Case study

on
Operating system/2

CREATED BY PRASHANT
PANDEY P4

History

The development of OS/2 began when IBM and Microsoft signed the "Joint
Development Agreement" in August 1985.

It was code-named "CP/DOS" and it took two years for the first product to be
delivered.

OS/2 was intended as a protected mode successor of PCDOS.

The collaboration between IBM and Microsoft unravelled in 1990, between the
releases of Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.3.

IBM released a version it called OS/2 Warp that included Internet access and
additional features. At the same time, Microsoft was working on OS/2 version
3.0; however, it later became Microsoft Windows NT.

OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was
discontinued on 31 December 2006. It has been since maintained with
relatively few new features under the name of eComStation.

IBM OS/2,in full International Business Machines Operating System/2, an

operating system introduced in 1987 by IBM and the Microsoft Corporation to
operate the second-generation line of IBM personal computers, the PS/2
(Personal System/2).

IBM OS/2 was intended to replace the older disk operating system (DOS),
which, with the development of the Intel Corporation 80286 microchips in the
mid-1980s, was growing increasingly obsolete. OS/2 combined a new
graphical user interface (GUI) with features previously available only on
mainframe computers. It shared similarities with other personal computer
(PC) operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, UNIX and Xenix.

Simultaneously, Microsoft continued development of its Windows operating

system, whose popular third iteration (Windows 3.0) contained some of the
GUI elements developed for OS/2. Despite later basing some Windows NT and
Windows 95 developments on code written for IBM and OS/2, Microsoft soon
discontinued development of further interface features for OS/2.

With Microsoft focusing its efforts on Windows, IBM turned to Commodore

Business Machines for interface development and borrowed GUI design ideas
from the Commodore AmigaOS. With OS/2.20 the Workplace Shell was
created and became a GUI standard, and future OS/2 iterations ran Windows
with a reliability that led IBM to label the system crash proof.

In 1994 IBM introduced a new version, OS/2 Warp, which included many new
features. OS/2, however, failed to acquire a share of the mass market. It
survived in IBM-dominated markets such as automated teller machines (ATMs),
but the company halted production in 2005 and support in 2006. Users and
developers still loyal to OS/2 support releasing the software as open source,
but Microsoft retains rights to some of the code, and the security of ATMs
could be compromised.

Definition

OS/2 was originally a 16-bit operating system that was designed to work with
286 processors and first introduced in 1987.

Jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM to operate with Intel microprocessors.

OS/2 later became a graphical interface similar to Windows, but also

supported a command line.

In fact, many OS/2 and DOS commands are the same.

The user interface is built up object-oriented.

Supported application

OS/2 is open source software.

It supports various applications which are list below.

Text editors: Extended Editor, ZED.

Graphics players: Animation player, Panorama Tools, Show3D.

Internet apps: NetChat, MailRun.

Browsers: Qbrows, QtWeb, Surfer.

Calculator: Octave, ccalc.

Screensaver: Blackout:

"Blackout" is a completely FREE screen saver for OS/2 versions 2.0.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheet Calculator.

Spell checker: Ispell.

Voice: Backtalk:

Backtalk is free Speech System for OS/2.

Games: Alien Blaster, Doom for OS/2.

Radio: FM Radio.

Audio player: os2sound.

Video: DCITU:

Digital Camera Image Transfer Utility application for OS/2 and eComStation.

QuickMotion:

Quickmotion for OS/2. MMOS/2 CODECS for Apple formats.

Antivirus: ClamAV.

OS/2 features

Low System Requirements:

OS/2 can run on any 386 or higher system with at least 8Mb of RAM and 200Mb
of hard drive space.

Ability to run More applications:

Because of OS/2's backwards compatibility you can run more applications on

OS/2 today than any other PC OS.

Full Pre-emptive Multitasking:

OS/2 controls how much processor time each program gets. This means that
users won't have to worry about a "resource hog" tying up the system, and
they can continue doing their work.

Users can also select exactly how much processor time they want to allocate
to each program.

Memory Virtualization:

Because of OS/2's excellent memory virtualization users can run applications

that they normally would not be able to because of memory restrictions.

As an example, users can run applications that would normally use up 32Mbs
of RAM on a 16Mb system.

Crash Protection:

OS/2 protects each program in it's own "virtual machine".

If the system does crash, chances are that the user will be able to recover
some or all of their data.

High Performance File System:

OS/2's file system is called HPFS . HPFS uses disk space more efficiently.

Device Driver Support:

IBM now includes a CD devoted to device drivers with OS/2 and is

continuously supporting manufacturers in ensuring that new hardware has
OS/2 drivers.

OS/2 architecture

Why OS/2 failed

The creators of OS/2 had great plans and expectations. Twenty years later, it
is clear that OS/2 largely failed.

There is no single reason for this failure.

Microsoft tried to claim all credit for OS/2 (MS OS/2 products for example
do not include IBM copyright messages, while IBM versions have both IBM and
MS copyright notices) which irked IBM.

There was also a culture clash between IBM and Microsoft. IBM had an
established and highly formalized development process, while Microsoft was
a company of hackers always ready to go for an ad-hoc solution.

IBM programmers could not understand how anyone could write code
without proper design documents and thorough testing. Microsoft
programmers could not understand how anyone could waste so much time
on paperwork when they should be writing code instead.

Some say that it was a mistake to develop for 286 and OS/2 should have been
developed for the 386 from the beginning. It is questionable whether this
would have been beneficial or not. On the one hand, the 286 architecture was
highly problematic when DOS compatibility was desired. On the other hand,
OS/2 was released at a time (1987) 386 based machines were very rare.