Your troubleshooting seems to show that the OS/2 boot floppy is not (completely) corrupt, but you didn't mention whether you were able to boot some other OS from the same floppy drive. In other words, have you tested to insure that the floppy drive is not failing?

Another point is that OS/2 Warp 3 requires installation floppies to boot from the A: drive. This may also be true of OS/2 2.x. Do you have multiple floppy drives (possibly different types, i.e. 3.5 and 5.25), and are you sure your OS/2 boot floppy is in the A: drive at boot time?

I mean I was able to boot the floppy- the OS/2 installer- on a Pentium 2 system. The same one used on the 486
The 3.5 drive is indeed A:\ and I do have that and a 5.25 on B:\

SRQ wrote:

I mean I was able to boot the floppy- the OS/2 installer- on a Pentium 2 system. The same one used on the 486
The 3.5 drive is indeed A:\ and I do have that and a 5.25 on B:\

So, what happens when you try to boot MS-DOS (or any other bootable floppy disk) on the 486 from drive A:?

If that too fails, then your A: floppy drive on your 486 is defective.

I'm running OS/2 2.11 on a 486 laptop just fine with 12MB RAM and 250MB IDE drive.
Possible workaround: Disable caches in BIOS, maybe this makes a change ?

Edit: Found something..
Installation

The CD version of OS/2 for Windows included a total of four boot floppies—two 3½” and two 5¼” HD diskettes.
What it unfortunately didn’t include was drivers for modern hardware, hardly a surprise given its vintage.
The first attempt to install this version of OS/2 on a test system (a 600 MHz Pentium III with a 4GB IDE fixed disk) failed miserably.
The floppies wouldn’t even boot and complained about missing A:\COUNTRY.SYS. That seemed curious because the file was decidedly present and it
couldn’t have anything to do with the anticipated hard disk troubles. Disabling internal and external caches on the test system got the installation past this hurdle.[..]
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-2-1-and-2-11/

It's the Floppy version of 2.1, and actually doesn't give any error at all.
Anyone got a source for a CD version 2.0/2.1?

PM sent.

Disabling caches actually made it boot, whyyyyyy.
That doesn't even make sense, The Pentium 2 had L2 enabled!

E: Entering the bios on this board is Ctrl-Alt-S /after/ DOS or another OS has loaded. I can't find that info anywhere online and it took some work so lemme explain this in terms as searchable as possible: The Leading Edge Winpro 486E Bios is entered with Ctrl-Alt-S

SRQ wrote:

Disabling caches actually made it boot, whyyyyyy.
That doesn't even make sense, The Pentium 2 had L2 enabled!

E: Entering the bios on this board is Ctrl-Alt-S /after/ DOS or another OS has loaded. I can't find that info anywhere online and it took some work so lemme explain this in terms as searchable as possible: The Leading Edge Winpro 486E Bios is entered with Ctrl-Alt-S

That almost sounds like the system was some kind of industrial or special appliance system originally! It may mean you'll encounter more strange behaviour later on (like any program that happens to use the Ctrl-Alt-S key combination being unusable).

There were a lot of odd foibles with OS/2, 2.0 much more so than 2.1. Timing issues (machines too fast), oddities with SCSI cards, etc.

Not sure if the soundcard will work, the Mach32 should be just fine.

Due to the antiquity of the OS/2 version, you may need to explicitly set the resolution from a command prompt, and then reboot. DOS support is needed to do the initial programming of refresh rate(!). On the fly resolution changes never happened, but by Warp 3 practically all drivers let a dialog box be used to select the resolution at next reboot..

yawetaG wrote:

SRQ wrote:

Disabling caches actually made it boot, whyyyyyy.
That doesn't even make sense, The Pentium 2 had L2 enabled!

E: Entering the bios on this board is Ctrl-Alt-S /after/ DOS or another OS has loaded. I can't find that info anywhere online and it took some work so lemme explain this in terms as searchable as possible: The Leading Edge Winpro 486E Bios is entered with Ctrl-Alt-S

That almost sounds like the system was some kind of industrial or special appliance system originally! It may mean you'll encounter more strange behaviour later on (like any program that happens to use the Ctrl-Alt-S key combination being unusable).

