Unboxing Citrix Multiuser 2.0

I think this is the proverbial OS/2 holy grail, a shipped copy of Microsoft OS/2 2.0

From a press release:

Coral Springs, Florida based Citrix Systems Inc has a new release of its multiuser implementation of MS-DOS. Multiuser 2.0 is designed to run any combination of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and OS/2 applications concurrently, and to provide all key features of commercial-grade operating systems multiuser, multitasking operation with terminal support, security, resource management, remote access and administration utilities. It is claimed to be a 32-bit operating system for Intel Corp iAPX86 machines from the 80386SX up. It is claimed to be compatible with Novell Inc NetWare, Microsoft LAN Manager, IBM LAN Server, and Banyan Vines networks, enabling it to function as a low-cost network extender. The ability to run graphical applications at the console will be available next month, with support of graphics at the terminal level will be added in April as a no charge upgrade. Citrix Multiuser 2.0 is $1,000 for a five-user package; doubling the number of users is $500, regardless of how many there were originally. An unlimited user licence is $2,000 once you’ve bought the five user licence. Out next month.

Looking at the copy I have, it’s strictly for OS/2 and MS-DOS programs.  There isn’t any hint of it supporting 32-bit OS/2 programs, so I have the suspicion that this is like the OS/2 FOOTBALL beta, which was the 1.0 kernel with 386 based paging (virtual memory) and v86 mode support for multitasking MS-DOS.   The manuals also state that there is no support for Presentation Manager either at the console or remotely.  So it appears that like Citrix Multiuser version 1.0 it is strictly text mode based.

I’d tell you more, except…. yeah. wrong media.

Hey buddy, spare a 5 1/4″ High density drive?

Spoiler, I got the drive! Continued in Part II!

2 thoughts on “Unboxing Citrix Multiuser 2.0

  1. Wow. What a great find. I really hope you get a drive to get this baby to run. Also, thanks for taking the time to make this video. This was actually the first unboxing I ever watched. I always felt they were kinda pointless but this one really intrigued me.
    Can’t wait to here the rest of this story.

    -Florian

    • Yeah, me too. Unboxing is lame, but this is more like unboxing history.

      I can’t find any good information on Citrix 1.0 or 2.0. … It seems it didn’t get anything graphical until a later Citrix WinView. At least disks and manuals for Citrix multiuser 1.0 leaked into the world, so this just looks like it’s based on the un-released Microsoft OS/2 2.0. the manual has a bunch of information on virtual DOS drivers for EMS, XMS, ANSI, and the filesystem filter.

      The media packet feels like 8 disks. But like I said, without a drive it’s kind of pointless to open.

      I did finally persuade a German reseller to test me up a drive, clean it, lube it and send along a cable. It should be here in about 2 weeks. I also ordered a game on 5 1/4″ disks first to test before I continue the unboxing and hopefully installation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.