On February 20, The Register received word from reader Brian Ledbetter that he had purchased a pre-release copy of the IBM/Microsoft OS/2 Software Development Kit from eBay. Specifically, in “Version 2.0 Prerelease 2 (for Prerelease 1 users),” an eBay user created an original listing called the.collectionist. This seller has previously sold other rare software finds.
According to the original eBay listing and final price of $650 (after two bids), the.collectionist will donate 20% of the sale proceeds to the Internet Archive. This is a smart move for those who seem equally keen on preserving software history based on past sales. Additionally, for her OS/2 researchers who want to try this out, it’s available from The Archive. Just saying.
For those who aren’t familiar with OS/2 or the history of operating systems in general, here’s a quick explanation. OS/2 was a joint operating system project by IBM and Microsoft for IBM’s proprietary Personal System/2 (PS/2) PC. If you’ve ever seen the old circular ports used in keyboards and mice on older PCs, they’re also known as PS/2 ports. This is because PS/2 ports are inherited.
Although OS/2 came after the original IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS, we know today that the IBM and Microsoft partnership would not continue that way. Microsoft finally stopped working with IBM in 1992 when it released Windows 3.1, a direct competitor to the OS/2 software that IBM paid for.
You’re probably reading this article on your Windows PC or Android smartphone, and you can probably see how things unfolded. Microsoft has long dominated the PC OS market.
Of course, IBM is still a pretty important name in the PC market. Before selling its PC division to Lenovo, it was instrumental in creating early operating systems and producing hardware like the original “ThinkPad” laptop design, so imagine what it would be like today without IBM. It’s difficult.
If you’re reading this before April 15, 2024, and want to learn more about the history of OS/2 computing, I recommend checking out the Hobbes OS/2 archive while it still exists. Masu. Hobbes OS/2 Archive is the longest surviving of his host of OS/2 software, but the decades have finally caught up with it and it is scheduled to close in April.