Consumer desktop, actually. Leading Edge Winpro 486E.

As for the problem- switching the card to a Diamond Stealth 24 fixed it, although sadly I can't find proper drivers for said card... anywhere, they don't seem to exist which is rather odd. I quite wanted to use OS/2 because, frankly, Windows 3 is a POS and win95 feels too out of the date range.

Given the specs of your system you system is meant for DOS only. 3.1 will work but like you said it looks like a POS and honestly I believe all 3.1 software can run in 95/98. Plus nothing really was worth playing that supported 3.1 that I can recall or exclusive to 3.1 that there wasn't a DOS version.

95DosBox wrote:

3.1 will work but like you said it looks like a POS and honestly I believe all 3.1 software can run in 95/98.

Hmm.. Maybe, maybe not. Windows 9x can't run in either Standard or Real-Mode. Windows 3.0/3.1 can.
Don't know if that does affect any games, though. Speed might be more of a problem here (thinking of Lunar Lander 3.0).
Earlier titles were meant to run on 12 to 25MHz machines. That's waay to slow for a real computer running Win9x, though.
-Ironically, (and in contrast to Win9x) both OS/2 and Windows NT (incl. XP/7) do contain a real copy of Windows 3.1x. 😀

95DosBox wrote:

Plus nothing really was worth playing that supported 3.1 that I can recall or exclusive to 3.1 that there wasn't a DOS version.

Windows games usually supported 640x480 resolution. That's about four times the pixels of a typical DOS game
(excluding high quality DOS games w/ Super VGA support). Also, Windows games can make use of MIDI and or run accellerated
if the hardware allows for it (esp. good for FMVs).

Jo22 wrote:

Hmm.. Maybe, maybe not. Windows 9x can't run in either Standard or Real-Mode. Windows 3.0/3.1 can. Don't know if that does affec […]
Show full quote

95DosBox wrote:

3.1 will work but like you said it looks like a POS and honestly I believe all 3.1 software can run in 95/98.

Hmm.. Maybe, maybe not. Windows 9x can't run in either Standard or Real-Mode. Windows 3.0/3.1 can.
Don't know if that does affect any games, though. Speed might be more of a problem here (thinking of Lunar Lander 3.0).
Earlier titles were meant to run on 12 to 25MHz machines. That's waay to slow for a real computer running Win9x, though.
-Ironically, (and in contrast to Win9x) both OS/2 and Windows NT (incl. XP/7) do contain a real copy of Windows 3.1x. 😀

95DosBox wrote:

Plus nothing really was worth playing that supported 3.1 that I can recall or exclusive to 3.1 that there wasn't a DOS version.

Windows games usually supported 640x480 resolution. That's about four times the pixels of a typical DOS game
(excluding high quality DOS games w/ Super VGA support). Also, Windows games can make use of MIDI and or run accellerated
if the hardware allows for it (esp. good for FMVs).

What do you mean real copy of 3.1x included in XP?

Most early CGA games were probably 320x240. There were a few Monochrome games that had much higher resolution. But many DOS games when VGA cards had more memory on it they supported 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 on the high end. But I don't think there were any Win 3.1 titles that weren't offered with a DOS version. 3.1 wasn't really that hot for gaming and was geared more toward business use (Word/Excel). It would be much slower if I recall correctly if you tried running a Dual Os supported game inside 3.1 compared to the DOS version and even then during the 95 days most people were still hardcore on DOS gaming for the most part. But if you know of any specific 3.1 titles that weren't on DOS I would check it out because there might be a few that exist with no DOS version. The Midi was great for Windows 3.1 but then you got DOS games that supported Roland MT-32 you weren't really missing out too much yet. But once CDrom games and FMVs became popular 3.1 actually started to be seen as a multimedia computer. Maybe someone can come up with a must play Windows 3.1 gaming exclusive list. I was too fond of DOS that I never really devoted myself to any significant 3.1 gaming. I think I may have using Windows 3.1 early on to connect to the primitive internet before 95 so Win 3.1 wasn't completely useless and still had a purpose.

