Hi and goid morning! I have seen a few videos about eComstation, the predecessor of ArcaOS (ex Blue Lion OS)..
But otherwise, I have focused on old OS/2 Warp 4.x mainly (-> see my ch.), which all of these successors are essentially based on.

So I do know little of ArcaOS, except that it runs rather well on modern hardware by comparison (UEFI support on schedule). Sorry. 😅

Here's an old thread that has a bit of information about OS/2 and games..

Ultimate OS/2 Warp 4 machine?

There's also a SimCity port for OS/2 and a few game demos for the DIVE API..
Additionally, ODIN can be used to run a few Win32 programs that use GDI or DirectDraw for graphics.

Good luck! 🙂

They are certainly unapologetic with this policy. Shame there's no demo.

Disclaimer

ArcaOS may not install or run on all systems, and Arca Noae makes no claim that it does. If you are unsure as to the suitability of your hardware for ArcaOS, please review this wiki page or contact us. There is no trial or demonstration version available.

All license sales are final. Once your personalized ISO has been downloaded, you have effectively torn the shrinkwrap off of physical media, and there is no way for us to return that to stock.

Yeah.. That doesn't sound too nice, I admit. On the other hand, I can kind of understand the attitude.
Customers of today have no sense of decency anymore.
Or let's call it lack of professionalism. That's nicer than saying they aren't legally competent anymore.
Let's just look at the heads at Microsoft before and after Balmer.
He was a funny dude, but he acted like a business man.
The successors act like hipsters/kids, imho. No responsibility they show by releasing beta software w/o quality control, and making living room and kitchen appliances the new target systems.
Despite the fact that software like Windows is used in power plants, nucl. sub marines and hospitals.
Maybe it's a generation thing, also, not sure.
Some of the end-users I had to work with in the past few years were less responsible than educated ~kids age 10.

Edit: I meant to say that this is one of the reasons Arca makes such a statement.
The analogy with "unwrapping" a product hints to such concerns about troublesome customers.
Arca, being a smaller company, is perhaps just trying to protect itself from non-serious customers that want to try out a product out of curiosity and then want their money back.

There was a demo livecd of eComStation released in 2013 if you're keen to try the first OS/2 successor.

Why have it open for anyone to buy?

Their sales model hints to only wanting to sell to a captive market that “knows what they are doing”
but instead they offer it to anyone in the general public willing to fork over $2XX , knowing full well 99% of the public can’t use the OS as intended?

Seems disengenuous ?

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-10-19, 17:28:

Why have it open for anyone to buy? […]
Show full quote

Why have it open for anyone to buy?

Their sales model hints to only wanting to sell to a captive market that “knows what they are doing”
but instead they offer it to anyone in the general public willing to fork over $2XX , knowing full well 99% of the public can’t use the OS as intended?

Seems disengenuous ?

I'd say you can't use traditional marketing on a non-traditional product. It's something special, from any side you look at it.

put it on a cash register 🤣

OS/2 was very weird. I mean, it didn't even know which clients to satisfy.
The most true description perhaps was that of a "migration platform".
OS/2 aimed at users with high demands of all kinds.
Speed, stability, compatibility, multi-tasking..
And it did rather well for what it was. Its DOS and Windows VMs are more sophisticated than those found on NT.

Most DOS applications can be made work in OS/2. And the Windows 3.x VM could even use Windows drivers.
The BIOS and VGA support was top notch. It could both emulate and trap/virtualize, depending on how the user configured the settings.

So it's really a mistery what kind of todays OS/2 users are.
Could be some prof. that runs custom lab software on OS/2.
Or an observatory with older OS/2 stuff (remember that scene in one of the Bond movies of the 90s ?).
Or it could be a dude running a home automation software. Or a security application needed for an underground car park.
Or special software for amusement parks. Etc etc. 😀

I have bought it and so far with mixed results for the range of stuffs I intend to try on. The system should be stable once configured properly, but as I'm new to OS/2 I encountered many issues.

