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From: burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Buying a 386 clone -- want advice
Summary: running OS/2 from a different manufacturer?
Message-ID: <596@mitisft.Convergent.COM>
Date: 23 Mar 89 21:28:06 GMT
References: <3177@imagen.UUCP> <1309@bucket.UUCP> <7956@chinet.chi.il.us> <3511@ima.ima.isc.com>
Organization: Convergent Technologies, San Jose, CA
Lines: 26

In article <3511@ima.ima.isc.com>, johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) writes:
> 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.
> 

I just glanced at a recent artcle in MIPS magazine, which is a new one to me,
and it mentioned that OS/2 benchmark tests for some no-name 386 systems used
the Compaq version of OS/2 if the vendor didn't provide one.  

Anyone care to speculate on how this was technically possible.  If we knew
the "rules", we could safely buy no-name 386 boards or systems, and still
have OS/2 available.

Phil Burton
Convergent Technologies