95DosBox wrote:

What do you mean real copy of 3.1x included in XP?

I mean it contains some of the -more or less- original Windows 3.1x system files.
On Windows NT, these are located in the %windir%\system directory.
The sub system for 16bit Windows is called WoW (Windows on Windows) and is running atop of NTVDM (virtual DOS machine).

OS/2 had a similar mechanism, but was more forgiveable. Its WIN-OS/2 was allowed to access hardware directly, for example.
The only drawback I can think of is the missing audio pass-through in OS/2. WIN-OS/2 and OS/2 can't share the same
soundcard at the same time (both are required to use their own driver for it).
OS/2 keeps a copy of Windows 3.1 in OS2\MDOS\WINOS2.

95DosBox wrote:

Most early CGA games were probably 320x240. There were a few Monochrome games that had much higher resolution. But many DOS games when VGA cards had more memory on it they supported 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 on the high end. But I don't think there were any Win 3.1 titles that weren't offered with a DOS version. 3.1 wasn't really that hot for gaming and was geared more toward business use (Word/Excel). It would be much slower if I recall correctly if you tried running a Dual Os supported game inside 3.1 compared to the DOS version and even then during the 95 days most people were still hardcore on DOS gaming for the most part. But if you know of any specific 3.1 titles that weren't on DOS I would check it out because there might be a few that exist with no DOS version. The Midi was great for Windows 3.1 but then you got DOS games that supported Roland MT-32 you weren't really missing out too much yet. But once CDrom games and FMVs became popular 3.1 actually started to be seen as a multimedia computer. Maybe someone can come up with a must play Windows 3.1 gaming exclusive list. I was too fond of DOS that I never really devoted myself to any significant 3.1 gaming. I think I may have using Windows 3.1 early on to connect to the primitive internet before 95 so Win 3.1 wasn't completely useless and still had a purpose.

I apologize, maybe it is also just a matter of point of view.
If we are talking about popular retail games, then yes, DOS (or the Macintosh) sure was the better choice for most players.
Games like ST:TNG-A Finaly Unity had VBE support and allowed for resolution of 1024x768 and beyond.
Other games like Descent 2 or ToonsTruck did this, too. And IF games, of course (Gateway, Wonderland, etc).

Unfortunatelly, I was more of a freeware/public domain person who liked adventures and puzzles.
And for free, independed authors, Windows 3.x was a godsend.
Because of the abstraction of the display hardware, the viewport could be much wider and 640x480@256 wasn't uncommon.
On DOS, someone would either stick with 320x200 resolution or would have to create a VBE-compatible engine.
To make things worse, cards of the early 90s often only had VBE 1.2 support (if at all, some had no VBE in ROM).
As you can imagine, playing text adventure on 320x200 isn't so much fun (point&click is another story).
Don't aks me why people dind't also use proper EGA (640x350), VGA (640x480) or SVGA (800x600, 102H) modes on DOS, too.
I have no idea. Only a few games did (EGATrek comes to mind).

S3 805 OS/2 drivers are here: http://cd.textfiles.com/hobbesos29804/disk1/D … VERS/805OS2.ZIP

Its from a 1998 Hobbes CD-ROM, so hopefully there is a OS/2 2.x driver in there

Thanks a lot! 😀

Jo22 wrote:

I mean it contains some of the -more or less- original Windows 3.1x system files. On Windows NT, these are located in the %windi […]
Show full quote

95DosBox wrote:

What do you mean real copy of 3.1x included in XP?

I mean it contains some of the -more or less- original Windows 3.1x system files.
On Windows NT, these are located in the %windir%\system directory.
The sub system for 16bit Windows is called WoW (Windows on Windows) and is running atop of NTVDM (virtual DOS machine).