LATE EDIT (2024-01-08): The following was about ArcaOS 5.0.x. ArcaOS 5.1.0 has been released and I've made a new post about it, as many things have changed in that version which addressed some of the issues I encountered while I was still on 5.0.x.

The major blocker is LVM (used by OS/2 in general, not to be confused with the Linux one):
- None of other OSes use LVM, and almost all partition managers other than DFSee cannot manipulate LVM information and are very likely to mess it up.
- So far only DFSee can correctly partition disks in a manner that LVM would not complain (be sure to check if any partition has non-trivial warnings, which might be something only relevant to OS/2). Also, you have to keep about 1GB space at the end of the disk unallocated when partitioning to prevent LVM from complaining about partitions "going out of bounds" when installing ArcaOS.
- If you want to use larger disks than 500GB you need to use DFSee to set a custom "geometry" with more than 63 sectors per track, like 240. This should allow you to use up to 1.9TB. As other partition/filesystem formatting tools may not be aware of this geometry information, there's a good chance that the geometry information would be messed up when formatting (especially NTFS), so make sure to check for such non-trivial warnings with DFSee after formatting (and fix them via FIXPBR).
- LVM is not fault tolerant. Any errors (disk, partition, LVM info) would cause LVM to fail, which prevents booting and installing ArcaOS. Should point out that the mere presence of a GPT partitioned disk is enough to prevent LVM from starting. If you have such disks present, you need to hide them when loading the disk driver.

Here are some other issues:
- DOS and Win/OS2 don't work on too modern systems (hangs ArcaOS) and is a known issue. Actually it seems DOS and Win/OS2 use some kind of VDM that hasn't been changed. For now only simple DOS command line stuffs work.
- Gaming keyboards (like those from Corsair) don't work (unless set in a BIOS complaint mode). PS/2 and standard USB ones do.
- While UNIAUD is based on ALSA, according to the documentations and the source code, it currently supports pretty much just what existing OS/2 sound card drivers already supported regarding PCI sound cards, plus AC97 and HDA (which I don't think it's working for me yet). Don't know if UNIAUD has plans to add support for other audio devices already supported by ALSA in the future.
- For some dual-mode controllers (like those in ICH7 and such), DANIS506 is more stable. I had issues with SATA disks not being recognized correctly and only after some intensive testing and diagnosing did I realize the problem turned out to be OS2AHCI.
- The current stable AirBoot release may not handle unpopulated internal USB card readers correctly and would cause READ ERROR, preventing booting. I either have to disable it from BIOS somehow, or just unplug it, to allow it to proceed to the disk selection (don't know if it's possible to disable USB detection from AirBoot itself).

For now I don't plan doing more about it, as I think a good amount of issues (namely partitioning related) might be addressed once a UEFI-compatible version comes out. After all, something must be done with LVM in order to make it UEFI-compatible.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-10-19, 20:27:

So it's really a mistery what kind of todays OS/2 users are.

I think it matters more to people who are using some OS/2 exclusive software (of any kind) that are still relevant even today. It seems those users know something that others (like me) who haven't used OS/2 don't.

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-10-19, 08:39:

They are certainly unapologetic with this policy. Shame there's no demo.

Disclaimer

ArcaOS may not install or run on all systems, and Arca Noae makes no claim that it does. If you are unsure as to the suitability of your hardware for ArcaOS, please review this wiki page or contact us. There is no trial or demonstration version available.

All license sales are final. Once your personalized ISO has been downloaded, you have effectively torn the shrinkwrap off of physical media, and there is no way for us to return that to stock.

The personalized ISO includes your license which would be used by the ACPI driver. When the system boots up, the ACPI driver will show your name and license ID.

