I was working on a PS/2 Model 95. This was one *heck* of a server back in the day. I had my finger pressed down on the button, when I realized it was not completely shut down: it had gotten stuck and I needed to kill a process to get it to finish. But I had my finger on the button!
So, I double-clicked the button as fast as I could. No problem! Everything stayed up.
I have seen that a few times since then, where the good-quality computers have survived momentary power outages and the crummy ones haven't. Just another reason to buy quality hardware...
I don't know the details, but I believe that at that time, Microsoft were still on IBM's team developing OS/2. Windows and OS/2 are very similar. Also, both SOM and COM were inspired by CORBA. And there are many differences; COM used DCE-RPC and added UUIDs to interfaces, for example, whereas SOM relied on simple names.
That part of my comments somehow got lost in the editing. That was kind of my point: While it was IBM that developed SOM pretty much on its own (as part of the Workplace Shell), Microsoft was very present during the development, including having source-code access. There was a reason that Microsoft gave IBM a source-code license to Windows 3.1: Microsoft had appropriated a *ton* of OS/2 code into Windows.
I do agree about the way that the industry seems to "re-invent" itself over and over, and often in less useful ways. CORBA/SOM/DCE/COM to SOAP/RMI/XML-RPC is a perfect example.
I'm sick of "new ideas" that take tried-and-true solutions and strip them of the "garbage" that made them a practical solution for the real world. By the time they get "refined" to be a useful solution in the real world, they bear a *striking* similarity to the solution that was rejected in the first place. CORBA -> SOAP is one of those things. So is SNA -> TCP/IP. Sure, SNA could be byzantine at times. But by the time you bolt on all of the security, QoS and other useful functions onto TCP/IP, it's amazing how byzantine it can be, too....:)
Or remember all of those people who thought they could eliminate their document management systems (such as Lotus Notes) and replace them with static Web servers? Secretaries can just write HTML! And it's New!(tm). Here we are, 10 years later, and what do we have? Web servers that look a *lot* like Lotus Notes servers!:)
My company offers IBM desktops and servers exclusively. We will work with other hardware, of course, and we are both HP and Dell "resellers", but we only offer IBM hardware as part of our quotes.
Not all of the hardware we've gotten from IBM has been the greatest, but on the whole, the quality of IBM's hardware has been at least as good as anything else out there. What *really* keeps us coming back to IBM, though, is the warranty. Their service is unmatched in the industry.
First off, 3 year onsite warranties are standard on the *vast* majority of IBM servers. Second, they can (and, for us, often are) upgraded to 4-hour (or even 2-hour) response warranties. Third, when I call IBM and tell them that a part is dead, they believe me and ship the part immediately. They do as a few logical questions, but the parts get shipped. I'm on the phone maybe 10 minutes total.
Dell, on the other hand, *often* requires me to talk to half a dozen people and take two or more hours just to get them to send the most inexpensive parts (a desktop CD-ROM incident among *several* comes to mind).
I'm not real worried about the quality of IBM equipment for the next six months or so: I figure that most equipment designs are already in the pipeline. However, I'm keeping a *close* eye on the machines we're getting... And if their warranty terms or responsiveness changes, you can be sure we will be ready with alternatives...
The original poster said that you need a massive antenna to reach India from the US. I said that I guy used a light bulb as an antenna and got WAC. Others have confirmed that what I said actually happened. And you're going to argue as to whether the light bulb or the very short feedline (even with a balun!) or the radio itself contriubted more to the process? And you think that "I didn't read the article" helps you, even when someone else gives you a link to the FA?
Are you kidding me? Don't you have something better to argue about? Even Tastes Great/Less Filling is a more meaningful argument. Or are you just trying to cover up your embarassment at being flat out wrong?
I really wish I could find the actual article, but this is close enough for me... Wrong on the year, though: it was mid-2000. Everything else is close enough.
You don't have to believe me. However, it was a *cover article* for QST magazine in the late '90's.
