Installing OS/2 on a PS/2 Model 80: 5000 Subscriber Special

I worked at the nordic IBM HelpWare Hotline and OS/2 Hotline in Copenhagen from June 1992 to December 1994, my first proper IT-job. So I was there just after the launch of OS/2 2.0 and the following versions, helping customers to install the thing. You are VERY correct in installing on a PS/2 was easymode, whereas installing on a random clone PC was often asking for trouble. Some had success (from floppies at least), but even slightly non-standard CD-Roms were hit-and-miss. And the joy of IBM supplying OS/2 2.1 (I think) for free on a CD in all of the nordics with a PC-magazine, and not telling us in support beforehand was something I'll remember forever. Chaos ensued.

Long time OS/2 user checking in. I don't remember how I learned about it, but somehow I got signed up for IBM's public beta of OS/2 2.0. Yes, the first IBM-only release, at the time that Windows 3.0 was the then-current version of Windows. I was in high school, and the only machines in the house that could run it were the primary family 486, which I wasn't allowed to mess with that much, or a PS/2 Model 30-286 my dad had gotten free from work as a "it's being retired" system that I spent my own money to buy a 386 upgrade and more RAM for. That brought it to the absolute bare minimum CPU, RAM, and hard drive space OS/2 supported. And even at the minimum, it was still far slower a machine than IBM expected, since that 386 was talking to the motherboard over a 286 bus. (At least the memory was on the CPU upgrade card that plugged into the 286 socket, so I wasn't limited to the 286's RAM support.) It was dog slow, but still better than using Windows 3.0. A couple years later, after graduating high school, I bought my own Pentium PC, and put OS/2 3.0 on it as my daily driver. I kept using OS/2 as my primary OS until Windows 98 came out - although I did always have a DOS/Windows partition for games that didn't run well on OS/2. And I kept beta-testing OSes, getting in on both the Windows 95 beta and the Windows NT 4.0 beta. Later I bought a beige Power Mac G3 used to run the Mac OS X Public Beta on. The next time it was time for a new laptop, I moved to a then-brand-new 12" PowerBook G4, and have been in Mac-land ever since. (Although my daily driver is a now-getting-old-in-Apple-years last-gen Intel MacBook Pro triple-booting macOS, Windows 10, and Linux. (Debian 12.))

I grew up with computers. As a teenager I loved watching Tech TV. Channels like yours, Mac84, Macintosh Library, RetroBytes, Adrian’s Digital Basement, The Serial Port, and LGR aren’t just a successor but an improvement. Keep it up!

Enjoyed it as always. Congrats on surpassing 5K subs. I'm sure it will continue to climb because your content quality is excellent!

I personally ran OS/2 Warp for years. Once I got my AMD 486 DX2/80 it was installed and with every hardware upgrade. Lucky enough the college I went to had a OS/2 lab and every quarter the lab was re-installed on Gateway P5-133 systems all with floppies. Then all were attached to the Netware network. Good times

You deserve WAY more subscribers in my personal opinion. I've seen alot of vintage tech youtubers and I can confidently say that your production quality is absolutely stellar! I wish nothing but the best <333 I'm watching this video on vintage tech myself, a Samsung Chromebook from 2012 "D

Kind words about LGR's Channel. Hope your channel also get good coverage and your viewers give you the feedback you need to continue publishing that particular great content

OS adoption stands on two main pillars: drivers for everything and native software. Miss one and the OS won't last long.

This was cool to actually see it. I grew up circa Y2K with a mom who liked used book sales and they were flooded with OS/2 stuff. For whatever reason I never bit on a zombie x86 OS and played with Amiga and early Linux instead. Great vid and congrats on 5k!

I was one of the hopefully few fools who installed OS/2 3.0 using floppy disks on my PS/2 55SX (386SX16). Patience and prayer (for data integrity) were key.

We had OS/2 2.1 in my high school. I tried 0S/2 Warp 3.0 in the mid 90's on a 386 DX 25 with 4 MB RAM at home. I really liked it but no readily available native software choices. At least it made neat laser sounds when opening and closing windows. Windows 95 came out and that killed it for me.

This reminds me, maybe someday NCommander will get OS/2 installed on his model 30 286.

We had one OS/2 fan and he even found a use case for it. We were testing WORM drives for the Navy that did get installed. One problem was the combination of Windows maximum hard disk partition and limits to the maximum number of drive letters that could be assigned. OS 2 let ten drive letters be assigned to WORM partitions with a total of 15 for all drives. And this was a standard clone! I later found that by assigning the computer as a server, it MAY have let you use all 26 letters, but never maxed that configuration out. This was either OS/2 2 or OS/2 3. My case for worst setup was Windows 3.0 on a 3 1/2 iinch rewritable optical drive on a Zenith 286. Paint dries faster than that loaded!

Brother, you bring back memories. It's been a long time since I ran OS/2, but do remember liking it a lot. I consider it a pity that OS/2 never really went mainstream.

Wow, didn't realize until now you only had 5000 subs! Your content is fantastic, one of my fave retrocomputing creators. You deserve a lot more. Keep it up and I'm sure you'll grow more!

Congrats on 5000. 🙂 I've not used OS/2 or any other system like that before. Outside of Windows the other OSs I used were what came with the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. One of these days I'll explore the old systems, like this one and Solaris!

Yay! I was 1/5000th of the reason for this getting made! Thanks for making fun videos!

Congrats on hitting 5k - excellent production and narration on your videos!

I'm amazed how pleasant boxed software of the past feels. Remember Windows XP boxes, what a treasure!

I ran OS/2 Warp 3 on a PS/2 Model 80 for years because it was the only OS at the time that had true pre-emptive multitasking that would run on a 386DX/25. I did have 16mb of RAM in it and a SCSI HDD since I used it as a BBS machine for years. It was always solid and never really crashed. I had to install mine with actual floppy disks the first time, the 2nd time after I repalced the first failed HDD I had a 6x NEC Multispin SCSI CD-ROM which made life much easier.