LATE EDIT: Apparently it turned out to be possible to still boot ArcaOS even when LVM failed. Just be careful when handling disk partitions from within ArcaOS. At one time I formatted a USB stick from ArcaOS and later on I noticed one of my SSD's partition table became unrecognizable which in turn caused LVM to silently fail (but the system itself still worked). I'm not sure if it really was that particular format operation that killed it, but one should be very careful with disk handling there, as things can be very, very fragile for those inexperienced to OS/2 in general, and with multi-boot scenarios.

Interesting reading. Nice work 😀

I second that, thanks for testing! I'm looking forward UEFI support, too.
Could well be that ArcaOS will be the last legacy OS to "natively" boot on x86-64 PCs of the 2020's.

@LSS10999
Thank you so much for all that information. Kinda a shame, really.

Yeah... ArcaOS is still OS/2... so it still has a good amount of issues that OS/2 Warp or eComStation had.

While LVM is an interesting feature for users to customize their disks and partitions and not constrained by the usual DOS way of assigning drive letters, it kind of made the OS less friendly for users who want to multiboot it with an existing OS. After all, none of other OSes use LVM (not to be confused with the Linux one which is a different thing), and no partition managers other than DFSee are aware of the LVM information and would very likely mess things up. So even if you could make a multiboot environment (actually AirBoot is a very good boot manager), it's very fragile and non-trivial to maintain.

Until UEFI support becomes formal and solid, I think it's mostly useful for users who are already using OS/2 Warp or eComStation (as an upgrade), or experiment it from a VM (so you don't have to backup and use DFSee to reparition all your disks).

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to bump this now after such a long period. ArcaOS 5.1.0 has been out for a while and I just had some time actually giving it a try. Originally I planned to join the discussion on OS2World but for some reasons my credentials no longer work on its forum section anymore... only on the main site. It's been quite a while since I logged in there anyway...

The best part is formal UEFI support starting with 5.1.0. From my experience with the installation on a 512GB NVMe drive with GPT and with an existing Linux install, there were much fewer hassle compared to how it was on 5.0.x, and I was able to start and finish installation with no serious obstacles. My test on this part is limited as I still have several unanswered questions:
1. I need to further test this on a system that has several disks, being larger than 512GB and with both MBR and GPT ones, to see if the LVM wrapper that made GPT work would also address existing partitioning hassles I had with MBR disks on 5.0.x.
2. Does ANCS get involved in case of booting with legacy BIOS/CSM? For now it seems ANCS is doing a better job on UEFI, which I'll explain it later.
3. Mounting ArcaOS' JFS partition on a different OS namely Linux remain a question that I don't know where I could find clues for. I never had any success trying to mount the system JFS on my Arch-based Linux distros, so I can't really do any external maintenance in case something goes wrong.
4. Will probably need to retest the partitioning setup to see if I can somehow assign a previously allocated partition for ArcaOS install. Back then I wasn't sure and I ended up deleting that allocated space and recreated it as ArcaOS Type 1 which it expects. Although no harm done to adjacent partitions, the partition numbers were a bit messed up (as it does not try to reorder the partition numbers). Not sure if it will not break if I manually reorder the partition numbers from Linux.

Other hardware support notes:
1. Support for network adapters is still mostly limited to Gigabit (1GBe) ones. At least with MMRE (Realtek), 2.5GBe adapters do not appear to work, so on my test machine I have to switch to a 1GBe port to be able to use internet there. This may be a problem with very recent high-end systems that do not have 1GBe anymore, with 2.5GBe becoming more and more common there.
2. Some USB keyboards (namely Corsair ones) still cannot work. I still need to use another keyboard for the purpose. It may take a while before this issue finally gets resolved.
3. You can find actively updated UNIAUD drivers here which one could use in case audio does not work out-of-box. Check the latest posts there for most recent developments as well as possible arguments needed for specific system configurations. In my case, I had to manually specify the card ID (/A:1) to be able to actually get sound, as the first card on my test system happened to be HDMI instead of onboard audio codec.
4. USB Mass Storage works but I haven't tested it intensively, especially when it comes to hotplug (without safely remove).
5. Some in OS2World suggest disabling HyperThreading when using ArcaOS but in my case I don't really see any major issue with it kept on yet. Your mileage may vary.

Software-related:
1. With the help of ANCS, on my UEFI test system Win/OS2 is finally working (yay!). Previously on 5.0.x trying to start Win/OS2 would very likely lead to a freeze. This is a major breakthrough for enabling using ArcaOS for retro purposes, though there's still a way to go to be able to use sound there. Apparently there's something called DTA/DTAudio for supporting audio in DOS or Win/OS2 sessions but it's not available yet...
2. ArcaOS' Firefox 45 is a bit too dated for certain websites. Namely I had difficulty browsing GitHub with many things appearing broken (including releases page). Does anyone know of a browser good enough for most websites for ArcaOS?
3. Is there a better file manager for ArcaOS that feels more friendly for Linux/Windows users? The default desktop seems to follow a rather different philosophy that I find it a bit odd, though I admit I'm very noob when it comes to OS/2 in general, so I'm not in a position to say whether or not certain behaviors are indeed bugs.
- Moving/copying files are only limited to windows I already opened. As such, if I want to copy a file to somewhere I have to open that folder before I open the copy dialog.
- It seems it is actually possible for files/folders to have newlines in their names. Pressing ENTER when creating a new folder, for example, would not finish setting the name, but rather put the newline into its name.
- From what I could remember, it is actually possible to copy stuffs to and from unintended locations such as "Drives" folder...
4. While ArcaOS has the OS/2 installer program which I think it's for installing more features, it doesn't appear to work as desired and may lead to side effects. When I tried to install fonts for additional languages through the installer, I did not see any noticeable differences (probably the files were already installed), and it seems to have caused some side effects in the system config files, which rendered the system unbootable (it reported an error with COM.SYS and froze there). Probably it was due to my leaving the already checked option "Symmetric Multiprocessing" as-is (since I wasn't really sure).

EDIT: Some update as I re-attempted to install ArcaOS on that same system, though using a larger NVMe drive.
1. It's trivial to just change partition type to ArcaOS Type 1 via "Set name and letter". For GPT, you can assign just any drive letter to a partition the same way as how it's done on 5.0.x with MBR. There's no need to recreate any partition. I didn't test partition reordering, but I don't think it matters much considering
2. It's recommended that you name your partitions on GPT disks, as this is the one used by ArcaOS when using "Set name and letter". Note that partition name is specific to GPT and is different from the filesystem label which we already know about.
3. I haven't tested multiple disk scenarios involving mixed MBR/GPT disks. ArcaOS 5.1 is better suited for more recent UEFI-based hardware and it's already making good process to unleash retro potential on such systems.
4. I noticed that if a JFS partition exists in the system, Calamares (Linux installer used by many distros) would get stuck at partition module. I've filed a bug to Calamares regarding this discovery, as this means installing ArcaOS would prevent further install/reinstall of such a Linux distro that utilizes Calamares.
5. As I was testing reinstalling ArcaOS on the larger SSD, I noticed a strange phenomenon that the first boot after installer finished the first phase would hang. Rebooting the system (CTRL-ALT-DEL possible at this point) would allow it to continue to the second phase, but at first the install was kind of broken, leaving a bunch of RecoveredObjects as well as some trace-related stuffs, and without taskbar, but when I tried installing it again the install finished fine with everything in the right place, even though I also had the initial hang after first phase. For now I don't intend to mess with the system too much as ArcaOS still feels delicate for someone who's not experienced with OS/2, although it's now much easier to reinstall the system than before.

