Can you run other OS/2 Presentation Managers on other versions?

Short answer?

NO

Long answer? Well depends on what you mean by run.

1.21 on 2.00 6.78

I did get the PM from OS/2 1.21 running on 6.78! But launching anything results in an immediate crash.

SYS1943:

OS/2 was not happy.

I did find that you can copy the BVH* video drivers from 1.21 onto 2.0 6.78, and OS/2 does boot. Perhaps the oddest thing is that with the 1.21 video drivers DOS sessions can launch windowed, and full screen, but OS/2 sessions only launch full screen. There is obviously at lot more hooked into the shell than just being a shell.

overwriting the following files from 6.78 result in a non-booting system:

  • pmwin
  • pmviop
  • pmshapi
  • pmgre

No matter how dysfunctional the system was replacing many of the DLL’s on 6.78 the pmspool always launched. I tried to substitute it from CMD but it just beeps like crazy. I tried other Presentation Manger applications, but they die immediately, leaving me with an empty desktop.

I suppose I’ll have to try other versions.

And trying to copy pmshell onto 2.00 GA results in a crash in the infamous SINGLEQ.

Has anyone else been able to mix Presentation Managers on OS/2?

4 thoughts on “Can you run other OS/2 Presentation Managers on other versions?

  1. I’m still amazed at how readily you mix and match compiler versions and would have absolutely no idea how to do that myself, and now you go and do this šŸ˜‚

    ^ clueless and innocent Unix developer

      • This is definitely one of the areas that I’m truly disappointed hasn’t been exploited by a GPT yet – One would think a computer would understand the translations between C and opcodes better than any of us mortals and be able to extrapolate binaries back to source, and yet nobody seems to have done that yet!

        (though I don’t know how necessary that really is, watching reverse engineers work through their process on YouTube definitely seems to indicate existing tools are more than up to the task at this point)

  2. On ReactOS, to be able to run Win32 core with their kernel, they had to implement interfaces along the NT Kernel and the userland modules (Basesrv, Winsrv, Csrss, Smss, Win32k, User32, Kernel32, GDI32, DxG), and assuming compatibility between their data structures. These days they can replace only a handful of modules, mostly but not limited to, Windows Graphics Engine ones (GDI and DirectX Kernel Graphics DxG) mostly to be able to run Microsoft DirectX Runtime. But they also can run Windows Kernel32 and User32 if required for testing.

    Would be Presentation Manager requires similar steps to make its modules run in a different environment, with the difference that, unlike Win32, it seems to be more coupled internally between its different components.

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