Where time allows this year, I have been doing PC build projects for Compaq LTE Elite laptop (486), IBM Aptiva (AMD-K6 500), Compaq DeskPro (P3-1Ghz), Core i7 PC I built back in 2011, and Pentium 200MMX setup on IBM PC300GL with OS/2, plus adding a parallel ZIP, HP iPAQ, Sony Clie Palm into the mix.

Whew.

This work has been ongoing since May, being done in small chunks when I had time. I was planning to do seperate detailed blog posts for each project but I simply don't have the time. I can see the year is running away from me and since this build work is ongoing since May, I wanted to get something out about it while it was still 2024! This is Part 1 post of several to follow!

The goal here with this work is to have machines able to play PC games and demos from the various eras I have been using PCs. Also, to play with some interesting period hardware I decided to get, like the iPAQ, Clie and parallel(!) Zip drive.

Specifically, these are the planned setups:

- Compaq LTE Elite 486DX4-75 laptop covering the early MS-DOS/Windows 3.1 period in the 80's and early 90's (Bought this year)

- IBM 300GL covering MS-DOS demos and games from early 1990's to 1997 (with OS/2 Warp also), covered in this blog here.

- IBM Aptiva with 3DFX Voodoo3 and Windows 98 covering the 1998 to 2002 period (the early 3D accelerated game and demo era) (bought this year)

- Compaq Deskpro (Pentium III 1 Ghz) wirth Windows XP covering the 2003 to 2008 period of demos and games (bought last year)

- My custom build Core i7 PC I built in 2011 (with Windows 7) covering the 2009 to 2015 period, the last of the CD/DVD based games covered. Back in 2015, I also built Icaros (AROS) on it and covered in my blog here.

- The current Alienware Aurora R12 PC I have covering from 2015 onwards, moving into the Steam/App store era. I covered that system build from back in 2022 on this blog here.

Unfortunately it is necessary to have these seperate machines to cover PC game and demo software released across these eras. 

There is DOSBox and virtual box / vmware emulation of course for the modern pc, which is good, but not the same as having the period correct systems, and compatibility is not perfect (although it is getting better).

Demos are demanding and need the right hardware to run properly. Emulation and virtual machines often can't run them.

PC Games need the right 3D card, specific versions of DirectX, Glide wrappers, Direct 3D, EAX sound cards and other requirements too in order to run as the authors intended.

I previously covered my IBM 300GL PC Pentium 200MMX setup in my blog post here if you want more detail on that. 

It is the best machine for running MS-DOS games and especially DOS demos - which work best with a Pentium 200MMX CPU. Here it is at the Adelaide Retro computer group meeting in Dec 2021 - can't believe that is almost 3 years ago:

Since then, I have been picking up some new boxed DOS games and also some OS/2 software to put on it.

As an aside, I was so surprised to learn that Psygnosis's Wipeout game (most well known on Playstation) was released for MS-DOS too. I had no idea. I simply had to pick that up! The game runs 100% from the CDROM!

That said, I intend to focus on the OS/2 Warp side in this part!

First up, there is these OS/2 Poker and Blackjack game released in physical boxes, which I picked up from eBay this year, new in box:

From the dates on the labels, they were released in 1992 and 1994.

I mucked around with the two new card games (Poker and Black Jack) on my OS/2 Warp 4 system - they installed and play perfectly - I apologise for the grainy iPhone photos of the screens:

Listening to MP3's via PM123 while playing the games is fun. I know OS/2 is not well known for games, but there are some available!

I also picked up the HyperAccess Pro comms software new in box for OS/2. This includes a great terminal client, and remote control software. 

Will be nice to remotely control my OS/2 Warp 4 PC setup from the seperate ARCAOS 5.1 system I have installed. The lite version that ships with OS/2 Warp 4 is limited in functionality. The Pro version unlocks the full features.

Installation from floppy disks was easy:

After launching it, I definitely need to read the manual methinks...

Have to say, I think my IBM 300GL setup with MS-DOS 6.22 and OS/2 Warp 4 looks pretty awesome. No Windows here...

As an aside, like Amiga has with Aminet.net, OS/2 has Hobbes for providing native software to download from the internet. 

After 30 years of hosting by the New Mexico State University IT department, the Hobbes archive has moved hosts this year in 2024, so I include the current location here so you can find it.