LATE EDIT (2024-01-14): I've struck through a few lines, as I got some time testing it on an old enough, BIOS/MBR based system. Sadly most if not all BIOS/MBR limitations present on 5.0.x still apply to 5.1.0 when using it on such systems.
- Disk size limitations (~512G for MBR), as well as the usual LVM quirks still apply. So you still need DFSee for MBR disks while you can use any partitioning tool for GPT ones.
- ANCS most likely won't be involved when using BIOS/MBR so most likely one won't notice too much difference compared to 5.0.x.

Additionally, even with GPT support ArcaOS still cannot work when the system has disks larger than 2TB. You MUST hide such disks via arguments of the respective drivers or the system will crash (trap) during boot process.

Yes. So far I cannot get SBEMU to work with DOS. https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU back in the day you could passthrough access to DOS. I have since forgotten how.

However, I have found a passthrough winos2 driver or two. DosBox/2 works fine. Even got Windows 95B on it. Although not real reliable.

https://www.os2site.com/sw/drivers/audio/wino … io_19980501.zip This one has wave support. I have all the win 3.1 sounds and simcity worked.

https://ecsoft2.org/generic-audio-driver-win-os2 - adds MIDI I haven't tested yet.

There is no trial of ArcaOS because of the license terms w/ IBM and probably MS. It is decent for retro gaming. The win 3.1 support is excellent esp w passthrough sound. Thinking about trying on my K6-3 instead of Thinkpad 11.6" I have an AWE32 in it. Of course internet browsing is off the table then.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-10-19, 20:27:

OS/2 was very weird. I mean, it didn't even know which clients to satisfy. The most true description perhaps was that of a "migr […]
Show full quote

OS/2 was very weird. I mean, it didn't even know which clients to satisfy.
The most true description perhaps was that of a "migration platform".
OS/2 aimed at users with high demands of all kinds.
Speed, stability, compatibility, multi-tasking..
And it did rather well for what it was. Its DOS and Windows VMs are more sophisticated than those found on NT.

Most DOS applications can be made work in OS/2. And the Windows 3.x VM could even use Windows drivers.
The BIOS and VGA support was top notch. It could both emulate and trap/virtualize, depending on how the user configured the settings.

So it's really a mistery what kind of todays OS/2 users are.
Could be some prof. that runs custom lab software on OS/2.
Or an observatory with older OS/2 stuff (remember that scene in one of the Bond movies of the 90s ?).
Or it could be a dude running a home automation software. Or a security application needed for an underground car park.
Or special software for amusement parks. Etc etc. 😀

As a BBS SysOp at the time OS/2 was for me. I loved it, I used it (Warp 3) as my primary OS between 1995 and 1998..

someitguy wrote on 2024-02-01, 06:30:

Yes. So far I cannot get SBEMU to work with DOS. https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU back in the day you could passthrough access to DOS. I have since forgotten how.

I never really tried OS/2's DOS so I'm not sure about the details, but I'm interested. I wonder if OS/2's DOS functionality is kind of similar to that of PC-DOS... like if it's possible to create startup options to use OS/2 like a real DOS with the same usual DOS TSRs, while going to the GUI in another config (and of course, avoid loading stuffs that would conflict).

someitguy wrote on 2024-02-01, 06:30:

However, I have found a passthrough winos2 driver or two. DosBox/2 works fine. Even got Windows 95B on it. Although not real reliable.

https://www.os2site.com/sw/drivers/audio/wino … io_19980501.zip This one has wave support. I have all the win 3.1 sounds and simcity worked.

https://ecsoft2.org/generic-audio-driver-win-os2 - adds MIDI I haven't tested yet.

I suppose that was the GenAud driver that you can find on Hobbes. I haven't tried as the driver logic is a bit complicated, requiring disabling EMS-related stuffs in Win-OS/2 sessions or the system may crash.

On the other hand, I doubt MIDI would work with UniAud, as that driver doesn't have any MIDI logic nor do I know of an OS/2 softsynth that can be used system-wide. I think there were some 16-bit softsynths back then... don't know whether or not they can be used as substitutes.

