Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!husc6!spdcc!ima!johnl
From: johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Buying a 386 clone -- want advice
Message-ID: <3511@ima.ima.isc.com>
Date: 21 Mar 89 13:41:56 GMT
References: <3177@imagen.UUCP> <1309@bucket.UUCP> <7956@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Organization: Segue Software, Inc.
Lines: 22

In article <7956@chinet.chi.il.us> randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) writes:
>In article <1309@bucket.UUCP> leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) writes:
>]The prime factor is this: OS/2 *doesn't use* the BIOS ROMs!!
>	Baloney.  We run IBM OS/2 1.0 and Presentation Manager on
>	IBM AT's, Compaq's of all sorts, AST's of all sorts, ITT Xtra's
>	and I run Presentation Manager on a 4 year old Korean AT klone
>	prototype.  The BIOS rom's play a *big* part. ...

Only partial baloney.  Microsoft's OS/2 doesn't know anything about devices,
so it's up to each vendor to add device drivers.  IBM defined a protected
mode BIOS and made OS/2 talk to that.  Other vendors go straight to the
hardware.  I don't know how IBM OS/2 works on an AT, since the AT's BIOS
wasn't written for protected mode, but it certainly does work.

History buffs will recall that this is the same situation that originally
applied with MS-DOS.  There were lots of non-BIOS DOS machines such as the
Tandy 2000.  When IBM became a dominant vendor, everybody went to BIOS
compatibility.  Who knows if the same thing will happen for OS/2.
-- 
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
{ bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
You're never too old to have a happy childhood.