[fpc-pascal] Re: Sybil Library - OS/2 and other INF e-books

[Tomas Hajny]

On Fri, January 25, 2013 11:00, Reinier Olislagers wrote:
> On 24-1-2013 18:55, Tomas Hajny wrote:
>> On Thu, January 24, 2013 18:03, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
>>> I know there are still a few of you developing for the OS/2 platform.
>>> So
>>> I made available on my server some INF e-books. They originally came
>>> from the Sybil Library project.
>>>
>>> There are also some Object Pascal and OOP related books.
>>>
>>>    http://opensoft.homeip.net/~graemeg/inf_books/
>> Anybody interested in the original documentation of OS/2 API and not
>> owning eComStation CDs nor the original IBM Developer's Toolkit
>> documentation may want to check
>> http://cyberkinetica.homeunix.net/os2tk45/
>> and http://www.edm2.com/.
>
> Thanks a lot, guys, perhaps I'll put some more effort in converting my
> set of original OS/2 2.0 floppies into a working Virtualbox image ;)
> (Did manage to read the floppies and I'm about halfway there but won't
> bother the list with OT horror stories)

You can contact me directly or via fpc-other if you feel a need for
consulting some issue you'd encounter (need for a more up to date drivers,
etc.). However, I believe that reviving OS/2 2.0 does not make too much
sense - you'd simply miss too many features added later.

Everything starting from OS/2 Warp v4.0 with the latest fix pack is OK
(although eCS is better due to addition of the 32-bit TCP/IP stack and
other features previously available from IBM separately or with the server
versions), earlier versions might be relevant only in the context of a
very specific need. As an example, you would not be able to compile
programs using FPC on this OS/2 version (I'm not 100% sure whether FPC
itself would work, but the version of GNU assembler distributed with FPC
does not work with this version for sure).

FPC compiled programs for OS/2 should work there, but you would need to
cross-compile them or stick to some older GNU assembler version. Compiling
FPC RTL is not possible with such old GNU assembler either (due to CPU
instructions not supported there but used in our RTL), but you might
obviously use the distributed RTL version.

Tomas