OS/2 1.x was designed for the 286 and couldn’t escape these limitations. In theory it was a decent improvement on MS-DOS, but in practice there wasn’t enough value to counter the lack of compatibility and the higher price.
That’s kind of insane if you think about it.
Microsoft always got it, and I feel certain the first release of NT (3.1) sold many times as many copies for x86 as it did for other architectures; and it was targeted for it as much as for any other arch.
It was actually Microsoft that saw early that OS/2 needed to exploit the 386 but IBM dragged their feet on it. A strategy similar to Windows/286 vs. Windows/386 would've made a lot of sense IMO. And probably helped IBM sell more 32-bit Micro Channel hardware early on!
Naturally as history has proven, this was a big mistake.
There was no CP/M for 8086/8088 CPUs in 1981 which is why Tim Paterson came up with QDOS for Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft's Paul Allen knew about QDOS and acquired it for IBM to use for the IBM PC.
PC-DOS 1.0 was released with the IBM PC in Aug 1981.
CP/M for IBM PC didn't show up until spring 1982.
80286 release date? 1982 Feb 01. Six months after IBM PC/PC-DOS 1.0 was introduced.
By the time the IBM PC's popularity took off, the 80286 design was etched in silicon already.
We were happily running MS-DOS 3.3 and DR-DOS 5.0, until it came to be.
At the time most people were expecting 80286es to become a second higher-end market where people ran Xenix (or perhaps a new MP/M for the 80286), separate from a low-end 8086 market with whatever tinpot non-multiuser non-virtual-memory operating systems were going to come out for it.
joshmarinacci•6mo ago
cr3ative•6mo ago