There was a line on the cover: "Anything can be a radiator..." and it showed a picture of a rig, less than 10 feet of wire, and a light bulb in a ceramic holder on a fence post. The article was about the fact that while an ideal and monster antenna is nice, that you can truly work around the world with just about *anything*.
In a couple of days, the guy had used the light bulb as an antenna. Someone noticed that he had worked, IIRC, everything but Africa for WAC, so he went ahead and found Africa (or whatever continent: it was just one he needed at that point).
Now this *was* at the peak of the solar cycle. The point was, though, that even with something that Hams had used as a *dummy load* you could work far-flung contacts. You could use even far from optimal designs in far from optimal ways and still reach people. Could the transmission lines have acted as more of an antenna than the bulb itself? Sure. But that wasn't the point.
I've searched both ARRL.org and Google and can't find this thing, but trust me: it did exist. Anyone else remember this?!?
A few years ago, a guy used a light bulb as an antenna and was able to work contacts on all 6 continents. There was an article in the ARRL magazine, but I can't seem to find it...
You can easily work around the world with a 5w transceiver and a simple wire antenna. Does having 1500w running through a 100' tower help? Sure. Is it necessary? Not even close.
A couple of hundred dollars of equipment could allow you to work even the most distant contacts under most circumstances. What did you spend on *game* software last year? Could someone else have chosen to spend the same amount of money on something they consider a valuable public service?
Here's one for you: *DID* a millitary fly in sat phones? If they did, would they be used by everyday people to let loved ones know they were still alive? No. So why do you assume it would happen tomorrow when it didn't happen today?
As for it not having advanced in the last 10 years: how much more advanced is that land telephone in your house? That power outlet that you plug your computer to? Don't you hate the fact that the power company hasn't "innovated"? Sometimes dramatic innovation isn't necessary. Computers are at most 50 years old. Radio is *twice* that. Wouldn't you expect a slower rate of innovation? And by the way, search for PSK31: just because *you* haven't heard of the innovatins, doesn't mean they don't exist...
Ham radio is not for everyone. It's not terribly exciting. But when there's a disaster, it's a community dedicated to serve. When was the last time you heard about those LAN network administrators who were instrumental in helping whole communities to communicate in the event of a disaster? No, that's right: They were too busy whining that their DSL was down...
Aptiva has been dead for *years*. IBM has one desktop line: the ThinkCentre. IBM has no dedicated home machines.
IBM's Intellistation line (PC workstation) and xSeries (server) machines are the same. They are only different in name and video card. So if they sell one, they're selling the other.
I don't know how IBM does in the workstation world. I've only seen one or two Intellistations out there. They're just too expensive for what you get: they're like 50% more than the identical file server, and the only difference is a video card, and maybe a non-hot-swap SCSI hard drive. In fact, I have actually sold an xSeries 225 instead of the comparable Intellistation for a client that needed the CPU power (dual CPU's) but did not need the video performance!
It's funny: when people ask me what type of notebook to buy, I tell them to buy a Thinkpad. I tell them that there is only one notebook better, but it's an Apple Powerbook!:)
Oddly enough, I've been telling people that for years, but in the last year, people have been taking me seriously. They've been asking if they should buy a Macintosh. And for home, I've actually been telling them to seriously consider it... OS X really has changed the rules.
I used to use OS/2 heavily until 1998/1999, and supported it (until the servers that ran it were replaced) until 2001 or so. I *still* have a couple of firewalls and an old, reliable mail server out there running OS/2 and InJoy (on a 9-year-old PC Server 320)!
For a completely vertial application (such as a teller computer), OS/2 would still be perfect. I've started running Linux on my notebook full-time, and I'm amazed how many times it reminds me of running OS/2 back in 1998. Just harder...
If it was a Presario, it was almost definitely *not* a P60. The P60 (and 66's and early 90's) were early Pentiums that were devoted to high-end computers. There were no "value" P60's. In fact, those chips were quite different from later Pentium chips. They were socket 3 chips, and weren't (hardware) compatible with much else moving forward.
To start the value market, Intel released the P75. This was a Pentium processor with a 1.5x multiplier, but a 50MHz front side bus. That's exactly what you're describing: a 50MHz setting on the motherboard (as well as the 60 and 66MHz speeds). I'd bet dollars to donuts that that's what you've got.
Fortunately for me, I only used Windows 3.1 personally for about 2 weeks before I reloaded the machine with OS/2 2.0! The only time I was subjected to Windows 3.1 was on an old 386SX I had (the client in my 2-computer client-server world!) and clients that had a few Windows 3.1 boxes. But OS/2 has the same spyware-prevention features as Windows 3.1: obscurity!:)
The Pentium started life as a 60, 66 and 90MHz chip. There was later a 75MHz chip (with 50MHz front end: usually with a 486-style chipset), but those are as slow as it goes.
I bought a 22" CRT (Mitsubishi DiamondScan something) that is as nice as *any* professional 20+" monitor I've seen. I paid $220 for it from an off-lease vendor.
The monitor was 3 years 2 months old when I bought it, but when properly calibrated the brightness is on 47 (of 100). There's a *lot* of life left in that guy...
Now it *is* the size of a small house, but seeing as it's 1/20'th the cost of a 22" flat panel, I'll take it!:)
I steal not a line of code, not a pixel of graphics, not a piece of anything. However, I have faithfully paid homage to a number of sites: IBM, Red Hat, Apple and others. I take their site apart. I see what colors they've used, what CSS and text features they've used, how they organize the page, the style of icons. And I rebuild it from scratch.
In fact, usually my stuff might even be better: it's often much cleaner, because I'm usually doing it by hand instead of using DreamWeaver or InDesign or whatever they used. They might have had requirements or previous attempts that caused them to go in one direction, that in a clean rewrite I do not have to worry about.
In the end, I leverage their (likely substantial) investment in artistic design and analysis, testing and other such features for free. And it is 100% legal. I have stolen nothing but a publicly-availble idea. I've built some sites so that, except for the text, everything else was nearly exactly identical down to the pixel, just to show that I can. For the most part, I make small changes: vary this color very slightly, make this column slightly wider, swap certain elements, etc. Not because I have to, but because it better fits with the customer's need (different sized logo, for example), or just to make it not *quite* such a clone.
I've had other do *exactly* the same thing to my sites. I do not care: it is fair and legal. I've also had people steal my site byte-for-byte. That I do not like. I've e-mailed such people. I've told them what I've done, and how they can do the same. They usually do. The don't always, and there's little I can do that is worth the time and effort.
In short, why break the law, even if everyone else does, when staying legal is so easy, and the result is the same?
Bochs is a very, very slow emulator. It is mainly used in areas where completely accurate, tracable emulation is required. It is also portable to non x86 architectures.
Xen uses virtualization (not emulation) to run multiple processes. It allows the vast majority of code to run natively on the processor. It is not portable. It is, however, very fast: usually within a few percent of native speeds.
Xen works by modifying the source of the operating system. That allows them to have a much more lightweight virtualization system that is also faster. But that's why you can't run Windows.
None of this has been true since 1998 at the *latest*, and some of these haven't been true since 1992!
OS/2 2.0 was a fully 32-bit, reentrant, fully preemptive multitasking kernel in 1992. Linux still has issues with a preemptive kernel! The graphics interface went 32-bit in OS/2 2.1. It is a single-user system, so there is (or was, anyway) little focus on multi-user style security, at least for local users (the HPFS, and especially HPFS386 filesystems were excellent for multi-user security, including full support for extended attributes).
As for the single program locking up the entire system, that was a design decision in the Presentation Manager (the GUI API and program). It had a single input queue: all window messages went through a single queue. This has performance and usability advantages, especially when one window must modify or handle the messages for another.
However, yes, a single program that did not respond to messages could lock the GUI. The computer would run, but the GUI would be locked until you killed it.
That was changed in Warp 4.0. There were a number of user selectable ways that this could be addressed, depending on how much you might need the features of SIQ.
I'm not saying that OS/2 is perfect, or even valuable in the year 2004, but give me a break. You're talking about issues that were addressed between 6 and *12* years ago!
