Re: Re: Updates from HQ
  By: Nick Andre to Sean Dennis on Tue Mar 21 2017 03:30 pm

NA> Agreed on this. From 1994 to around 2001, 2002 I think it was... I was by
NA> all accounts a die-hard OS/2 user. I still think in OS/2 terms with some
NA> things. I still remember how to do Rexx programming. The BBS is DOS-based
NA> but it ran so freaking unbelievably well under OS/2 and Rexx scripting
NA> allowed me to do things beyond DOS batch file scripting...

I loved my time with OS/2 -- I felt like OS/2 could do more than any other OS
on the hardware of the day, but as soon as desktop horsepower took off,
throwing more CPU cycles at Windows made it a better overall platform.

I started running OS/2 1.2 in 1991. I was working in an all-IBM shop at the
time, with LAN Manager servers, IBM system/38 and AS/400 midranges, and a
handful of PCs. On a 25 mhz 386 with 8 MB of RAM, I could run a GUI, connect
via Twinax to the midrange computers, run Token ring to LAN Manager, run
Microsoft Word and Excel and still have enough horsepower left to call out to
my BBS at home.

We had a store system WAN that ran over dialup - the host node was a similar
386 running OS/2 with a 16 port digiboard and the store systems running DOS
would dial up to transfer sales data and download price lookup files. At peak
times, all 16 modems were in use. The WAN software on the host all ran REXX
scripts, and we could do some pretty impressive things with the remote systems
in REXX.

Later on, I ran OS/2 2.1 at home, and it was a much better DOS than DOS. I had
a DOS VDM running LANTastic to network it to my DOS BBS, and later moved the
BBS over to DOS and OS/2 native apps under OS/2.

It wasn't until Windows 95 hit and Pentium CPUs could throw enough cycles at a
DOS window that I stopped using OS/2.
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