munish@ms.uky.edu (Munish Mehra) (10/27/89)
How has OS/2 behaved on clones running different BIOS's.
I had thought that clone vendors had to customize OS/2
for their machines, but it seems everyone claims OS/2
compatibility.
Munish Mehra ARPA: munish@ms.uky.edu BITNET: munish@ukma.BITNET
UUCP: {uunet,rutgers}!ukma!munish
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."
Geoffrey James, The Tao of Programming.ander@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael R. Primm) (10/28/89)
I'm pretty sure that when OS/2 is installed for AT-class machines,
(meaning those without ABIOS (the protected mode BIOS on PS/2's)), it will
totally circumvent BIOS. The reason being that BIOS is non-reentrant, and
has an unhealthy (for multitasking machines) habit of waiting patiently for
the hardware its requesting service from (hard disks, keyboard, etc),
instead of going off and doing something useful while the request is
being handled. The end result is that OS/2 needs to be "tweeked" to
cover any port-level incompatabilities that many machines, hard disk
controllers, etc may have. But, if your machine is 100% port-level
AT-compatable (as well as you disk controllers, video, etc), you can
run IBM OS/2 without any problems (as I'm doing on my Austin 286 right now).
The BIOS your using will have little to nothing to do with compatability
with OS/2 (unless its an ABIOS close).
--Mike PrimmFYS-EH@FINTUVM.BITNET (Esa Heinonen) (10/31/89)
The ROM BIOS *is* significant. I couldn't even start installing IBM OS/2 1.1 to my 286 AT (Suntac motherboard) that had an Award 3.30 BIOS. The installation program would not boot at all. I had to trade the BIOS for an AMI BIOS (can't remember the version right now... but it was dated 1989.) So, contrary to what Mark Minasi said in February (March?) 1989 Byte, new AMI BIOSes seem to be OS/2 compatible, and some Award BIOSes seem not to be. Or maybe it was the Suntac & Award combination - I don't know for sure. At least on my 286 clone the genuine IBM OS/2 1.1 EE seems to work relatively nicely. Sometimes the system locks up, but it may be because I only have 2 MB of RAM. Any other suggestions? :----------------------------------------------: : Esa Heinonen, University of Turku, Finland : :----------------------------------------------: : Bitnet: FYS-EH at FINTUVM : : Internet: FYS-EH@MAMMUTTI.UTU.FI : :----------------------------------------------: