OS/2 on an 8088?

[linuxlove]

Was there ever an OS/2 that would run on an 8088 system?

 

[mbbrutman]

No. Never. Not even remotely possible.

Early versions (1.x) did run on an 80286 class system. Later versions (2.x and up) required at least an 80386 of some sort.

 

[Chuck(G)]

On the other hand, there's always TopView.... uke:

 

[Chromedome45]

Here's some light reading for you on the history of this great OS
http://pages.prodigy.net/michaln/history/

 

[carlsson]

Heh, check what the editor of that web page has to say:

IBM TopView. This was a text-mode multitasking shell for DOS. I have never seen this product but supposedly it wasn't too bad. It inspired the much more successful Quarterdeck DesqView.

I think in one of Andrew S. Tanenbaum's books on operating systems, he notes that DOS was barely adequate for 8088 systems and in his study of a 80286 uses a different OS. At the moment I can't recall which, probably not OS/2 though.

 

[ahm]

I think in one of Andrew S. Tanenbaum's books on operating systems, he notes that DOS was barely adequate for 8088 systems and in his study of a 80286 uses a different OS. At the moment I can't recall which, probably not OS/2 though.

Minix?

 

[Chuck(G)]

I think in one of Andrew S. Tanenbaum's books on operating systems, he notes that DOS was barely adequate for 8088 systems and in his study of a 80286 uses a different OS. At the moment I can't recall which, probably not OS/2 though.

Probably a *nix-type. There were several.

TopView was a memory hog on an 8088. As I recall, it did not get many favorable initial reviews. The fact that very few people have actually seen it gives an indication of its popularity. It's notable for having invented the .PIF file.

But if you want a multitasking OS for an 8088, there aren't too many choices, although Concurrent DOS/Concurrent CP/M would be another choice, as would MP/M 86.

 

[Raven]

There are 16-bit OS/2s, and if you somehow got an emulation for 16-bit instructions going you could run one of those conceivably, but it'd be ungodly slow unless you OC'd the heck out of your 8088.

 

[mbbrutman]

The 8088 is a 16 bit CPU already.

Trying to simulate an 80286 with it's protected mode memory addressing is not feasible on an 808x processor, no matter what level of overclocking.

 

[krebizfan]

For the handful who want to read Topview reviews, the Google archive of Infoworld includes a main review (Jun 17, 1985 pp. 44-46) and a performance comparison (Oct 7, 1985 p. 35). Simplifying it down, for DOS applications, Windows 1.0x needed an extra 5kB and slowed DOS apps slightly; Topview needed an extra 148kB and slowed DOS apps much more.

Topview also disabled some DOS functionality; a mistake IBM repeated with the OS/2 DOS Compatibility Box.

Just to make sure no one bothered with Topview, IBM required programmers to adjust certain Topview data structures in conjunction with doing a task switch. This meant excess code which no one likes. Spelunking through data structures controlled by a different application is never a good idea. Task switching was also made a lot slower. Finally, accessing outside data structures precluded porting Topview applications to protected mode. (GPF! GPF!)

Desqview ignored most of those function calls and instead did a consolidated fixup once a task switch was scheduled. More speed and more stability with Desqview. Desqview added support for EEMS making task switching faster and a variety of patches for some badly behaved programs.

 

[Raven]

The 8088 is a 16 bit CPU already.

Trying to simulate an 80286 with it's protected mode memory addressing is not feasible on an 808x processor, no matter what level of overclocking.

Well if we had the source we could correct this, too bad no OS/2 code has been leaked.

As for the 8088 being 16-bit, I had just woken up, so excuse my fail.

 

[Micom 2000]

Wasn't Topview a later version of DRs Gem ? ISTR there was a download available for it either on Tim O.s site or on Caldera's when they made a free download available of DRDOS.

Lawrence

Probably a *nix-type. There were several.

TopView was a memory hog on an 8088. As I recall, it did not get many favorable initial reviews. The fact that very few people have actually seen it gives an indication of its popularity. It's notable for having invented the .PIF file.

But if you want a multitasking OS for an 8088, there aren't too many choices, although Concurrent DOS/Concurrent CP/M would be another choice, as would MP/M 86.

 

[krebizfan]

Wasn't Topview a later version of DRs Gem ? ISTR there was a download available for it either on Tim O.s site or on Caldera's when they made a free download available of DRDOS.

Lawrence

No, Topview was an ugly character mode multitasker; GEM was a single tasking GUI. DRDOS had its own task switching API which was not compatible with Topview. There were probably at least another dozen different multitasking/task switching APIs for DOS variants; all different and little used.

 

[carlsson]

Andrew S. Tanenbaum [..] notes that DOS was barely adequate for 8088 systems and in his study of a 80286 uses a different OS.

Ah, I found it in the book Structured Computer Organization, 3rd edition. In chapter 6.4, Example operating systems he writes:

The choice for the 680x0 CPUs is relatively easy. [..] Most 68020 and 68030 based computers run UNIX. Thus we will use UNIX as our example here. The choice for the Intel family is much harder. Most 8088s [..] usually run MS-DOS [..] an obsolete, primitive and not very interesting system. [..] However, two other operating systems are also available for the 80286 and 80386, namely UNIX and OS/2. Since we have already decided to treat UNIX [..] we will use OS/2 as the example for the Intel line. Although it is not nearly as popular as MS-DOS, it is much more interesting, and has some ideas not even found in UNIX.

Further on in his comparison, he writes that OS/2 was designed specifically for the 80286. It will run on a 80386 but not take advantage of its extra features. It should be mentioned this book was last revised in 1990, so what happened to OS/2 after that is not covered in Tanenbaum's comparison with UNIX. It also shows in his summary of the comparison, when he points out OS/2 is threaded while UNIX is not.