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Ah OS/2! You could use the computer even while formatting a floppy.

As I recall, IBM would send you OS/2 for free, on a bunch of the new-style 3.5" floppies. I think it was about two dozen floppies.



Not that I knew of.

OS/2 1, the 286 version, was quite expensive enterprise software. I evaluated 1.0 in my first job.

OS/2 2, the 386 version, was relatively cheap. I paid about £40 for a copy, and it's one of the very few pieces of x86 PC software I've ever bought in my life.

OS/2 3 "Warp" did have a free evaluation version, and was distributed on magazine cover disks. However it took much of a CD and was not readily available on floppies.

https://twitter.com/AlvinGrissomII/status/108455170211465216...


Surely not in early 90's Portugal, where OS/2 was only available in IBM PS/2 PC with MCA architecture, with a tax of additional 500 € (more than one month salary minimum wage) versus the 386SX/DX OEM PCs.


There was a widespread belief that it needed a PS/2 and MCA, but it didn't.

I ran it on Librex laptops and several generic clones. No version ever _needed_ MCA.

It's just one of many things that doomed it. :-(


Might have been the case, but on my small town buying such IBM model was the only way to get OS/2.

No one was selling it on OEM clones, and buying a PC clone was already expensive enough, to even think about trying to get an additional alternative OS at IBM prices.


I remember testing the networking component of a game by running two simultaneous Windows 3.1 sessions, and fuzz testing DOS apps in multiple VMs (using DPMI, even!)


Even while running a BBS in the background, too!


OS/2 for free? That must've been well after Windows 95 came out, with OS/2 then deemed unsalvageable by IBM itself.


If anyone's still interested, there's a free demo CD of the later successor to OS/2, eComStation.

http://www.ecomstation.com/democd/index.php?file=9

This is what it looks like:

http://toastytech.com/guis/ecsd.html


You could use an Amiga while formatting a floppy, back in 1985, a couple years before OS/2 was released.




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