And the Workplace Shell features a level of object orientedness I have never experienced anyplace else, one that worked *extremely* well. The GUI was not pretty, but it was extremely robust, with a collection of very powerful features.
Microsoft largely wrote OS/2 1.x according to IBM's specifications. IBM was responsible for writing OS/2 2.x. This includes the entire Workplace Shell, which started life as a shell for 1.x, actually: I saw it demo'ed in 1998 running on 1.x. This was an early demo: even window resize did not work!:)
While IBM was working on 2.x (mainly WPS stuff), Microsoft was tasked with writing the next version of OS/2: 3.0. It was about this time that Windows 3.0 became such a success. Microsoft then too their OS/2 3.0 code and decided to make Windows NT.
That is why an *amazing* number of Win32 (as in NT, *not* 95) calls are merely renamed OS/2 calls. In fact, IBM ported Lotus SmartSuite to OS/2 by creating a Win32 (again, NT, not 95) to OS/2 translation layer that allowed them to port like 85% of the SmartSuite code without rewriting.
Windows 95 was not even *thought* of at this time. We're talking 1991 timeframe. Windows 95 was never supposed to exist: NT (NT 3.1, that is) was supposed to be the 32-bit OS that the world moved to. But it was too big, too bloated, too unusable.
However, there is (well, was) a *ton* of code that started life as OS/2 3.0 in Windows NT. That's why during the divorce, IBM was given the rights to a source license of Windows 3.1. Which is also why shortly afterward Microsoft release Windows 3.11!:) In IBM's "Blue Spine" version of OS/2 (the one that included Windows 3.1), IBM's copy of Windows 3.1 ran 10% faster than Microsoft's. Why? They recompiled Windows with the Watcom C compiler instead of MSVC!:)
However, it's all kind of moot, anyway. The Win32 API is now quite a bit different (Windows 95's 'Win32' API was quite a bit different from NT 3.5's, and Windows 2000 and XP have moved in new directions, too), and OS/2 isn't going anywhere.
We use these as firewalls with zero moving parts: Compact Flash IDE, Eden 533MHz processors with heatsink only, etc.
We've probably got something like a dozen or so of these in producton. We've never, not *ever*, had to reboot a single one of these. It's not that they have not ever been restarted, but they've never crashed once.
I'd say that, for us, they've been highly reliable...
Slashdot Mirror
So, I double-clicked the button as fast as I could. No problem! Everything stayed up.
I have seen that a few times since then, where the good-quality computers have survived momentary power outages and the crummy ones haven't. Just another reason to buy quality hardware...
~600 people /95 people X 1 mile/gal = ~6 gal/mile.
Right?
That part of my comments somehow got lost in the editing. That was kind of my point: While it was IBM that developed SOM pretty much on its own (as part of the Workplace Shell), Microsoft was very present during the development, including having source-code access. There was a reason that Microsoft gave IBM a source-code license to Windows 3.1: Microsoft had appropriated a *ton* of OS/2 code into Windows.
I do agree about the way that the industry seems to "re-invent" itself over and over, and often in less useful ways. CORBA/SOM/DCE/COM to SOAP/RMI/XML-RPC is a perfect example.
I'm sick of "new ideas" that take tried-and-true solutions and strip them of the "garbage" that made them a practical solution for the real world. By the time they get "refined" to be a useful solution in the real world, they bear a *striking* similarity to the solution that was rejected in the first place. CORBA -> SOAP is one of those things. So is SNA -> TCP/IP. Sure, SNA could be byzantine at times. But by the time you bolt on all of the security, QoS and other useful functions onto TCP/IP, it's amazing how byzantine it can be, too.... :)
Or remember all of those people who thought they could eliminate their document management systems (such as Lotus Notes) and replace them with static Web servers? Secretaries can just write HTML! And it's New!(tm). Here we are, 10 years later, and what do we have? Web servers that look a *lot* like Lotus Notes servers! :)
I think I'm getting old. Old and bitter...
This was before the split between Microsoft and IBM. SOM and COM are very similar...
