the 386 did come out earlier than
| expected and we saw what was happening, Microsoft wanted to
| abandon OS/2 1.0 before it was released and work on a 386-only
| version, one that would be able to emulate more than one DOS
| box and do a better job, at that. >>
| maximilianburke wrote:
| From what I understand, IBM didn't want to make the leap to
| 32-bit earlier because they were still making a boatload of
| money selling 286-based computers (PS/2 50, 60)
| lproven wrote:
| They were indeed. At that time I was installing and setting
| the things up.
|
| 99% of them ran plain unaugmented PC DOS 3.3 and DOS apps,
| and the customers didn't give a fig about OS/2.
|
| IBM lost a $multi-billion market through its short-
| sightedness, and if it had more vision, it could have
| couriered a 386 planar to every 286 PS/2 owner who wanted
| OS/2 and sent an engineer to install the board and then the
| OS... and _still_ made more money overall.
| unwind wrote:
| As someone with both feet in the embedded development world,
| reading this from 1995 is fun:
|
| _Note that even the RS232 port itself is a standard. And an
| inferior one; sending stuff at 9600 baud over a 7 wire connection
| is a travesty by modern standards._
|
| Note: RS232 is still around, and still relevant on modern
| systems. Not perhaps "actual" RS232 with the large voltage swing
| and negative voltage, but the UART signalling.
|
| Also, I wonder what he would have preferred, USB was really
| really young then.
| relaxing wrote:
| There were some SCSI modems at the time.
| lizknope wrote:
| Around 2010 I met a former coworker for lunch and he told me
| how they were running serial stuff really fast. I told him I
| was also working on high speed serial stuff. I asked him how
| fast and he said 115 kilobit/s. I told him I was working on 8
| gigabit/s or around 70,000 times faster. At that point I had
| not used RS232 in over 10 years. I have a friend who still uses
| RS232 for lots of industrial factory type stuff in 2024.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Nitpick: USB 1.0 wasn't released until 1996.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I shared this 2 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30324595
|
| Long story short: Gates and Microsoft were in domination mode and
| everybody else was in experimentation mode. Microsoft's
| management are par excellence opportunists.
|
| And if I recall correctly from watching one of the Bill's
| interviews from the 1990s, he even couldn't believe and wrap his
| head around why IBM didn't do the OS themselves and why the hell
| they decided to outsource it to Microsoft.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Gordon's book 'Inside OS/2' was one of the most accessible and
| well written texts on Operating Systems I've ever read.
| irusensei wrote:
| I think people blaming OS/2's failure surely on Microsoft are
| missing the point that IBM grossly mismanaged the project.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| I really liked OS/2 the way it was. And I only read half of the
| usenet post.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > The miscalculation came about with the 386 coming out sooner
| than we expected.
|
| Different times, different world.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Great bit of history.
|
| The nugget I hadn't heard before is how the 386 enabling DOS
| extenders really threw the whole product strategy for a loop.
|
| I wonder if that was a happy side effect of Intel's other goals,
| or if there was design intention to enable DOS to break the 640K
| barrier.
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