Thinkpads Forum

Recently got a X30 which has 2 OS2 drivers listed, does anyone have or know the list of which TP machines supported OS/2?

I'd venture a guess that the support ended with P4M era, since I recall seeing some drivers for A31p, but not for any of the T4x series...

Thx, Ajkula66

Ok invert the question, do you think the x30 is a viable machine in terms of drivers to run OS2 v 3 or higher, google throws up nothing.

FWIW, I've got a Thinkpad 600E running OS/2 Warp 3.

I read that A30, T20, T23, and T30 are good choices for OS/2; and OS/2 Warp 4.52 is definitely a supported operating system for a T40 :

"Software Requirements:
The following operating systems support the ThinkPad T40 computer:
- OS/2 Warp Convenience Package 2 V4.52 MCP2: XR_450216 with FixPak XR_F001, or later16, and XR_D003
- OS/2 Warp Convenience Package 2 V4.52 Refresh MCP2 Refresh: XR_4503"

source:
- http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca ... 03-084.PDF (March 2003)

I been meaning to see if OS/2 Warp 4.52 would work on one of my spare T43's or T43p's or get a cheap T40 to try it out on if they can't...

How are you going to put 4.52 on the machine.

Not sure yet, but it is/was supported there must be a way...

There are 4.52 iso's on line. But you have issues with partion sizes and nearly all the tips are for running in a VM, not on real iron.

Dekks wrote:There are 4.52 iso's on line. But you have issues with partion sizes and nearly all the tips are for running in a VM, not on real iron.

I have the OS/2 in a sealed original box, on floppies. That will be going onto my A31p at some point in the game...

I'm still waiting to find a reasonably priced copy of OS/2 Warp 4 -- they seem to be pretty bloody rare (even finding a blue-spined Warp 3 is proving tough)! Eventually, it will happen...

Just bagged an original warp v3 set on floppies for £12, will have to see how that goes, would prefer v4 but as has been said, it's rare and expensive on fleabay.

So far the x30 is resisting the charms of OS/2. Even with the latest Dani IDE driver it's no go, going to run a linux distro up and lspci to see exactly what hardware is in there. One issue is i cant get a fdisk utility that runs off a floppy that can format a 4GB partition in HPFS, i've a feeling that may be the bigger issue.

The Blue Spline V3 FDD's are all working OK tho and are all there, might have to go for earlier machine pah.

I strongly advise anyone with a set of floppies to image them using Winimage or similar on Windows (dd in Linux) and make self-extracting files so you can write fresh floppies if your originals become corrupted. Self-extracting files are handiest because you don't need the program which produced them installed in order to write floppies.

This also enables you to help other legitimate users (legitimacy verifiable by emailing pics of OEM media with timestamp etc) who may have a corrupted floppy by sending them an image.

One issue is i cant get a fdisk utility that runs off a floppy that can format a 4GB partition in HPFS, i've a feeling that may be the bigger issue.

Can you toss your hard disk into a more modern PC or hang it off an external adapter to format the drive and perform your installation?

I have both OS/2 Warp 4 and Warp4.52 installed on my 770X. I did this around 10 years ago. As I remember, the installation process was challenging and getting both systems to multiboot with other systems much more so. OS/2 has a built in Windows 3.1 emulator and can run and multitask MSDOS and Windows 16 bit apps in a multitasking environment. It is a fascinating operating system. I found it cool but never did anything with it. I found the isos online. They didn't come from pirate sites per se. It was a dying OS at the time and I found fan sites of users who were so passionate about OS/2 Warp that they provided links to the isos for the sake of preservation.

The only version of OS/2 Warp that was widely distributed was 3.0. I've owned a couple sets of the floppies. Legal copies of 4.0 and 4.52 are not very common because they were never released in a retail fashion. The were sold to corporations not consumers.

Anybody has tried to run eComStation 2.2 on T43 series? Lenovo Support is listing few drivers for OS/2 (ATI graphics, audio).

lukee wrote:Anybody has tried to run eComStation 2.2 on T43 series? Lenovo Support is listing few drivers for OS/2 (ATI graphics, audio).

--I know this is very late, but just tried out eComStation 2.2 beta 5 on my T43. Everything worked except the WiFi card. KB, Trackpoint, Tracklight, USB all worked. T43 uses an Atheros card pulled from an R51, it originally had an Intel card with a weak signal.

I had previously played around with an older demo CD on my X40 and it worked perfect including WIFI. I think it must have had an IBM labeled card (Atheros AR5000 series chip) Anybody get OS/2 Warp 4.52 working on T4x series laptops? Those sell for under $50 dlls.