Yet another "innovation" from Microsoft that was based upon suspiciously similar innovations from other companies...
Not all of the hardware we've gotten from IBM has been the greatest, but on the whole, the quality of IBM's hardware has been at least as good as anything else out there. What *really* keeps us coming back to IBM, though, is the warranty. Their service is unmatched in the industry.
First off, 3 year onsite warranties are standard on the *vast* majority of IBM servers. Second, they can (and, for us, often are) upgraded to 4-hour (or even 2-hour) response warranties. Third, when I call IBM and tell them that a part is dead, they believe me and ship the part immediately. They do as a few logical questions, but the parts get shipped. I'm on the phone maybe 10 minutes total.
Dell, on the other hand, *often* requires me to talk to half a dozen people and take two or more hours just to get them to send the most inexpensive parts (a desktop CD-ROM incident among *several* comes to mind).
I'm not real worried about the quality of IBM equipment for the next six months or so: I figure that most equipment designs are already in the pipeline. However, I'm keeping a *close* eye on the machines we're getting... And if their warranty terms or responsiveness changes, you can be sure we will be ready with alternatives...
The original poster said that you need a massive antenna to reach India from the US. I said that I guy used a light bulb as an antenna and got WAC. Others have confirmed that what I said actually happened. And you're going to argue as to whether the light bulb or the very short feedline (even with a balun!) or the radio itself contriubted more to the process? And you think that "I didn't read the article" helps you, even when someone else gives you a link to the FA?
Are you kidding me? Don't you have something better to argue about? Even Tastes Great/Less Filling is a more meaningful argument. Or are you just trying to cover up your embarassment at being flat out wrong?
I don't know why I'm wasting my time for someone who won't Google for it themselves, but PSK31 has nothing to do with packet...
A link that pretty much backs up what I was saying. And it even mentions that the author used a balun to reduce feedline radiation!
http://qrp.kd4ab.org/2000/000617/0033.html
I really wish I could find the actual article, but this is close enough for me... Wrong on the year, though: it was mid-2000. Everything else is close enough.
There was a line on the cover: "Anything can be a radiator..." and it showed a picture of a rig, less than 10 feet of wire, and a light bulb in a ceramic holder on a fence post. The article was about the fact that while an ideal and monster antenna is nice, that you can truly work around the world with just about *anything*.
In a couple of days, the guy had used the light bulb as an antenna. Someone noticed that he had worked, IIRC, everything but Africa for WAC, so he went ahead and found Africa (or whatever continent: it was just one he needed at that point).
Now this *was* at the peak of the solar cycle. The point was, though, that even with something that Hams had used as a *dummy load* you could work far-flung contacts. You could use even far from optimal designs in far from optimal ways and still reach people. Could the transmission lines have acted as more of an antenna than the bulb itself? Sure. But that wasn't the point. I've searched both ARRL.org and Google and can't find this thing, but trust me: it did exist. Anyone else remember this?!?
Oh, and 73, KC8PWV :)
A few years ago, a guy used a light bulb as an antenna and was able to work contacts on all 6 continents. There was an article in the ARRL magazine, but I can't seem to find it...
You can easily work around the world with a 5w transceiver and a simple wire antenna. Does having 1500w running through a 100' tower help? Sure. Is it necessary? Not even close.
A couple of hundred dollars of equipment could allow you to work even the most distant contacts under most circumstances. What did you spend on *game* software last year? Could someone else have chosen to spend the same amount of money on something they consider a valuable public service?
Here's one for you: *DID* a millitary fly in sat phones? If they did, would they be used by everyday people to let loved ones know they were still alive? No. So why do you assume it would happen tomorrow when it didn't happen today?
As for it not having advanced in the last 10 years: how much more advanced is that land telephone in your house? That power outlet that you plug your computer to? Don't you hate the fact that the power company hasn't "innovated"? Sometimes dramatic innovation isn't necessary. Computers are at most 50 years old. Radio is *twice* that. Wouldn't you expect a slower rate of innovation? And by the way, search for PSK31: just because *you* haven't heard of the innovatins, doesn't mean they don't exist...
Ham radio is not for everyone. It's not terribly exciting. But when there's a disaster, it's a community dedicated to serve. When was the last time you heard about those LAN network administrators who were instrumental in helping whole communities to communicate in the event of a disaster? No, that's right: They were too busy whining that their DSL was down...
I see at least two errors in your post. Seeing as you asked for mercy, I'll leave them undetailed...
Who knew being a grammar Nazi would be so fun! :)
Someone else wrote the post? Or did you mean "in there"?
That's 2 posts and two mistakes. Care to try again? :)
IBM's Intellistation line (PC workstation) and xSeries (server) machines are the same. They are only different in name and video card. So if they sell one, they're selling the other.
I don't know how IBM does in the workstation world. I've only seen one or two Intellistations out there. They're just too expensive for what you get: they're like 50% more than the identical file server, and the only difference is a video card, and maybe a non-hot-swap SCSI hard drive. In fact, I have actually sold an xSeries 225 instead of the comparable Intellistation for a client that needed the CPU power (dual CPU's) but did not need the video performance!
Oddly enough, I've been telling people that for years, but in the last year, people have been taking me seriously. They've been asking if they should buy a Macintosh. And for home, I've actually been telling them to seriously consider it... OS X really has changed the rules.
I used to use OS/2 heavily until 1998/1999, and supported it (until the servers that ran it were replaced) until 2001 or so. I *still* have a couple of firewalls and an old, reliable mail server out there running OS/2 and InJoy (on a 9-year-old PC Server 320)!
For a completely vertial application (such as a teller computer), OS/2 would still be perfect. I've started running Linux on my notebook full-time, and I'm amazed how many times it reminds me of running OS/2 back in 1998. Just harder...
To start the value market, Intel released the P75. This was a Pentium processor with a 1.5x multiplier, but a 50MHz front side bus. That's exactly what you're describing: a 50MHz setting on the motherboard (as well as the 60 and 66MHz speeds). I'd bet dollars to donuts that that's what you've got.
Fortunately for me, I only used Windows 3.1 personally for about 2 weeks before I reloaded the machine with OS/2 2.0! The only time I was subjected to Windows 3.1 was on an old 386SX I had (the client in my 2-computer client-server world!) and clients that had a few Windows 3.1 boxes. But OS/2 has the same spyware-prevention features as Windows 3.1: obscurity! :)
The Pentium started life as a 60, 66 and 90MHz chip. There was later a 75MHz chip (with 50MHz front end: usually with a 486-style chipset), but those are as slow as it goes.
Reference
I still use Netscape 4 on a couple of machines (NT4 fileservers). Last time I used Netscape 3.x was on a Windows 3.1 computer dialing in via SLIP! :)
I bought a 22" CRT (Mitsubishi DiamondScan something) that is as nice as *any* professional 20+" monitor I've seen. I paid $220 for it from an off-lease vendor.
The monitor was 3 years 2 months old when I bought it, but when properly calibrated the brightness is on 47 (of 100). There's a *lot* of life left in that guy...
Now it *is* the size of a small house, but seeing as it's 1/20'th the cost of a 22" flat panel, I'll take it! :)
I steal not a line of code, not a pixel of graphics, not a piece of anything. However, I have faithfully paid homage to a number of sites: IBM, Red Hat, Apple and others. I take their site apart. I see what colors they've used, what CSS and text features they've used, how they organize the page, the style of icons. And I rebuild it from scratch.
In fact, usually my stuff might even be better: it's often much cleaner, because I'm usually doing it by hand instead of using DreamWeaver or InDesign or whatever they used. They might have had requirements or previous attempts that caused them to go in one direction, that in a clean rewrite I do not have to worry about.
In the end, I leverage their (likely substantial) investment in artistic design and analysis, testing and other such features for free. And it is 100% legal. I have stolen nothing but a publicly-availble idea. I've built some sites so that, except for the text, everything else was nearly exactly identical down to the pixel, just to show that I can. For the most part, I make small changes: vary this color very slightly, make this column slightly wider, swap certain elements, etc. Not because I have to, but because it better fits with the customer's need (different sized logo, for example), or just to make it not *quite* such a clone.
