[HN Gopher] Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking fo...
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Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding
and archiving
It's amazing how software from a major company that is less than 30
years old can get lost & forgotten so fast. Building on a 2022
post about finding a copy of the long lost Slovenian OS/2 Warp 4 -
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/slovenian-os-2-warp-4/ - some fellow
software archaeologists have concluded some other localization
editions are still missing - copied from the post's comments: --
OBattler says: December 8, 2024 at 9:53 am It turns out Slovenian
isn't the only version missing of OS/2 Warp 4.0 - Portuguese
(Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil) are also missing, as are Dutch,
French, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and a non-trial version of
Hungarian. OBattler says: December 8, 2024 at 10:01 am I just
found FixPack 5 for OS/2 Warp 3.0 (or at least, references thereof)
Arabic, French (Canada), Hebrew, Thai, Turkish, and, apparently,
also Bulgarian and Lithuaian! So OS/2 Warp 4.0 must have also
existed in these languages. Source: https://ecsoft2.org/system-
fixpacks-and-patches -- Anyone who can help find these CDs and
help the os2museum.com preserve them (and optionally upload them to
archive.org, too) is very welcome to join our cause. Also looking
for any (ex)IBM employees thst worked on the OS/2 localization
projects and can help with this! Marko Stamcar Computer History
Museum Slovenia
Author : markostamcar
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-12-15 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
| larodi wrote:
| What is the official IBM statement on this (or MS one, as it was
| a joint project, right?)
| markostamcar wrote:
| In regards to what? Software preservation? I think every vendor
| should value it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| OS/2 Warp was long after Microsoft had anything to do with OS/2
| danielktdoranie wrote:
| Good luck!
| markostamcar wrote:
| Thanks! It's really hard to find any info online and even for
| the Slovenian version we just have a copy of a copy of the
| original installation CD and no photos of the original
| localized materials exist online.
| danielktdoranie wrote:
| Yeah it's really odd how much OS/2 software has been lost
| considering the last IBM release of OS/2 Warp was only
| December 2001. Thanks for your work. Personally, I am
| currently debating buying a ThinkPad T23 or T30 and dual
| booting OS/2 Warp 4.51 and Arca OS 5.1
| mikerg87 wrote:
| I cross posted a reference to this on 2SB
| (https://twostopbits.com/) in case someone over there knows
| something that might be of assistance.
| markostamcar wrote:
| Great, thanks!
| squarefoot wrote:
| If you are comfortable/allowed to use torrents, you may want to
| try this magnet link:
|
| magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d981a11797c174ab90d5567bcb47e09da70a3451
|
| It contains 29+GB of OS/2 related stuff, including official CDs.
| Just found by searching at the usual shady places, so no
| guarantees about contents and safety.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Crazy that French could be missing. It's the 6th most spoken
| language on Earth!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Professor Farnsworth's Universal Translator supports that
| language! ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwODwwgE6rA
| ohjeez wrote:
| I crossposted this to the os2 reddit, as well as LinkedIn and my
| personal Facebook page. I used to write about OS/2 exclusively,
| so I'm still connected with a lot of the IBM engineers and
| executives. Though I would not count on them keeping every
| language version, any more than I kept the 300 OS/2 applications
| I'd acquired.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Well, good luck. But how many copies of OS/2 Warp do you think
| were ever sold in Slovenia? Heck, there were not many sold in
| English speaking regions!
|
| Perhaps a more interesting question would be: "how do I create a
| localisation CD?"
| hylaride wrote:
| It did have a decent run in the embedded market, especially
| before windows 2000 as it had a clean 32-bit codebase that was
| more stable than win9X. A lot of ATMs used it. You'd also be
| shocked what you'd find in the back IT cabinets of some older
| companies. A former colleague who now works at a defence firm
| sorted through piles of old manuals from 1980s era VAX/VMS
| hardware during an office move (even though it was public
| documentation, the bureaucracy of disposing it meant they still
| kept it and moved it).
| guiambros wrote:
| Thanks for raising awareness on this. I think I may have a retail
| box with Warp 3 in Portuguese (Brazil). I had an ISV at the time,
| and used to join the OS/2 meetups organized by IBM, where they
| regularly distributed copies to power users.
|
| I'll try to find it next week and see if it's helpful for the
| folks in OS/2 museum.
|
| _edit: it seems they 're looking for Warp 4; I don't think I
| ever saw that version. I only used 2.0/2.1 and Warp 3._
| lb1lf wrote:
| I have the Norwegian Warp 4.0 CD in a box in my parents' attic;
| I'll try to dig it out when I go to see them for Christmas.
|
| IBM were so eager (understandably so) to gain market share that I
| simply called their Norwegian office and asked if I could have a
| few copies for installing in my high school's computer lab. 'Sure
| thing!' - days later I received a box full of retail copies along
| with a friendly letter suggesting I get in touch if I needed
| more!
| scoopr wrote:
| Hrm. I think I had few OS/2 boxes amongst some old games I took
| to sell to a video game antiquarian, and I think I left it there
| but they didn't seem interested in them.
|
| Frankly I don't remember which language they were, either english
| or finnish. I had both the red and blue boxes (was it, with
| windows support or not?), and other was unopened.
|
| I usually preferred english versions myself, as I learned
| computers with english, it was more comfortable with me. Also IBM
| had some rather odd choices on some words versus Microsoft, which
| could be jarring (was it Umpilevy for hard drive, as opposed to
| Kiintolevy or Kovalevy in most other places).
|
| One year (must of been 1997 or so?) IBM had a crazy marketing
| campaign at Assembly[0], where they practically just handed out
| the boxes to anyone who would take them. If they had handed out
| finnish version, I would be surprised if they were that hard to
| come by.
|
| [0] https://assembly.org/en
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(page generated 2024-12-15 23:01 UTC)