Where to get OS/2 Warp nowadays?

lukee wrote:Where to get OS/2 Warp nowadays?

I found a great Abandonware site: https://winworldpc.com/. It has old Windows, Macintosh and miscellaneous OSs. I downloaded OS/2 Warp 4 and 4.52 but they need a serial number. I was hoping to test out if one would work on my T43 before possibly spending $50 USD on one of those OS/2 boxes on eBay.

I did just check the Russian eCom software site and it says some models of T43 have Lenovo drivers. So I just need to see what model it is and find out what WIFI card they use.

natgab wrote:

lukee wrote:Where to get OS/2 Warp nowadays?

I found a great Abandonware site: https://winworldpc.com/. It has old Windows, Macintosh and miscellaneous OSs. I downloaded OS/2 Warp 4 and 4.52 but they need a serial number. I was hoping to test out if one would work on my T43 before possibly spending $50 USD on one of those OS/2 boxes on eBay.

I did just check the Russian eCom software site and it says some models of T43 have Lenovo drivers. So I just need to see what model it is and find out what WIFI card they use.

Did you have any further luck with this? I'm thinking of testing OS/2 & ecomstation on some T43s and T60s.
EDIT: figured out how to install OS/2 Warp 4.52 on a T43. A T60 would be far more challenging and would be best to have eCS support if considering to use the actual OS/2 release on it.

I still have my Warp 4 and Warp Connect 3 (blue spine) CDs. I tossed the ver 3 box, and put all the books in the Warp 4 box. I even have some v2.11 CDs, bonus packs, etc. I used to have a set of floppies, but figured the CDs would last a lot longer. I might have the floppies around somewhere as well.

Never heard of v 4.52. Found out that it was issues in a "convenience pack", but can be DL'd at winworld

I heard of eCommerceStation (eCS), but never really looked into it. It's still being sold, but I think I'd prefer to run a linux install if I was going to tool around with another OS.

cadillacmike68 wrote:I still have my Warp 4 and Warp Connect 3 (blue spine) CDs. I tossed the ver 3 box, and put all the books in the Warp 4 box. I even have some v2.11 CDs, bonus packs, etc. I used to have a set of floppies, but figured the CDs would last a lot longer. I might have the floppies around somewhere as well.

Never heard of v 4.52. Found out that it was issues in a "convenience pack", but can be DL'd at winworld

I heard of eCommerceStation (eCS), but never really looked into it. It's still being sold, but I think I'd prefer to run a linux install if I was going to tool around with another OS.

4.52 was never released in a retail box (apparently), just an internal release for existing customers or distributed in limited ways.

All of the employees who worked for eCS have quit and moved to BlueLion whose working on a release to support more modern hardware. So there's no point on buying eCS as it's dead now.

Linux is fairly different from OS/2, not really comparable--both serve different niches. Linux makes a lot of sense for modern hardware. For something as old as a T43, OS/2 is perfect.
The only reason why someone would ever run OS/2 on modern hardware is if they want something 'different'.

Also I should note there are games and hardware for OS/2 (and on old versions of Windows) which cannot run under Linux.

I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my X220 today!!!

karotlopj wrote:I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my X220 today!!!

Congrats. Now why did you do that?

Thinkpad4by3 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 27, 2017 11:38 am

karotlopj wrote:I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my X220 today!!!

Congrats. Now why did you do that?

I guess I just wanted to share my joy with the world ....

Did you know that OS/2 will be celebrating its 30th birthday in December?

I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my T420 today!!! Needed to change BIOS setting for SATA to AHCI to get it to boot.

karotlopj wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 15, 2017 5:10 am

I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my T420 today!!! Needed to change BIOS setting for SATA to AHCI to get it to boot.

Did you manage to get wifi or sound working? Or is it just basic functionality?
(IBM supported all of the hardware on the T43 with OS/2, fortunately).

micrex22 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:31 am

karotlopj wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 15, 2017 5:10 am

I'd just like to announce that I've managed to get OS/2 working on my T420 today!!! Needed to change BIOS setting for SATA to AHCI to get it to boot.

Did you manage to get wifi or sound working? Or is it just basic functionality?
(IBM supported all of the hardware on the T43 with OS/2, fortunately).

I just got it to boot! Haven't done much testing with it yet.... BTW This is the T420 - i'm not sure if you thought I was referring to a T42...

Have you checked out Arca Noae ArcaOS? It is the latest incarnation of OS/2 Warp - eComStation.
https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion/