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| Author | Emulating OS/2 on Mac OS with SoftWindows (Read 68322 times) | ||||||||||||||
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lauland
512 MB  Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer! 
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Reply #15 on: January 02, 2024, 16:36
FYI I actually read that last article: https://virtuallyfun.com/2014/05/09/a-sneak-peak-at-microsoft-os2-2-0/ And turns out I was wrong...what they describe really WAS the OS/2 2.x that we ended up getting. So MS was working on it even before the split, the bastards! If you read it, it goes into detail about all the API changes (not just making names saner) between 1.x and 2.x, which were a lot more extensive than I remembered. I think MS learned a lesson there when they designed the Win32 API they stuck to widening things mostly! Yes, truly bewildering why there's 16 bit code at the driver level. Maybe it was because they knew a lot of vendors wouldn't ever bother to make 32 bit drivers and needed to support existing ones? |
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Last Edit: January 02, 2024, 16:38 by lauland
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #16 on: January 02, 2024, 20:57
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I once asked an IBM OS/2 lead developer about that and he told me - it was in the days of Warp - that Big Blue could barely hold on to its existing customer base in the OpSys market and didn't dare offend them by messing around with vintage code. If I remember correctly the original reason for the 16-bit mess was the idea of integrating pre-existing software tightly into the new OS: "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows". But they also made some great leaps forward: Believe or or not, under OS/2 adding a totally exotic filesystem requires nothing more than loading the correct driver for it. This way you can access FAT, HFS+ and even EXT volumes. No other changes to the system are required. Many of these gimmicks got written ages ago and then the programmers - or the companies they worked for - left the OS/2 market wholesale. IBM - the company - never managed to get a strong community going. Big Blue had no Steve Jobs and no Elon Musk either in their ranks. So they couldn't replace those loses and needed to stay compatible with existing products at all cost.
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snes1423
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256 MB Posts: 458 A Man born of Mechina
Reply #17 on: January 02, 2024, 21:28
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why no Win95 compatibility with 32-bit apps why just 16-bit?
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #18 on: January 02, 2024, 22:26
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Win95 was Microsoft's very own brainchild and it marked a major step in the escalation of the "Operating System Wars". Before that Microsoft and IBM had worked in partnership on OS/2. Matter of fact, MS had been developing most of it. But once the split between the two had occurred any attempt of IBM to include Microsoft code in their product would have given Bill Gates carte blanche to slaughter them in court (which his lawyers were just itching for). That was the primary reason why the Windows integration in OS2 never matured past W3.1. The WinXP compatibility layer Odin was indeed developed by Russian coders who couldn't care less about Microsoft's copyrights. Well, they did also "steel" a lot of lines from Linux's Wine.  But IBM's official Windows integration was 16bit and stayed 16 bit. Billy Boy would have charged them an arm and a leg and a neck for any WinXP integration. Don't forget: His entire aim was to blast OS/2 out of existence.
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