Yes, I’m nostalgic. Before I started using Linux, I was using OS/2. I went to it from DOS/Win3.1… skipped Windows95 altogether. OS/2 was the absolute best OS back in the day (as far as I’m concerned) and being a nostalgic (and sometimes bored) idiot, I decided to pull out my Warp 4 CDs and see if I could install it in Parallels. I succeeded… to some extent. Now that I have OS/2 installed I can honestly say I have no idea what I would ever use it for anymore. I also couldn’t get the (what should be) the simplest things installed (i.e. OS/2 builds of Firefox, even something as simple as lynx was crapping out on me). Granted, I didn’t spend too much time tweaking it (I’m not that bored).
At any rate, here’s a quick rundown of the things I had to do in order to make it work. Had to do a bit of googling to find all the bits, and this is what worked for me (note, this is Parallels on OS X)…Ok, here’s the steps:
- Copy the disk images from the Warp4 CD; in particular you want DISK0.DSK, DISK1-CD.DSK, and DISK2.DSK, in the /diskimgs/os2/35/ directory
- rename each of these files to a .dmg file (i.e. DISK0.DSK becomes disk0.dmg) — make sure you can mount each of them in the Finder
- if you can mount them, unmount them and rename them to .fdd (i.e. disk0.dmg becomes disk0.fdd)
- Create the new virtual machine, set the OS type to OS/2. Set the primary drive to be 2GB (I used 1.9GB to make sure OS/2 could read it)
- Set the CD drive to /Library/Parallels/Tools/vmtools.iso
- Set the floppy drive to ~/Desktop/disk0.fdd or wherever you saved your floppy disk images
- Make sure the machine is set to boot from the floppy first, then boot the machine. You’ll make your way through the three floppies; when the installer asks for the next floppy, just use *Devices->Floppy->Connect Image* and pick the disk it’s asking for
- When the installer wants the OS/2 CD inserted, do the same thing and use *Devices->CD/DVD-ROM 1>->[Drive name]* to have it use the physical CD-ROM (I tried with a disk image created via Disk Utility but it didn’t work)
- Use the advanced install and format your drive to HPFS
- You’ll probably have to reboot and go through all these steps again (stupid installer) after you create the filesystem and partition the drive
- When you’ve got everything installed, use the *GENGRADD* SVGA driver for the graphics card
- For the TCP/IP settings, when it comes to it, connect the floppy device to /Library/Parallels/Tools/vmtools.fdd to have it pull the network driver off the image; this should be the “RTL8029 PCI Ethernet Adapter” (PCIND.OS2).
- Once the install is complete, reboot, and use the vmware tools installer once you’ve brought OS/2 up in order to install the mouse driver (D:\DRIVERS\MOUSE\OS2\INSTALL.CMD)
I must admit, I find it pretty neat that I have OS/2 running again. It looks awful, the UI is horrid, but it’s the OS/2 I fondly remember (although I don’t remember it looking quite this bad). At any rate, I spent a bit of time trying to download stuff off of hobbes to get installed and pretty much none of it worked, and I didn’t have the patience to try and figure out what I needed to do to make it work. It was enough that I got it installed. I had tried once a few years ago in VMware and couldn’t make it work.
So, if nothing else, I spent an evening tinkering, did absolutely nothing productive, but now I can show it to my kid and make her thankful for good UIs like GNOME and Aqua.