OS/2 had a similar mechanism, but was more forgiveable. Its WIN-OS/2 was allowed to access hardware directly, for example.
The only drawback I can think of is the missing audio pass-through in OS/2. WIN-OS/2 and OS/2 can't share the same
soundcard at the same time (both are required to use their own driver for it).
OS/2 keeps a copy of Windows 3.1 in OS2\MDOS\WINOS2.

I apologize, maybe it is also just a matter of point of view.
If we are talking about popular retail games, then yes, DOS (or the Macintosh) sure was the better choice for most players.
Games like ST:TNG-A Finaly Unity had VBE support and allowed for resolution of 1024x768 and beyond.
Other games like Descent 2 or ToonsTruck did this, too. And IF games, of course (Gateway, Wonderland, etc).

Unfortunatelly, I was more of a freeware/public domain person who liked adventures and puzzles.
And for free, independed authors, Windows 3.x was a godsend.
Because of the abstraction of the display hardware, the viewport could be much wider and 640x480@256 wasn't uncommon.
On DOS, someone would either stick with 320x200 resolution or would have to create a VBE-compatible engine.
To make things worse, cards of the early 90s often only had VBE 1.2 support (if at all, some had no VBE in ROM).
As you can imagine, playing text adventure on 320x200 isn't so much fun (point&click is another story).
Don't aks me why people dind't also use proper EGA (640x350), VGA (640x480) or SVGA (800x600, 102H) modes on DOS, too.
I have no idea. Only a few games did (EGATrek comes to mind).

Ahh. That's what I thought. I didn't recall any hidden directory with a free copy of Win 3.1. That would have been a handy easter egg. But 98 could/should run 95 and 3.1 programs just fine which is why I didn't see any real need to go back to 3.1 as MS Word 6.0 and Excel worked in 95 and also those famous After Dark screensavers. There was a Star Trek one that I loved.

Ahh you mainly played shareware type stuff then probably they were not as advanced. There was one game called "Space War" that had a CGA version and a Monochrome version of the same game. But the two ships were different in each version which made it unique. You could run the CGA version on the Monochrome display with a special CGA emulation software. But you couldn't run the Monochrome version on the CGA display. 🙁

For those games that were 640x480 or higher I think you had to either choose the config setting in the game and it had its own driver built in or you had to preload it before running the game.

Yes the Spectrum Holobyte ST:TNG A Final Unity was one game I can remember that allowed high resolution VGA. I spent much time letting it idle on with the warp core engine room hum sound. Unfortunately it ran off a CD so it was more of a pain getting that game to work.

95DosBox wrote:

Ahh. That's what I thought. I didn't recall any hidden directory with a free copy of Win 3.1. That would have been a handy easter egg.
But 98 could/should run 95 and 3.1 programs just fine which is why I didn't see any real need to go back to 3.1 as MS Word 6.0 and Excel worked
in 95 and also those famous After Dark screensavers. There was a Star Trek one that I loved.

Ah, I see. Sorry to disappoint you. The only easter egg I could think of is the Win9x installer. It contains a cut-down version of Windows 3.1.
I'm speakin' under correction, but I think it is named mini.cab and runs in one of the two Standard Modes. 😉
The only real "free" copy of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 came with Windows NT Server, I believe.

95DosBox wrote:

Ahh you mainly played shareware type stuff then probably they were not as advanced.

Yes, I think someone could say so. The DOS versions of them mainly ran in the famous 320x200 mode.
I bet some of them weren't even true VGA, but just MCGA. 😉
And since that shareware type stuff was very popular in the first half of the 90s (when they shipped on shareware compilation CDs),
most newly written games had no support for Hercules and CGA anymore.

