Anyone get OS/2 running under Fusion?

[Yaztromo]

Hi Everyone:

Okay -- I know that it's not officially[/i] supported, but has anyone here been able to get OS/2 (any version) running under Fusion? The Wikipedia entry for OS/2 suggests that VMware still recognizes the guest parameter "os2experimental", and sure enough Fusion seems to accept this. I've found a forum posting elsewhere where someone claims to have it working under Fusion, but I can't get either WARP v4 or Warp Server for e-Business (v4.5) installed.

I'm mostly curious to find out if it's doable. I don't have any real need to do this, but I used to be an OS/2 software developer at IBM some years ago, and wanted to see it I could get it running purely for the "blast from the past" value, as opposed to any particular need.

Thanks in advance!

Yaz.

[stevedt281]

I'm curious about this too. I used it extensively (and used to be an OS/2 groupie to some extent) starting with 2.1.

How far do you get? I can get to the second install floppy and it just freezes.

I'm using Warp 4 also. I can't find my old 2.1 CDs, but I'll keep looking.

[Yaztromo]

Interestingly enough, I've been able to get a basic WARP v4 install going under VMware Fusion.

I'm able to run the base OS, and it appears to be quite stable, but there are issues. I haven't been able to get sound working yet -- installing the SB16 drivers report an error at boot time. Video is[/i] working at resolutions higher then 640x480x16, but I had to install SciTech SNAP Graphics drivers in VESA mode.

Unfortunately, networking has been problematic. I was able to install FP11 off CD, and got the Intel E1000 network adapter drivers off Hobbes, which MPTS happily installed for me. The drivers do detect the virtual adapter and its MAC address at boot time, but the adapter is being configured for 10Mbps half-duplex mode. I've upgraded MPTS to the full 32-bit version from WARP Server for e-business (something IBM did in fact support), but I can't get a DHCP connection, and my attempts to use a static IP have likewise failed.

Installing TCP/IP v4.2.1 (also from WSeB) have likewise failed -- launching the installer causes the UI to stop responding to mouse or keyboard events at the very first screen. I need to read up on how to install it in "unattended" mode to see if I can bypass this limitation.

As might be expected, serial device support doesn't work. This isn't a big deal from a usage standpoint (I have no serial devices t use with it anymore anyhow), however OS/2 insists on installing the serial device drivers COM.SYS and VCOM.SYS even if you tell it not to install serial support, and these will halt the boot process to ask you to press enter to verify that you've seen they don't work. A quick edit of the CONFIG.SYS removes these lines, but the upgraded MPTS install re-enabled them again.

Otherwise, it is working. I haven't decided what exactly to do with it yet, although I do have a ton of boxed OS/2 software in storage that I might play around with. Admittedly I went through a number of failed installs, and I'm not sure what I did this time to make it work. If you'd like, I can post my VMX file, in case anyone else wants to get this working.

Yaz.

[admin]

Fusion doesn't actually support SB16 emulation, so try the ES1371 emulation. OS/2 has a diver for this, though probably not in base Warp 4.

I haven't had much of a chance, but when I do I'll give it a shot with MCP2 and see where I get. I tried on Parallels (they claim support) some time back and it just completely failed.

[Yaztromo]

I'll give that a try and will see what happens.

As I said, I was originally trying the WARP Server for e-Business install, and that consistently crapped out on me before even getting to the installer. I tried both the boot CD and the diskette images, to no avail. Which is a shame, as I was hoping to run with the SMP kernel built into WSeB.

WARP v4 installed just fine -- all I have to get working is the audio (for which I'll try your advice next), networking, and the installer for TCP/IP v4.2.1.

After that -- I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I was a steady OS/2 user for ten years, and have lots of OS/2 software boxed up and in storage, but it's been several years since I've used it, and I've replaced all that old software with newer stuff.

Still, the stroll down memory lane has been fun -- I'm glad I've been able to get things working as well as they are.

Yaz.

[wdeboer]

Well, you could upload your OS/2 virtual machine and share it with me! Then I can use the best word processor ever again describe/2.

[Yaztromo]

Well, you could upload your OS/2 virtual machine and

share it with me! Then I can use the best word

processor ever again describe/2.

Well, however much I might feel that Abandonware should be fair game for redistribution, the law doesn't agree with me. Sorry. Wait until IBM's copyright expire in several decades, and then we can talk :P.

Yaz.

[Linh_My]

I don't think that OS/2 is Abandonware.

http://www.os2world.com/

[Yaztromo]

Fusion doesn't actually support SB16 emulation, so

try the ES1371 emulation. OS/2 has a diver for this,

though probably not in base Warp 4.

FWIW, while the ES1371 driver install appeared to work, and the drive does load correctly and without error, I'm not getting any sound. This seems to mirror my problems with the E1000 network driver -- it installs, and detects the virtual hardware, but I can't seem to get any data to actually transmit. There is no improvement with RC1.

