Installing the OS/2 v1.03 SDK On 86Box
Beta software often tells an interesting story. In the 80's, GUI's were still a relatively new concept. Thus, the GUI could have gone in any number of directions. In the case of Microsoft, the Windows 1.0 betas showed the evolution of the GUI and its shell, the MS-DOS Executive, which was the file manager/program launcher. The MS-DOS Executive was in the Windows DR5 Beta that was released on Oct 31, 1984, or roughly 12 months before Windows 1.0 was officially released.
Now, the MS-DOS executive was very basic. At the same time Microsoft just entered into an agreement with IBM to create the successor to MS-DOS. Of course, a new OS would need a new shell. The beta versions of OS/2 would be released throughout 1987, but the PM (Presentation Manager), or OS/2's GUI, wasn't ready yet. Developed by Microsoft, the PM would have a shell program called the Desktop Manager that would be more sophisticated than the MS-DOS Executive.
The first OS/2 beta that included the PM (and the Desktop Manager) was the v1.03 SDK that was released in March 1988, or about 7 months before showing up in its completed state in OS/2 v1.1. The SDK came complete with developers' tools, sample source code, and PM programming examples. While having the look-and-feel of Windows 2.x, which was released a couple of months back prior, it sported an early version of the Desktop Manager shell.
Now Windows was still being developed with the oldest (leaked) Windows 3.0 beta being released in February 22, 1989. This version still used the MS-DOS Executive. The later July 31, 1989 beta build would have all the 3D controls and GUI that would define 3.0 (and OS/2 v1.2, which was released on October 1989, or about 2-1/2 or 3 months later), but still used the MS-DOS Executive as it's shell. The Program Manager that would define Windows 3.0 wasn't in this build. However, the beta that shipped on January 2nd, 1990 did include the Program Manager, so we know that it showed up in Windows sometime between early August to late December 1989.
Why is this important? One could make the safe assumption that the design of the Desktop Manager in OS/2 would be a major influence on the Program Manager, as both could contain groups with programs with each group. One could make the safe assumption that Microsoft took feedback from the Desktop Manager that would greatly influence the design of the Program Manager that would eventually be a part of Windows 3.0. The development of the Program Manager had to start somewhere, right!
Very special thanks to the OS/2 Museum and WinWorld for archiving this historically important piece of software.
One thing to note is that since I'm using an emulated PS/2, you will need a IBM Reference Disk to configure the machine. Also, the default disk01.sys will NOT like the PS/2 ESDI Disk Controller. As such, you will need to rename the disk01.sys to disk01.bak and the disk01.esd to disk01.sys. After that, reboot the installer, and the installer program will find the hard-disk, partition it, and format it afterwards. Also, I used a Microsoft serial mouse as this beta version of the PM doesn't include drivers for a PS/2 mouse. There was also no drivers for the IBM 8514/A Display Adapter, only basic VGA. The SDK Toolkit was installed after the main OS was up and running. Other than that, this is how to install OS/2 v1.03 in 86Box.
The OS/2 SDK can be found either here or here:
https://winworldpc.com/product/micros...
https://archive.org/details/ms-os2-sd...
Songs Used:
Black Swan By Quincas Moreira
Haunted Forest By TrackTribe
(70% of Playback Speed)
Can I Tell You A Secret
By TrackTribe
(80% of Playback Speed)
Black Swan By Quincas Moreira
(95% of Playback Speed)
YouTube Audio Library
Software Used:
Recorded With OBS Studio
Composed In Kdenlive
Hardware Used:
PC equipped with a
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
6 Cores Running At 4.2GHz
AMD Radeon RX570 GPU
Windows 11