About the same time Windows 3.x games had their hey-day, I think. While they weren't so sophisticated in visual terms,
they had easy to read GUI elements and in-game help(!) files. Some games I liked to play were GNUChess, Warpath, WinTrek,
SpaceExploration Alpha and SolarVengeance. Also Dare to Dream and several puzzle/logic games. Some of them can be played at atchive.org now..
Yeah, looks boring, I know. But to my defense, I also played "real" games on my NES/SNES, MegaDrive (a friend had it, I got mine later on) and the Gameboy. 😁

95DosBox wrote:

There was one game called "Space War" that had a CGA version and a Monochrome version of the same game. But the two ships were […]
Show full quote

There was one game called "Space War" that had a CGA version and a Monochrome version of the same game.
But the two ships were different in each version which made it unique. You could run the CGA version on the Monochrome display with a special CGA emulation software.
But you couldn't run the Monochrome version on the CGA display. 🙁

For those games that were 640x480 or higher I think you had to either choose the config setting in the game and it
had its own driver built in or you had to preload it before running the game.

Cool! SpaceWar was one of the earliest games, btw. 😀 I didn't play the DOS version, but I knew a Windows 3.1 (again) version named "Duel".
But if you want to play the Hercules version, then there's a way. Some ISA VGA cards do have the ability to emulate Hercules.
I know of the Paradie PVGA, Trident 8900 (hald-mode only ?) and ET3000/ET4000, for example. Other cards can maybe do it, too.

95DosBox wrote:

Yes the Spectrum Holobyte ST:TNG A Final Unity was one game I can remember that allowed high resolution VGA.
I spent much time letting it idle on with the warp core engine room hum sound. Unfortunately it ran off a CD so it was more of a pain getting that game to work.

Yup, that game was neat. 😁 I heard there was a Macintosh version also.
I wonder if that one also had full motions videos and if so, whether or not these FMVs were in a higher resolution
(AFAIK, the DOS version always played them in 320x200).
But back to the DOS version.. I managed to get it to run on a 386 mainboard (486DLC-40 with 387 math co-processor).
And to my surprise the game was quite playable. Not fast, but playable. Only the space combat was too stressing for it.
At this point, the game became a very laggy slide-show and I had to abbort my little experiment.
Anyway, that game has a special place in my heart. It was excellent from both the story line,
as well as from the technical point of view. Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites were also good, though.
Especially with MT-32 sound track. 😉

There was something nice about Win 3.1 now that I think about it. It was very organized and structured with those window pop ups prompts. I think maybe Win 3.1 was actually close enough to DOS where if you copy the entire Windows folder of where the game/software was installed you could transplant that to another computer and run the game without any additional missing files. If that was the case that made Win 3.1 easy to copy the installed program and then zip it archiving. 95 and 98 didn't always follow this rule and had drivers and random files all over the place. I remember going to the computer shows and seeing these massive shareware booths where you look at this paper catalog and find a list of disk titles and description and you figure out what you want and they hand you the disk. I could have picked up Space War there as it was shareware. Later on I ended up calling the guy who wrote it and wanted to buy his newest version of it. 😀 I still have that disk somewhere here in this mess all these years. Had a lot of good times on that game. He really knew how to make use of that internal PC speaker. I think it was written in assembler as most of those oldies were. Very compact and efficient coding. Later I used a hex editor and started altering code like I knew what I was doing randomly changing the bytes that I could read and the ones that were garbled. A few times it produced interesting results. I ended up with one ship looking like a Borg Cube. Interesting that VGA could emulate Monochrome on some cards but I never bothered to attempt it because I think that was the only Monochrome game that differed from the Color version. There was one Star Trek simulator game and I think it might have been shareware that was quite addicting. Then there was a bunch of Basic games that you could load and run which look awful today and quite primitive. I don't think I ever finished getting to the end of A Final Unity or maybe I did. But 25th and Judgment Rites I can recall. Those were some decent ST based game transfers and that old school theme song on Midi output. 😀 Most of my nostalgic music derived from the original classic 8 bit Mono Sound Blaster but years later I did get a Roland MT-32 to listen to the differences on those early Sierra games. Some really sound completely different and you got to hand it to those sound designers who managed to do what they could with that one note internal PC speaker in the early days.