As for Win9x... OS/2 has something called Odin which allows some 32-bit Windows apps to work, but I don't really have a good use case to test its functionality at the moment.

someitguy wrote on 2024-02-01, 06:30:

There is no trial of ArcaOS because of the license terms w/ IBM and probably MS. It is decent for retro gaming. The win 3.1 support is excellent esp w passthrough sound. Thinking about trying on my K6-3 instead of Thinkpad 11.6" I have an AWE32 in it.

I'm not sure about the backgrounds regarding IBM and MS... it seems development of some core components like drivers are still bound by IBM's licenses and I wonder if such licenses are still obtainable after this many years...

At present ArcaOS 5.1 is pretty much solid enough to be deployed on a modern UEFI system (including UEFI-only ones). The only systems that might have trouble deploying it would be the ones in-between, using BIOS/MBR yet too modern for OS/2, as from what I tested, on BIOS/MBR systems things are pretty much the same as ArcaOS 5.0.

For old, OS/2 period-correct hardware, however, I think ArcaOS will work just the way original OS/2 should... I'm new to OS/2 so I'm not sure about the quirks...

someitguy wrote on 2024-02-01, 06:30:

Of course internet browsing is off the table then.

I recall seeing the development of a Chromium-based browser called Otter, but I'm not sure about its capability. The Firefox port ArcaOS included (45.9 I think) is ill-suited for some websites nowadays -- some sites are indeed broken.

It tried Odin a few years ago when I got ArcaOS 5.0. It was hit and miss. I have way better win32 options if needed. I wish DosBOX-X was available on OS/2 you can even run Windows 2000 on it. It is 5 way OS machine. With ArcaOS, Haiku, AROS, XP and Lubuntu 22.04. As for the Midi that would be a nice bonus. I am thrilled with Wave function passthrough in WINOS2 sessions. The first one works with or without EMS on. It was put files in the right places as said in readme. Update config.sys and system.ini. Reboot. Because I have something in startup that is win16. I got Arca startup sound then Tada. That old Windows TADA was music to my ears. I did the DosBOX Windows 95 as an experiment. It is slightly more stable than ReactOS.

For my DOS games on it. DosBOX/2 works fine. I'd like to do to have sound in OS2 VDM. I'll poke at it a bit more. Getting the right memory mgmt setup seems to be a thing. I recall the VDM in OS2 3.0 grabbin my soundblaster and working. 30 years is a long time to remember how I did that. Just ran across the SBEMU mentioned elsewhere here.

I'm not sure about the backgrounds regarding IBM and MS... it seems development of some core components like drivers are still bound by IBM's licenses and I wonder if such licenses are still obtainable after this many years...

I listened to a discussion by the CEO of ArcaNoae. He states copy that goes out has to be tracked and they have to remit a license fee to IBM. It is all IBM and MS code at core. ArcaOS is driver and patch set for OS/2 on modern hardware. Along w/ ports of software like Samba. I wish Haiku had as new of a port of Samba as Arca. I have to use my NAS on SMB1 with it. Although it supports wifi.

"I recall seeing the development of a Chromium-based browser called Otter, but I'm not sure about its capability. The Firefox port ArcaOS included (45.9 I think) is ill-suited for some websites nowadays -- some sites are indeed broken."
I have Chromium browser on the existing setup. I have to use it as my micro wifi I use on it's web UI went fancy HTML5/JS. The Dual Celeron 64-bit from Win 8 era is going to run circles around a K6-3+ 1999-2000 era. Dual celeron it "works" I doubt the K6-3+ having none of the P4 SSE and instructions will play ball let alone the processing power.

So… I’m not sure why, but I completely forgot this thread existed on VOGONS.

I gave a talk a few months ago at Warpstock 2023 on the topic of gaming on ArcaOS, which may be relevant to some folks here.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2x76Csv5jXk

Hope you all enjoy! And feel free to leave comments.