I don't have a lot of time to fiddle with it right now, so I'll be putting this onto the back-burner for a bit, until I have some more free time to experiment.

Yaz.

[Yaztromo]

Hey Everyone:

I've been able to spend a bit more time on this, and have made some progress.

One of my biggest remaining obstacles has been solved -- I've been able to get networking working correctly. I switched from the e1000 driver (which loaded just fine, detected the correct MAC address, but could never talk to the network) to the AMD PCnet 32 driver (and switched the virtualDev to "vlance"), and networking is now working correctly. Huzzah!

For video, I'm using the Scitech Display Doctor v7.10 video driver suite in VESA 2.0 mode. I haven't been able to hack it to display at 1280x800 yet, but have it running at 1280x768, in 32 bit colour mode. Scitech has a newer (although now no longer delevoped) driver suite, but I couldn't find a registration code for them (I used to have a legal license for it, but lost the code long ago -- fortunately I did find my old SDD driver license code in a filing box today).

This just leaves the audio to get working, and I'll have a functional OS/2 setup running virtualized on my MacBook. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it, however having once been a long-time OS/2 user and developer, I do have lots of old software and data files that might be fun to play around with now and then.

If I ever get the audio working, I'll let everyone know.

Yaz.

[MichaelRowe01]

Can you provide a setup guide . I have ECS 1.2 that I would love getting to work on my Mac Book.

[daveratsolidcor]

I'm trying to use the VLANCE driver too, but I'm seeing this when I boot:

AMD PCNet Family Ethernet Adapter

NDIS v2.0.1 MAC Driver, Version 3.00

DriverName ........ PCNTND$ \dev\PCNTND$-OS2-#15: Device not found

If I enable the interface, it seems to cause a reliable black screen of death after CONFIG.SYS is processed. Furthermore, I cannot see anything that looks like this device in the Hardware Manager.

[Yaztromo]

Can you provide a setup guide . I have ECS 1.2 that I would love getting to work on my Mac Book.

I don't think eCS 1.2 will work, as I'm pretty sure it's based on the MCP, and thus has a kernel level beyond the FP13 level. Starting in around the FP13/FP14 area, something changed in the OS/2 kernel that will prevent the OS from booting in VMware.

Yaz.

[Yaztromo]

I'm trying to use the VLANCE driver too, but I'm seeing this when I boot:

AMD PCNet Family Ethernet Adapter

NDIS v2.0.1 MAC Driver, Version 3.00

DriverName ........ PCNTND$ \dev\PCNTND$-OS2-#15: Device not found

Well, if it helps I appear to have the v4.08 version of that driver, which I probably pulled off Hobbes (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu), although it may have also come from the 32-bit MPTS update I did to the system.

Yaz.

[Pat_Lee]

Since there is a lot of geeking and tweaking of VMX files here, I think that one addition to your VMX settings file that will help is to force VMware Fusion to use the VT monitor in this case. OS/2 does something that does not like VMware's binary translation monitor and using the VT monitor solves that issue.

Open your VMX settings file and add the following line to the config and save:

monitor_control.vt32 = "TRUE"

Hopefully this will improve stability with OS/2 and VMware Fusion.

Hope that helps.

Pat

[Yaztromo]

Hi Pat:

This didn't help me with the issue of using FixPak 14 or later on WARP v4 (and presumably also for OS/2 WARP Server for e-Business, the Merlin and Aurora Convenience Packs, and eComStation, although I haven't tested any of these) crashing at boot time with an Internal Monitor Error. I've put it into debug mode and have collected the vmware-core.gz and vmware.log files, and can send them onward if you're interested. It appears to be early during kernel initialization, or perhaps when loading one of the base device drivers.

Fortunately, I created a snapshot prior to installing the fixpak I tested this with (FP15), so getting back to something usable again isn't going to be an issue.

Yaz.

[FinalizedSven]

So has anyone come up with a guide on how to set this thing up definitively?

I thought I'd contribute a little something to that effect:

for those with a non-bootable OS2 Warp v4 iso, such as myself, you need to vmware some bootable media to work with, like a virtual floppy.

These can be easily created by getting into the Terminal.app, navigating to a folder of your choice (preferably an empty one)

and typing the following line:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=2880 of=floppy.img

where "floppy.img" is you can change the name to whatever you want, just be aware that VMware is looking for the .img extension.

I'd suggest naming them as the CDINST built into the warp installer dictates.

(also, in order to get to CDINST in the first place, you need a bootable disk clearly, so with your virtual disk you just made, mount it into the OS of your choice, and write it with something that boots and loads up CD drivers so that you can begin the CDINST process; googling around for bootable media isn't a bad place to start)

*edit*

I've changed the guestOS option to os2experimental and when I try to boot it up it tells me I need to support hardware virtualization; I'm not even sure what that would mean if I had it. Isn't the whole point of virtual things to do them in software? Anyway, I'm not having much luck with this.

any ideas?