Getting back to games released natively for OS/2, here is Doom for OS/2:

Lemmings and Mahjong for OS/2 as well:

Lastly on the game front, I tried out Links for OS/2 - had to find the iso online as unfortunately I was unable to find the original game for sale on eBay - I'll keep an eye out for it: 

The OS/2 version of Links is very interesting, and it really uses the Presentation Manager interface well - you can move around all the elements of the game exactly how you want:

You can see I was playing Links on my OS/2 warp machine while installing ARCAOS 5.1 (the newest 2024 release of OS/2) onto my 2012 Core i7 PC:

You can run some DOS games and demos (that can run in protected mode) also. But I usually reboot into MS-DOS 6.22 on my dual boot system for that.

As you probably know, OS/2 Warp 4 can also run Windows 3.1 software natively as well, so to show this I set to work installing MS Office 4.3 for Windows 3.1 - so I have Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

The nice part is you don't have to use Windows or MS Office at all. OS/2 has several native office suites. 

I have two - one called StarOffice 5.1 (the precursor to OpenOffice and later LibreOffice), 

Staroffice 5.1 supports opening Word/Excel/Powerpoint 97 or 95 format documents (which is before they started using docx, xlsx and pptx file formats from Office 2007)

It is nicer to use the native OS/2 presentation manager, as in my opinion the GUI is so much nicer than Windows 3.1. Sorry to those who like that interface....

Also, there is Lotus SmartSuite (Organizer, Word Pro, and Lotus 1-2-3) - which was released for OS/2 as well. I think Organiser looks terrific on OS/2.

You may notice I am listening to Amiga modules using MikMOD PM software at the same time as I am playing around with Lotus Smartsuite...

The modules (and Mp3 files) are located on the seperate 2x 2GB MS-DOS partitions, so they are accessible when booting from the OS/2 Warp side, and also the MS-DOS side using Cubic Player or Impulse Tracker. The 2 OS/2 partitions in the system cannot be seen by MS-DOS as it is HPFS.

Lotus also released Lotus Notes Server for OS/2, as well as the Lotus Notes client. They later rebranded Lotus Notes Server as Lotus Domino, a groupware solution running sharepoint style functionality, database, and email client services, with Lotus Notes name remaining as the client. 

I managed to find a retail copy of Lotus Notes Server for OS/2 on eBay. It is a new in box, and a huge big box full of really chunky manuals, and very heavy! This is the last version released for OS/2.

I had to support Lotus Domino R5 and Lotus Notes running on Windows NT 4 server in the early-mid 2000's in my professional IT career, and later migrated it to Windows Server 2003R2 Active Directory, Exchange Server 2003 and Sharepoint Server 2003. 

Nowadays I support an MS Azure based global networked environment with Windows Server 2022, Exchange Server online and Sharepoint Server online via Microsoft 365. The platform may have moved from on premise to the cloud with plenty of new features added over time, but comforting to know that a number of core communication/groupware systems for business today like email and user management are mostly still the same as they were twenty years ago, hidden from view behind a wall of "cloud computing". 

Remember girls and boys, "cloud computing" just means someone else's computer hosts your solution instead of you. The systems behind the scenes are as dodgy and horrible and prone to failure as they always were - just harder to access and more difficult to migrate vendors if you want to. 

Kubernetes/containers ramp this to another level again - serverless applications. You simply have no idea what it is being hosted on and just crossing your fingers Microsoft understands the solution and gives it the resources it needs just in time....Anyway, I digress.

Domino is tricky software to setup, but very rock solid reliable once it is. 

When I have some more time, I plan to build Notes Server from this Retail boxed copy on my ARCAOS machine or a virtual server on ESXi, and install the notes client on the IBM 300GL OS/2 Warp 4 setup to connect to it. :-)

Perhaps I should ask Microsoft CoPilot or chatgpt for a Lotus Notes server quick start configuration guide summary for my home ESXi lab hosting. Heh, maybe AI will be useful for more than just composing non-threatening "Leave me alone" emails to people chasing me for business opportunities when I don't want to be bothered responding in detail. :-)

I bought some other titles for OS/2 over the years, such as this very useful Archive Tool, and PMView 2000 for viewing pictures:

I have been using OS/2 since the mid 1990's when a friend at the time at University introduced me to OS/2 Warp 3. He taught me the basics, since Presentation Manager works very differently to Windows desktop and it's explorer/file manager. 

I bought OS/2 Warp 3 on sale on a local store in Adelaide at the time, and got it working on a second hand cheap laptop. I still have the ghost image file floating around somewhere! Applying the right drivers and corrective service packs to OS/2 was (and is) painful, but I learnt lots about it, by making plenty of mistakes along the way and plenty of rebuilds...

OS/2 Warp 4 I got from a cover CD with Australian Personal Computer magazine, along with BeOS 5. FYI BeOS is these days called Haiku OS and still actively developed also, and is available for free.

