Make sure your driver strategy is in place if you launch a new O/S
Good article Andrew. I was there in Miami when IBM launched the PS/2. They closed off the streets six blocks around the exhibition centre and as far as I remember the Beach Boys played. They should probably have saved their money. One thing you missed is that not only was OS/2 late but the driver support in the operating system was very poor. This meant that as well as blocking all the plug in cards through the new bus architecture, they also bricked all of the add on peripherals for the PS/2 that had worked with the IBM PC. Add to that the fact that the OS/2 driver team started competing with driver developers for driver business and also blocked them from developing for the architecture (until the OS/2 DDK made a brief appearance and then disappeared) and the factors that contributed to IBM's demise was complete. I recall that when the driver team saw the source code of one of our drivers some years later they threatened to sue us. That was until I pointed out that the code was based on the OS/2 DDK and they went quiet but couldn't quite believe that we had managed to obtain a copy in the few weeks that it had popped its head above the surface. Microsoft worked out early on that driver support is a key element to the success of an Operating System. Something that they seem to have lost sight of a bit with Windows Vista onwards although I suppose the switch to 64bit has made backwards compatibility more difficult. Keep the nostalgia coming Andrew, it's not like it used to be! Tony Harris
Biting the hand that feeds IT
