Renew use of OS/2

[jkpalmer]

Hi,

I had OS/2 Warp back in the 90's but finally had to surrender to the Windows world.

I would like to acquire OS/2 again and begin tinkering with it as I approach retirement.

Over time, I've misplaced my CDs for installing, so my questions are:

• Where is the best place to purchase OS/2 Warp 3?
• What are the minimum hardware requirements?
• Can Warp run in a Virtual Machine, like Parallels for Mac?

Help greatly appreciated.

-Jp

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi, welcome back to the community.

• Where is the best place to purchase OS/2 Warp 3?

If you want to find an older version of OS/2 the best place is ebay. If you want to have the latest incarnation of OS/2 you should wait (let's hope friday) to buy ArcaOS 5.0.

• What are the minimum hardware requirements?

Very minimum compared to today''s hardware. If you want to run it on a VM you require a processor with Intel VTX and AMD virtualization, which is basically all the moderns processor like i3, i5, i7. You can run a VM with 1GB or 2GB or RAM (or even less). It depends on what you are going to do.

• Can Warp run in a Virtual Machine, like Parallels for Mac?

OS/2 Warp 3, 4 , eComStation runs as a VirtualBox guest.
The OS2World wiki has some notes about it that may help you to configure the VM.

Give it a try !!!

Regards

Update: Corrected ArcaOS Version.

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Jim,
If you really want to do anything with OS/2, you really need Warp v4.5, Warp v4 + all the free fixes. If you want to install on modern hardware, as Martin said, ArcaOS should be out soon.
Things like Firefox use a lot of memory and older OS/2 is limited to 512 MB process space.
If you've owned a license, there are ISOs of the various Warp releases out there on abandoned software sites. Virtual box works well if you want to go that route.

[ak120]

Where is the best place to purchase OS/2 Warp 3?

There are enough resellers that still have packages listed. Originally most of the Warp 3 products were withdrawn in 1999. But it should not be impossible nowadays.

If you could specify your Warp 3 product (and NLS version) I can look for a package. There have been a lot of different packages:
*Warp 3, Warp 3 with Win-OS/2 (both in Floppy and CD-ROM versions)
*Warp Connect, Warp Connect with Win OS/2
*Warp Server Version 4, Warp Server Advanced Version 4

What are the minimum hardware requirements?

For Warp 3 any IBM compatible PC with at least a 386 processor, 8 MB RAM, 3,5"-floppy, CD-ROM drive and Harddisk should be enough. The last supported mobile devices were IBM ThinkPad 770. So everything up to Pentium MMX or AMD K6 class machines will work without trouble.

Can Warp run in a Virtual Machine, like Parallels for Mac?

Yes, of course. But Parallels supported guest OS start with OS/2 Warp 4. The reason for this is the shipped audio device driver which is included in their ISO image of guest integration stuff. By applying later fixpaks to the base operating system it could be made possible under Warp 3. Not straightforward and time-consuming for the uninitiated.

With Warp 4 product everything is much more simple. And as Dave already noted, it allows to raise the base operating system level (4.50) comparable to Warp Server for e-business (without LVM and SMP features) by applying the latest available fixpaks. It should be possible to acquire a used Warp 4 package for $50-60.

[Greggory Shaw]

Hi,

...

Over time, I've misplaced my CDs for installing, so my questions are:

...

Help greatly appreciated.

-Jp

Well, since you already bought a license check out - https://winworldpc.com/product/os-2-warp-4/os-2-warp-452



But as Martin stated, "should wait (let's hope friday) to buy ArcaOS 5.0."

[Martin Iturbide]

Well, since you already bought a license check out - https://winworldpc.com/product/os-2-warp-4/os-2-warp-452

The release date was changed to April 15 according to the last announcement.

Regards

[jkpalmer]

Been a few weeks since I last commented/solicited.

I have found my old CD's for OS/2 Version 3 but the installation floppies are long gone.

I see some commentary about installing OS/2 on a VirtualBox.

I have VirtualBox installed on an iMac. 

Is installing OS/2 on this VM do-able?

If so, my next question would be, how to get the installation disk information from the CD to be available to be used to install PS/2 on the VirtualBox.

Help / guidance greatly appreciated.

Jim P.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Jim

Warp 3 is doable on VirtualBox. If the iMac has an intel processor with VT-x it is doable. Check if it is an Intel processor that has that function.

My suggestion to install Warp 3 is:
1) Insert the CD and grab the disk images required to boot. If I don't get it wrong it should be . INSTALL.DSK, DISK1.DSK or DISK1-CD.DSK (I'm trying to remember, I'm not complete sure)
2) You need to change that .DSK images to a format that VirtualBox can recognize as Virtual diskette image. On my case I had changed the .DSK files to .IMA with WinImage for Windows. But I'm not sure what you can use if you want to do it on an iMac. I guess there should be a lot of other ways to transform the .dsk to .ima.
3) Once you have the IMA disk images, you can create your VirtualBox VM, just create it with the normal settings and mount the .IMA files on the diskette icon once you start the VM.

Give it a try and post back if you get stucked somewhere.

Regards

[Andy Willis]

I know the Warp v4 CD had them, I am not sure about V3 but there is a good chance, the V4 disks had the floppy images on the CD so that they could be recreated from it.  I am not sure if the images are directly compatible with the VirtualBox floppy, of if the VB floppy can only be connected to a real drive (IOW, I do not know if the floppy can use an image the way the CD can use an ISO and if it can if the image formats are the same).

[ak120]

There are a lot of misleading advises in this thread.

1. The disk image files (DISK0.DSK, DISK1_CD.DSK) are contained in the subdirecory \DISKIMGS\OS2\35 of the installation CD-ROM.
2. There's simply no need to convert them to a different image format. They are already in uncompressed form and can be used by virtualisation software directly.
3. Only the VirtualBox GUI configuration method for a VM has problems because of the filename extension. So simply add a *.img to the filename extension should resolve this stupid behavior.
4. VirtualBox only supports physical floppy drives for Windows host systems, but virtual images for all host systems.