I tested OS/2 Warp 4 on the new open-source Qemu PC Emulator (Win32 port). It took a long time to install the OS (I was doing a disk installation), but it runs now =). I gave the emulated machine the following stats: RAM: 48MB's HD: 450MB VGA-BIOS LGPL (This emulator uses the Bochs bios/vga bios) running at 640 by 480 16 colors (I'm planning to get drivers for the emulated cirrus card). Other operating systems I tested but with no luck included: IBM OS/2 v1.1 (Fails to read boot record) Microsoft OS/2 v1.3 (Shows text-logo, then screen clears and does nothing). I'm hopeful because there options were you can emulate a ISA only system (MS OS/2 crashes when detecting PCI). IBM OS/2 v2.1 (Shows boot screen, then shows the "country.sys file is missing" message) IBM Warp 3 (Shows logo screen and does nothing). I'm very hopeful about this emulator because it already supports OS/2 and the emu is only in alpha stage so far. It uses different x86 compilation code, and as a result, it runs faster than Bochs x86. Also for people interested in PPC emulation, QEMU has a expiremental PPC emulator. That's it so far.

I'm back (in case anyone is actually reading this). I did some more expirimenting with Qemu. I was able to create a preinstalled MS OS/2 v1.3 hard-disk image from a hard-disk installation on one of my 486's. I started Qemu. It shows Microsoft's copyright, then its clears screen and displays a "TRA_" and does nothing. The hd image works, it just that there currently no emulator to support it. I also tested OS/2 v1.1 on Qemu. After showing the Hard-disk boot message, a "S=" is displayed. The hard-disk is showing activity, then Qemu crashes (Which is a indicator that the hard-disk image also works, but there is no emulator to support it. I have great hope in this emulator. I'm reporting this here so if anyone on the Qemu project does a search and finds this discussion, they will know the current status of 286 versions of OS/2. I'm still working at getting OS/2 v2.1 and Warp 3 working, and I will report on this too. Happy computing =) !.