As I chose a volume over 4 GB, only HPFS is available. If the volume size was up to 2 GB, you’re given the choice of selecting FAT or OS/2’s HPFS (High Performance File System). Given the hard disk is virtual, either press Q or Enter with Perform a quick format selected.ĭepending on the volume size specified earlier will determine the next step of selecting the file system. It will then be requested to either perform a long or quick format. Either press A or Enter with Accept this volume selected.
This time Setup prompts to install on the detected volume. You’ll need to repeat the steps of changing back to the Client CD, and go past the welcome and installation process screens. At this point re-mount the Boot CD and invoke the Ctrl+Alt+Del command for the VM to restart it. However instead press F3, select Save the changes and exit, and press Enter.Ī dialog box will appear stating that the disk partitioning is complete. If you press Enter here you’ll be able to modify the volume and/or hide it from OS/2. Once done, you’ll return back to the Logical View and you’ll now see a hard disk volume beside the CD-ROM. Press Enter after you’re decided on the partition size or accept the default value. Finally you may choose the size of the partition in megabytes, in this case the value is 4400 which will consume the entire hard disk. Next you may name the partition with the default value being.
Select Allocate from free space from the menu that appears, and again with the specified free space shown. Press Enter with D1 highlighted as we only have a single virtual disk. The Volume Management Tool changes to Physical View stating to choose the disk to create the volume on. Next you will need to specify a name for the volume so call it whatever you desire and press Enter. You will be asked to specify the assigned drive letter, select C: and press Enter. Select the option Create a volume that can be made bootable and press Enter. With the default option Create a new volume selected, press Enter for a sub-menu to appear. Press Enter in Logical View and a blue menu will appear. Press F5 again to revert back to the Logical View. Here however you can only change the disk name. Pressing F5 to change to the Physical View allows you to see the hard disk with its available capacity. Swap the CDs over and press Enter.Īt the moment the only recognised volume is the Client CD mounted assigned to a drive letter greater than C. Before long, you’ll be prompted to insert the Client CD. As the name suggests the VM boots off the CD and you’ll see OS/2 Warp appear across the screen with a blue background – same as the image at the top of this post. All I changed is NAT to Bridged Adapter under the Network settings.īefore starting up the VM, I mount the OS/2 Boot CD from selecting the CD-ROM drive under the Storage settings. VT-x/AMD-V), SoundBlaster 16 for sound, and PCNET-Fast III for the network. Hardware virtualisation features are to be left on (i.e. Once the VM has been created, very little requires adjusting. This version of OS/2 requires a minimum of 120 MB, though with all features installed can exceed up to 450 MB of disk space.
I decided to use 256 MB of RAM with a 4.3 GB hard disk. VirtualBox suggests 128 MB of RAM, and a 2 GB virtual hard disk which are both acceptable. Give the VM a name and select IBM OS/2 under Type, and OS/2 Warp 4.5 under Version. A Create Virtual Machine dialog box will appear allowing you to select which operating system it will be using for this virtual machine (VM).
CDs or ISO images of IBM OS/2 Warp 4.52 (there’s a Boot CD, and a Client CD).
Unlike previous posts with installing earlier Windows in VirtualBox, there’s no need to retrieve additional drivers.
In this guide I’ll be using Oracle VirtualBox 5.1.18 on a Windows 10 machine.
After this the foundation of the OS had evolved into what is now known as eComStation. It wasn’t offered in a retail package, but for those who had a contractual agreement with IBM for OS/2 support. OS/2 Warp 4.52 was the final version by IBM released in 2001 with official support ending in 2006. Years later it was still found on some servers and even ATMs on the street. By 1996 with the final retail release of OS/2 Warp 4.0, IBM conceded defeat by Microsoft realising it was not able to compete with Windows 95, although still managed to withhold a portion of the enterprise market. OS/2 initially developed in cooperation between Microsoft and IBM back in the 1980s had a turbulent history over the years.