Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#51

Post by jboggan » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:14 AM UTC

Up until March of last year a lot of ATMs in the US were still running OS/2 . . . I "upgraded" a lot of them to Windows XP. Yuck.

When I would take the OS/2 system offline and replace it with a Windows cage the payment network would sometimes tell me the uptime on the deprecated machines . . . one network operator claimed 8 years of uptime at one particular machine. I have no way of confirming that, but I definitely felt the OS/2 machines were rock solid, especially compared to the vulnerable Windows machines. Most small banks with NCR machines are running two software packages (APTRA Edge or Advance) with default admin passwords and are really behind on the monthly bug patches. Eek.

The OS/2 machines required you to input config info in hex though, so I was glad I didn't have to work on them in the field too much.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#52

Post by wglb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:14 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #16

lbarrow wrote: post #4

Great read. In the end, it seems like a classic failure to resolve the innovator's dilemma. IBM decided that the future of computing would revolve around mainframes because they liked mainframes , not because that's where the facts led them. And ultimately they paid the price for it.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who'd grown up on mainframes. The systems you're used to are fabulously expensive, sure, but their operating systems have sophisticated architectures that allow them to easily juggle multiple users running multiple programs while maintaining the security of the system overall. They are the completest expression ever realized of forty…

Regarding vulnerabilities, which many think (wrongly) are not present in mainframes, because they are networked nearly as much, and have massively fewer programs running on them, don't show up as much. But they are there.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#53

Post by wglb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:16 AM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #14

> Long before operating systems got exciting names based on giant cats and towns in California named after dogs, most of their names were pretty boring. Ah, yes. Mavericks, California. It's a great little offshore town, just off Pillar Point. I love that town. Kidding aside, this is a great article. Related to this story, the Windows 3.0 visual shell was originally not supposed to be Program Manager and File Manager.…

I don't think we used that exact terminology, but back in the '70s in the real-time interrupt-driven world, the concept was there. In fact, if you had used that phrase at that time, everyone would have grasped the meaning.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#54

Post by wglb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:18 AM UTC

yuhong wrote: post #24

melling wrote: post #6

If anyone wants an insider's view, here's a Usenet post from one of the early Microsoft employees, Gordon Letwin: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post Somewhere in the Usenet archive is Gordon trolling the OS/2 users for weeks (or months?) on end. I can't remember the exact details, but he had a bet with several people that Windows would have multitasking, or that OS/2 wouldn't have some sort of mul…

As I mentioned in a comment on a os2museum blog post, keep in mind Letwin left in 1993, before MS did many of the unethical attacks against OS/2 that is not mentioned in this article.

However, I got the impression he was asked to leave as a result of his confrontational behavior.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#55

Post by wglb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:21 AM UTC

galonk wrote: post #15

michaelhoffman wrote: post #3

> IBM licensed Commodore’s AREXX scripting language and included it with OS/2 2.0. I find this hard to believe, given that Rexx was developed by IBM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx

Ars Technica isn't exactly big on fact checking. These days most of their short articles are rewritten press releases, and most of their long articles are personal opinion/recollection written as if it was reportage.

While they may got the part about the history of AREXX wrong, most of the article is spot on.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#56

Post by kabdib » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:31 AM UTC

When OS/2 Warp came out, I remember it being insanely cheap ($20?), so in a what-the-hell mood I bought it. Took it home and tried to install it. It was a hopeless mess of disks, both optical and floppy, and I never got it to run.

One of my cow-orkers at Apple had worked on the OS/2 Presentation Manager at IBM. I tried talking with her about it, but she said the experience had been "absolutely awful" and she didn't want to say much else.

IBM never had a chance.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#57

Post by kabdib » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:37 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #13

damian2000 wrote: post #2

Incredible that companies like Apple (Mac), Atari (ST) and Commodore (Amiga) weren't able to fully capitalise on their leading position in GUI based OSes of the time, which were miles ahead of both MS and IBM.

Those of us around then know exactly why this was: PC Clones were too cheap and got better too quickly for other platforms to compete. Back then we all thought "computers" was a hardware game. Only Microsoft realised the hardware didn't matter, software was the main game. And yes, I realise we have swung back to the "integrated hardware/software platform" thing being important again. Picking winning strategies in pla…

Also, Atari didn't get marketing (Jack Tramiel was very reluctant to spend money there). Atari really didn't get systems software, either, and never hired to the extent needed to make a good impact there. The world was basically safe from Atari being anything other than a low-end consumer computer company.

And the thing that probably saved Apple in the late 80s was the desktop publishing business.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#58

Post by atombender » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:49 AM UTC

michaelhoffman wrote: post #3

> IBM licensed Commodore’s AREXX scripting language and included it with OS/2 2.0. I find this hard to believe, given that Rexx was developed by IBM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx

They probably misread the Wikipedia on OS/2, which says:

> In addition, IBM once made a deal with Commodore to license Amiga technology for OS/2 2.0 and above in exchange for the REXX scripting language.

In other words, IBM licensed REXX to Amiga in return for something else (we don't know what).

But who knows if this is true. Apparently IBM and Commodore already had an IP cross-licensing agreement at the time, and had access to their patents. And AREXX apparently did not contain any IBM code.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#59

Post by InclinedPlane » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 5:54 AM UTC

dangoldin wrote: post #30

I remember my dad getting a promotional shirt for OS/2 with the caption "Flight 4.0 to Chicago has been delayed, I'm taking off with OS/2" The idea being that Windows 95 was internally called Windows 4.0 with the codename Chicago. I keep on searching for it but can't find it anywhere. And Bill Gates on OS/2 in 1987: "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all ti…

I remember seeing this article in popsci way back when: http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=vypUfjzMwlAC&pg=52

It talks about Windows 4.0 and other contemporary "next gen" operating systems.

Re: Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

#60

Post by whatusername » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:09 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #18

michaelhoffman wrote: post #3

> IBM licensed Commodore’s AREXX scripting language and included it with OS/2 2.0. I find this hard to believe, given that Rexx was developed by IBM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx

Indeed. And IBM do, in fact, still make other OSes, contrary to the subhead of the story: zVM/CMS, zOS (MVS), AIX, and whatever they're calling AS/400 these days.

AS/400 is now "IBM i".

Which leads us to the great set of names where we have: IBM i, Apple iOS, Cisco IOS