[pjmlp]

> Also, IBM sold PS/2 (or something like that) with OS/2 preinstalled... It booted like forever and there was zero software available for the home-user.

And was like 500 € (on today's money) more expensive than a PC compatible with similar specs.

[brudgers]

The big thing the PS/2 had going at introduction was 80386 chips. The big limitation over the long term for consumers was MicroChannel which limited flexibility in configuring systems due to fewer total options; higher prices; and no commodity market for expansion cards.

[JdeBP]

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14024665, pjmlp has been propounding the myth that OS/2 required a PS/2. This is a myth, untrue of any version. I am surprised to see it still around, a quarter century or more after it was debunked.

[pjmlp]

Myth or not, in 1992 on my hometown it was only possible to get legal OS/2 2.0 copies when buying a PS2.

Only one IBM dealer was selling PS2 with them.

OS/2 2.0 wasn't nowhere else to be found and I didn't knew anyone to get me a pirate copy of OS/2 2.0 just to try it out on a PC clone.

So regardless of you calling me a liar, in 1992 on a small Portuguese town, getting OS/2 2.0 on a legal way, required buying a PS2 with it bundled at the local IBM dealer.

And for what I could remeber it was pretty much like that across the country until OS/2 Warp got released.

[JdeBP]

One IBM dealer not being willing/permitted to sell you OS/2 pre-loaded on anything other than a PS/2 is a very different thing to OS/2 requiring a PS/2. That you continue to conflate the twain is an error, and a repetition of a long since debunked myth.

This was written in 1995, and was far from the first debunking of this myth:

* http://www.mit.edu/activities/os2/faq/os2faq0201.html

The unwillingness of that one IBM dealer was almost certainly far more to do with the structures of the Microsoft licensing deals for pre-loaded systems than any mythical requirement of a PS/2. This came to light some years later; around the time of the US DOJ anti-trust case.

To learn how for a quarter of a century you've erroneously been ascribing things to the myth that OS/2 required a PS/2 when in fact your one IBM dealer was merely part of a larger and complex picture of licensing deals and royalty payments involving pre-loading Windows on IBM machines versus pre-loading anything else, start here:

* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/368660.stm

* http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/06/04/ibm_witness_the_insi...

There is a lot more to read than just those two, of course.

[pjmlp]

Fair enough, I will look into them.

[brudgers]

I don't understand how this relates to my comment.