I've had other do *exactly* the same thing to my sites. I do not care: it is fair and legal. I've also had people steal my site byte-for-byte. That I do not like. I've e-mailed such people. I've told them what I've done, and how they can do the same. They usually do. The don't always, and there's little I can do that is worth the time and effort.
In short, why break the law, even if everyone else does, when staying legal is so easy, and the result is the same?
Xen uses virtualization (not emulation) to run multiple processes. It allows the vast majority of code to run natively on the processor. It is not portable. It is, however, very fast: usually within a few percent of native speeds.
Xen works by modifying the source of the operating system. That allows them to have a much more lightweight virtualization system that is also faster. But that's why you can't run Windows.
OS/2 2.0 was a fully 32-bit, reentrant, fully preemptive multitasking kernel in 1992. Linux still has issues with a preemptive kernel! The graphics interface went 32-bit in OS/2 2.1. It is a single-user system, so there is (or was, anyway) little focus on multi-user style security, at least for local users (the HPFS, and especially HPFS386 filesystems were excellent for multi-user security, including full support for extended attributes).
As for the single program locking up the entire system, that was a design decision in the Presentation Manager (the GUI API and program). It had a single input queue: all window messages went through a single queue. This has performance and usability advantages, especially when one window must modify or handle the messages for another.
However, yes, a single program that did not respond to messages could lock the GUI. The computer would run, but the GUI would be locked until you killed it.
That was changed in Warp 4.0. There were a number of user selectable ways that this could be addressed, depending on how much you might need the features of SIQ.
I'm not saying that OS/2 is perfect, or even valuable in the year 2004, but give me a break. You're talking about issues that were addressed between 6 and *12* years ago!
And the Workplace Shell features a level of object orientedness I have never experienced anyplace else, one that worked *extremely* well. The GUI was not pretty, but it was extremely robust, with a collection of very powerful features.
Microsoft largely wrote OS/2 1.x according to IBM's specifications. IBM was responsible for writing OS/2 2.x. This includes the entire Workplace Shell, which started life as a shell for 1.x, actually: I saw it demo'ed in 1998 running on 1.x. This was an early demo: even window resize did not work! :)
While IBM was working on 2.x (mainly WPS stuff), Microsoft was tasked with writing the next version of OS/2: 3.0. It was about this time that Windows 3.0 became such a success. Microsoft then too their OS/2 3.0 code and decided to make Windows NT.
That is why an *amazing* number of Win32 (as in NT, *not* 95) calls are merely renamed OS/2 calls. In fact, IBM ported Lotus SmartSuite to OS/2 by creating a Win32 (again, NT, not 95) to OS/2 translation layer that allowed them to port like 85% of the SmartSuite code without rewriting.
Windows 95 was not even *thought* of at this time. We're talking 1991 timeframe. Windows 95 was never supposed to exist: NT (NT 3.1, that is) was supposed to be the 32-bit OS that the world moved to. But it was too big, too bloated, too unusable.
However, there is (well, was) a *ton* of code that started life as OS/2 3.0 in Windows NT. That's why during the divorce, IBM was given the rights to a source license of Windows 3.1. Which is also why shortly afterward Microsoft release Windows 3.11! :) In IBM's "Blue Spine" version of OS/2 (the one that included Windows 3.1), IBM's copy of Windows 3.1 ran 10% faster than Microsoft's. Why? They recompiled Windows with the Watcom C compiler instead of MSVC! :)
However, it's all kind of moot, anyway. The Win32 API is now quite a bit different (Windows 95's 'Win32' API was quite a bit different from NT 3.5's, and Windows 2000 and XP have moved in new directions, too), and OS/2 isn't going anywhere.
We've probably got something like a dozen or so of these in producton. We've never, not *ever*, had to reboot a single one of these. It's not that they have not ever been restarted, but they've never crashed once.
I'd say that, for us, they've been highly reliable...