Lost IBM OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 localizations: Looking for help finding and archiving

74 points · markostamcar · 15 days ago

It's amazing how software from a major company that is less than 30 years old can get lost & forgotten so fast.

Building on a 2022 post about finding a copy of the long lost Slovenian OS/2 Warp 4 - https://www.os2museum.com/wp/slovenian-os-2-warp-4/ - some fellow software archaeologists have concluded some other localization editions are still missing - copied from the post's comments:

-- OBattler says: December 8, 2024 at 9:53 am It turns out Slovenian isn’t the only version missing of OS/2 Warp 4.0 – Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil) are also missing, as are Dutch, French, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and a non-trial version of Hungarian.

OBattler says: December 8, 2024 at 10:01 am I just found FixPack 5 for OS/2 Warp 3.0 (or at least, references thereof) Arabic, French (Canada), Hebrew, Thai, Turkish, and, apparently, also Bulgarian and Lithuaian! So OS/2 Warp 4.0 must have also existed in these languages.

Source: https://ecsoft2.org/system-fixpacks-and-patches --

Anyone who can help find these CDs and help the os2museum.com preserve them (and optionally upload them to archive.org, too) is very welcome to join our cause.

Also looking for any (ex)IBM employees thst worked on the OS/2 localization projects and can help with this!

Marko Štamcar Computer History Museum Slovenia

20 comments

lb1lf · 14 days ago

I have the Norwegian Warp 4.0 CD in a box in my parents' attic; I'll try to dig it out when I go to see them for Christmas.

IBM were so eager (understandably so) to gain market share that I simply called their Norwegian office and asked if I could have a few copies for installing in my high school's computer lab. 'Sure thing!' - days later I received a box full of retail copies along with a friendly letter suggesting I get in touch if I needed more!

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squarefoot · 14 days ago

If you are comfortable/allowed to use torrents, you may want to try this magnet link:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d981a11797c174ab90d5567bcb47e09da70a3451

It contains 29+GB of OS/2 related stuff, including official CDs. Just found by searching at the usual shady places, so no guarantees about contents and safety.

guiambros · 14 days ago

Thanks for raising awareness on this. I think I may have a retail box with Warp 3 in Portuguese (Brazil). I had an ISV at the time, and used to join the OS/2 meetups organized by IBM, where they regularly distributed copies to power users.

I'll try to find it next week and see if it's helpful for the folks in OS/2 museum.

edit: it seems they're looking for Warp 4; I don't think I ever saw that version. I only used 2.0/2.1 and Warp 3.

ohjeez · 14 days ago

I crossposted this to the os2 reddit, as well as LinkedIn and my personal Facebook page. I used to write about OS/2 exclusively, so I'm still connected with a lot of the IBM engineers and executives. Though I would not count on them keeping every language version, any more than I kept the 300 OS/2 applications I'd acquired.

1over137 · 14 days ago

Crazy that French could be missing. It's the 6th most spoken language on Earth!

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