No really! Â It’s an article from PC Magazine, 29th of May, 1990. Â And it’s authored by Ray Duncan, before the infamous split.
Of course the thing that stands out from the screen shot is that OS/2 2.0 looks more like OS/2 1.2. Â And of course it’s ability to run two MS-DOS VDM’s in a window at the same time!
Flight Simulator, in a Window!
Although this was a feat that Windows/386 was capable of doing, going far back as far as 1987.
Windows 2.1/386 running Flight simulator 3.0 in a window
But as you can see, OS/2 did it better. Â Windows/386 was unable to run EGA graphics in a window, instead I was forced to run Flight simulator 3 in CGA mode. Â While the OS/2 2.0 beta could give over 620kb to a MS-DOS session, Windows/386 could only give me 550kb.
And when it came time to ship, well here is IBM OS/2 2.00 0xr6100 running Flight simulator 3.0 in a window, and showing a MS-DOS box with about 600kb free.
IBM OS/2 running Flight Simulator 3.0
The real shame is that MS OS/2 2.0 was looking really promising in 1990, but thanks to the split the world didn’t get to try it out until 1992.
The article is a good read to get an idea of the state of development back in 1990. Â And of course all of PC Magaine’s 1990’s magazines are up on google books. Â I’ve managed to find 2/3rd of the Beta since I started looking (from 1990… been looking a long long time), and I have reviewed the SDK/toolkit earlier, and here.
PC Magazine, May 29th 1990 Pages 387-388
PC Magazine, May 29th 1990 Pages 389
Power Programming part 2
Power Programming Part 2, contd.
Power Programming pt3 1-2
Power Programming pt3 3-4
Power Programming pt3 5
Power Programming pt4 1-2
Power Programming pt4 3-4
Yea, as I said before, MS turned this project into an entire fiasco. As a side note, I wonder if this was how the infamous EXEPACK bug was first discovered.
Neozeed, is it still possible to run DOS software that uses graphics in a DOS window under OS/2? Just wondering.
If is so, how can it be done?
depending on how they setup the video card, and how the screen is rendered, yes. usually it just involves using a windowed dos box, or just hitting alt+enter ..
running EGA in a window on a VGA system or lower (cga/mda) works best
Thank you for the explanation.
For example, I’m running OS/2 Warp 3 using the Tseng ET4000 and I’m gonna have to find ways how to run software with EGA graphics on a 8514/A compatible graphics adapter, because OS/2 won’t accept DOS graphics running in a VGA window or higher :p