OS/2 v4 need dos?

I'm thinking about adding OS/2 warp v4 to an old box and have a couple of questions to anyone familiar with this old os..

1: Does OS/2 version4 need a dos enviornment to run? or is it a full blown 32 bit os?

2: Will I have any probs with usb 1 and with AGP?

3: Are there any archived drivers/ hotfixes available anywhere on the web? I know that IBM supposedly quit supporting it officialy in 2005 or 2006?

I have always wanted to try it on comparable equipment of it's day.
The rig I want to put it on is a be6-II ver2, although I will not be using the onboard raid ctrlr...and if the be6-2 board/proc/mem combo is too much, I can always downgrade all the way down to a 486 dx4 if I have to, and yes I still have a dx4, and a pentium overdrive, and a few others in that catagory...Maybe I should'a called myself "Packrat"
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Doc

OS/2 Warp has built in DOS, you do not need any separate disk or license.

I believe that OS/2 has built in drivers for USB v.1. But if I recall, you may need to find OS/2 drivers for any peripherals that you want to connect.

As far as your AGP video card goes, you may have to go to the manufacturer site and see if there are OS/2 drivers for your particular card. Keep in mind, there won't be any OS/2 drivers for any newer cards.

IBM should have all the latest patches online. You will not find much live support except via user groups. Many financial institutions still use OS/2 in banking and POS systems.

You will find that OS/2 was much better than Windows 3.1 (its protoge), but only for office type applications. The OS/2 DOS box was much better/robust/faster than anything M$ had to offer at the time. Games did not fare so well due to the interrupt driven [TRUE] pre-emptive multitasking built in to OS/2.

GOOGLE is probably your friend here.

Nice. I had OS/2 Warp 4 on my first computer. I didn't know much about computers at the time but I still wasn't afraid to play with it a bit, I did get hooked on an astroids clone that came with it, lol.

My hardware knowledge of OS/2 is pretty much that computer, it was a 75MHz Pentium, 8MB's of RAM, trident video on board chipset w/ 2MB RAM I think. The motherboard may have had one PCI slot but I think it was all ISA. To my knowledge USB wasn't even in existence when this computer was built.

I know IBM did put a decent amount of driver support into OS/2 so I say grab a lot of patches before starting and starting with a PCI video card may be a good idea. Have any ATI Mach64's laying around? I know those were popular at the time, but I'm not sure of driver support.

You may want to look for drivers for eComStation which is OS/2 developed by a company I guess working with IBM or something but it is still being supported by this 3rd party.

Good luck and post screenies

With appropriate drivers that I managed to locate on the web, OS/2 Warp 4 supported my ancient ATi AGP card. I don't recall the model off hand and the computer has since been disposed of, but OS/2 and AGP can coexist peacefully. The computer had USB ports as well, but I never tried them.

Make sure you patch your boot disks if you plan on installing it on any modern hard drive more than a few gigs in size, instructions here.

Thanks all.......I think I will get it and play with it, After all I understood that warp4 was like win95 on steroids when it came certain apps.
You all made my mind up, I will do it...I might have to join Paypal to get it though

just saw this, thought it might be interesting to the topic:

http://www.os2world.com/content/view/16595/1/

Doh! Thanks for the info though splat, maybe better luck in 5 more years.

Doc Clock, I would also have a look at Ecomstation, it's essentially OS/2 Warp 4.5 (which I think was only ever released as a server OS by IBM) with a few modifications and tweaks. It's supposed to be much less hassle to install and run.

Having said that, when you finally get OS/2 running with Odin installed and everything else in place, it's fine.