Later on, I bought eComstation 2.1, the next commercial OS/2 version released after IBM gave up on OS/2 Warp after v4.52, which I ran on a ThinkPad T43 I bought in Japan back in 2010 for many years, until the system recently failed. 

I bought ARCAOS when it was released, which is the current version of OS/2. The latest version of ARCAOS is 5.1, released this year in 2024! You can buy ARCAOS from their website here. I plan to cover more about ARCAOS in the future! It supports a lot more modern gfx, usb, network and sound hardware than the old OS/2 versions do. The latest version of ARCAOS supports modern UEFI boot systems and usb image booting finally too, which is a huge step forward.

Anyway, moving back to this build.

For those who like Midnight Commander interface, there is a version for OS/2 as well:

The Presentation Manager desktop in OS/2 is very customisable - changes are implemented in real time, so you don't need to click on OK - there is no Ok button, just Undo and Default buttons alongside the Help button if you need it. Tabs along the top to switch between areas of configuration, with +/- icons where there is more than one screen of options for that section:

BTW I forgot to mention Describe 5 - a commercial word processor for OS/2 that I only just found out about! I loaded it on the machine after finding the iso online. Again, unable to locate the physical release version as yet.

With the IBM 300GL now working great as MS-DOS and OS/2 Warp 4 machine, I also picked up a Compaq Elite LTE 486DX75 laptop that I had hoped to load OS/2 Warp 3 onto as well. It is supposedly supported....my version of Warp 3 comes on floppy disks, many floppy disks.

Since this laptop has no CD drive, that is a good thing though. Sadly though, it wouldn't boot from the install floppy disks:

I did sort that problem out - it was the hard disk partition format on the replacement IDE to SD card I had put in there...I need to prepare the SD card to have FAT16 partitions limited to 2GB. 

However, once fixed, the machine would hang during the installation with a floppy disk read error...this system has no CD drive and as mentioned Warp 3 is supplied on many, many, floppy disks. 

It gets through the first stage:

And gets me to here:

Annoyingly it does after having to shuffle in out over 3 install floppy disks and 12 setup floppy disks....after 3 attempts bombing out at the same point wasting a full evening, I gave up on OS/2 Warp 3 on this machine, and decided to set it up with the recovery iso from Compaq with Windows 3.1 instead!

 If you want to play with OS/2 yourself, I recommend ARCAOS - support the latest version and easy to run on new hardware.

If you enjoy pain and much frustration, try using OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 on non-IBM hardware. You'll throw the computer and the hefty OS/2 manual and disks at a wall in no time. Trust me, you will.

To avoid that, use correct period IBM, HP and Compaq systems that have confirmed OS/2 support, make sure you have the right drivers for everything you want to use on disk ready to feed into the installer, and keep to the hard disk size limits, partition layouts and memory limits. 

I suggest also (if you are learning) to have MS-DOS installed first on one partition with windows 3.1 or Windows 95 installed, with enough space for OS/2 boot manager to be installed for dual booting and do the OS/2 install after, as I have done with the IBM 300GL build here. 

If you are learning, I would run OS/2 on FAT16 until you know how to build it for your system without it failing to boot up, then run the install again, and rebuild from scratch on HPFS. I didn't bother with windows on the dos side, but it makes it easier to fix problems preventing booting on the OS/2 partition (as long as it is FAT16). Otherwise you need to boot (very slowly) from three OS/2 floppy disks to be able to access a os/2 command prompt to do anything to fix issues, and no decent editor available to edit the command files unless you prep another disk with the os/2 versions of a decent editor also.

Finally, don't put Windows NT, 2000 or XP on the system as a dual boot if you are running OS/2. It will detect the HPFS partition and tell you to format it every time you boot, until you do it. It will also destroy the boot manager as part of the installation, which breaks being able to boot OS/2 anymore. Linux can co-exist in a dual boot configuration if it is installed before OS/2, but note that grub can stuff up boot manager too if you make changes later on. Linux in the Pentium 2000mmx era was painful. Every device driver needed to be compiled into the kernel manually - using Slackware linux back in 1995 still gives me nightmares today...

For more help, I found the BlondeGuy website very handy.   He also sells modern laptops and desktop pcs pre-loaded with OS/2 or ARCAOS with all the driver issues sorted and working. The computers he got working (and his info on how) should prepare you for the right hardware to try to install OS/2 on.

In the next blog post I will look in more detail at the Compaq LTE Elite laptop build!

In the meantime I hope this OS/2 build work and its capabilities was interesting!