What is IBM OS/2 Warp - PowerPC Edition?

When the first PowerPC products reached the market in 1993, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors. Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorola's PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS. IBM ported its AIX Unix and planned a release of OS/2. Ultimately, demand for the new architecture on the desktop never truly materialized. Windows, OS/2 and Sun customers, faced with the lack of application software for the PowerPC, almost universally ignored the chip. The PowerPC versions of Solaris, OS/2, and Windows were discontinued after only a brief period on the market.

IBM OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition was a port of OS/2 Warp 3 to the PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP). It was a subsystem (OS/2 personality) running on the IBM microkernel, which was a refinement of the Carnegie Mellon University Mach microkernel. It was a first step to Workplace OS (or WPOS for short) was supposed to be built on top of the Mach microkernel and support multiple "personalities". The personalities would implement existing operating systems such as OS/2, AIX, Windows NT and perhaps even Mac OS. In the end this never happened and the only supported personality was OS/2.

IBM OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition was never released as a product and was only offered to interested IBM customers as CD pack (2 CDs: "OS/2 Warp (PowerPC Edition) December 1995 Version" and "IBM Applications Sampler"). It stayed in beta status until cancelation of the OS/2 PowerPC project in 1996.

IBM OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition had all features of its Intel counterpart OS/2 Warp 3 (including DOS and Win-OS2 support), but missing all the networking functionality of the "Connect" versions. It had a beta version of OpenGL support, which shared code with IBM's AIX workstation class implementation. Moreover, it had already many features that showed up later in OS/2 Warp 4 on Intel.

Download IBM OS/2 Warp - PowerPC Edition for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Installs only install on IBM PowerPC workstations and on Motorola PowerStack (PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP)).

Compatible IBM PowerPC workstations:
• Desktop:
Personal Computer Power Series 830 (PowerPC 604)
Personal Computer Power Series 850 (PowerPC 604)
• Laptop:
ThinkPad Power Series 820 (PowerPC 603e)
ThinkPad Power Series 850 (PowerPC 603e)

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II