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.
Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#12Crazy that French could be missing. It's the 6th most spoken language on Earth!
Professor Farnsworth's Universal Translator supports that language! ;)
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#13Well, 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?"
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#14Good luck!
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.
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
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#15Well, 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?"
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).
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#16Thanks 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.
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#17I 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!
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#18Hrm. 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.
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#19Well, 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?"
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 pu…
I wouldn't be shocked at all. In the 90s I consulted for a couple of UK firms that used OS/2 - a training company I worked for used a (nightmarish) C++ compiler that only ran, very badly, on it. And I trained several batches of VMS programmers in converting to Unix.
Re: Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving
#20I 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…
> IBM were so eager (understandably so) to gain market share
I got Warp 4 easily, but sadly, in the era of Warp 2 and Warp 3, even in charge of a 6-digit IT budget, I couldn't get eval copies -- nor later as a journalist at a UK national PC magazine.
It got the message way too late.