Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 191 posts

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

#81

Post by _delirium »

nl wrote: post #72
kabdib wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, Atari didn't get marketing (Jack Tramiel was very reluctant to spend money there). I know that is the conventional story (and pretty similar for the Amiga). I'm not convinced. I think that both the Amiga & the Atari ST were too far ahead of their time. They were multimedia workstations, without anywhere to play that multimedia (except on other Ataris and Amigas). Like you said, the Mac managed to hit the deskto…

Yeah, the Amiga seems like it completely dominated the multimedia niche, but the multimedia niche of the time essentially consisted of the demoscene. Which was great, except that the demoscene was not that large.

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

#82

Post by damian2000 »

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…

Around 1989 I traded my Amiga 500 for an IBM AT clone running DOS. Each was worth around AUD$1000 at the time. It felt like I was going back in time 10 years - a mono screen and no mouse. The reason was that I needed it for uni.study purposes (Turbo pascal, Turbo C++, etc.) ...

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

#83

Post by damian2000 »

dhughes wrote: post #22
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.

One reason: stigma. All I recall from childhood/teen years is "IBM compatible PC" a mantra on every TV commercial IBM or others produced. A PC was for business and you were rich or a fool to spend thousands on something so useless to a regular Joe. Apple was even more expensive and even less common than a PC and even so Apple was quirky and drew pictures, ATARI and Commodore were for games. They were in totally diffe…

Agreed, Atari ST and Amiga especially never caught on much with businesses ... they were definitely seen as games machines, even though their capabilities were certainly on par with the IBM clones.

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

#84

Post by yardie »

yuhong wrote: post #40
sehugg wrote: post #19

OS/2 had many flaws but its multitasking was unseen on a PC at the time. I remember formatting a floppy while running two 16-bit Windows sessions (which were communicating with each other) and multiple DOS windows, thinking I was in the future. Even Windows 95 was limited by many system calls being funneled through single threaded BIOS or DOS 16-bit land.

For me, the worst thing is that Caldera was able to continue suing MS due to this Win9x dependency on DOS.

you mean MS-DOS. Caldera and others had their own version of DOS and MS went out of their way to make sure no one used it.

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

#85

Post by gaius »

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.

An excellent book that studies that is The Future Was Here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Was-Here-Commodore-Platform-e...

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

#86

Post by nikbackm »

Interesting read. This part really brought the current Windows 8 push by Microsoft to mind.

"These machines were meant to wrestle control of the PC industry away from the clone makers, but they were also meant to subtly push people back toward a world where PCs were the servants and mainframes were the masters. They were never allowed to be too fast or run a proper operating system that would take advantage of the 32-bit computing power available with the 386 chip. In trying to do two contradictory things at once, they failed at both."

Not quite the same situation, but they have many similarities.

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

#88

Post by yardie »

kabdib wrote: post #57
nl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

...and education, and government, and academia. Apple was a pretty safe bet in the 80s (The Mac IIfx was designed to government specs and was the fastest desktop PC around). They only really started to lose market after Windows 95.

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

#89

Post by marshray »

gnaffle wrote: post #78
jboggan wrote: post #51

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…

When you think of it, 8 years of uptime isn't special for a machine running on a UPS and not needing a reboot for software updates. There simply isn't a reason for a well-built operating system running on solid hardware to crash.

Cosmic rays, but yeah, that's solid.
Post reply on HN