The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is a large collection of OS/2 software that has been publicly available for many years, even as OS/2 itself has mostly faded into obscurity. Yet now it would appear that the entity behind the Hobbes OS/2 Archive, the Information & Communication Technologies department at the New Mexico State University, has decided to call it quits — with the site going permanently offline on April 15th, 2024.
Fortunately, from a cursory glance around the comment sections over at Hacker News and other places, it seems that backup efforts have already been made, and the preservation of the archive’s contents should be secure at this point in time. Regardless, it is always a shame to lose such a central repository, especially since IBM’s OS/2 operating system is still anything but dead. Whether for hobbyist, industrial or commercial use, there is still a vibrant community around today, as we noted in 2019 already in relation to the NYC’s subway system.
Beyond downloaded copies and boxed CDs bought on EBay, you can even get a modernized version of OS/2 called ArcaOS, which even comes with commercial support. Whatever the fate is of the Hobbes OS/2 Archive’s data, we hope it finds a loving new home somewhere.
Thanks, Microsoft.
I can probably host a mirror if there’s a torrent. It’s a bunch of old software, it’s probably not that big.
Still have my Walnut Creek CD-ROM.
Man Walnut Creek CD-ROMs haven’t thought about those in a long time. I fear I lost the ones I had when a bunch of my CD folders gotten stolen back in the mid-2000s.
A mirror is up on http://www.os2site.com and being worked on to redeirect to this site. And synch the newer stuff. Roderickklein at xs4all.nl
Thanks. With virtualization and these archives it opens up a bigger software ecosystem than just the big three.
It is good to know there is someone keeping a mirror up. There has been so much history lost from those that believe old software isn’t worth archiving.
I’d be shocked if the Internet Archive doesn’t pick it up.
Click the link. 18GB.
Dang. I used to run this archive back in the 90s, when I was a student at NMSU and it was one of my ancillary duties when I worked part-time for the IT department. I wasn’t a fan of OS/2 myself but I appreciated how much of a community there was around it and how excited people were to continue to use it. When I inherited it the website was put together with duct tape and paperclips, and the files were pretty inconsistently-organized.
I spent a few months building a new website and tooling to make it easier to manage and then completely reorganized the archive, and while other students replaced the underlying code over the years (eventually replacing my not-very-great C++-based bespoke-CGI system with a much more robust PHP-based one), my design was largely intact, as was the file structure I’d established.
I’m kind of amazed it kept running for this long, but this is a personal end of an era for me. I still held a lot of nostalgia for it and my time working on it.
Cool!
Cool, you were the one doing it? I remeber very well. I’ve started to use OS/2 2.0 at work to support our RAID controller (ICP GDT3000 and later). Bought my first copy as OS/2 2.1 and to continued to use it until 2008 when I switched to linux. Some of my old software is stored there, I’m happy to see that there will be a public copy / successor to hobbes.
Jason Scott (of textfiles.com) posted on Mastadon “Nobody should worry about Hobbes, I’ve got Hobbes handled”. Given his track record, I’m quite willing to take him at his word on that one.
OS/2 was a real multitasking os. I used it in the late 80’s to create a nice industrial data acquisition system on 386 based PC. It was solid and reliable.
Kludge-o-magic.
*matic
Given that OS/2 1.x didn’t immediately crash on various IBM ‘286 hardware (also horrible kludges) and actually found some customers, both apply.
I worked on OS/2 2.0 as an intern at Microsoft. Most underrated operating system of all time. It got lost in extra “stuff” that wasn’t even tech-related.
I supported OS2/Warp for Iomega Jazz, Zip, and ditto drives from around 1996-1998. Was enjoyable. Fixes were easy. At MCI’s chandler AZ call center. Was a fun first IT job. Glad it’s being saved. Still have the box and CDs in the garage with my Vic-20
We tried OS/2 at work (we were an automation company) and liked it… But our customers were M$, so stuck with Windows to keep the relationships… Which turned out was the right decision even if for the wrong reason so to speak. A few years ago I deep-sixed a boxed set that I had at the house (clean out of unused ‘space wasting’ stuff).
Still have the red box with a big honking book to go with it.
I’m gonna miss my old OS/2 and Presentation Manager days — I was an intern at IBM during OS/2 1.2, 1.3, … into 2.0 and the Warp release. I even did document review and a bit of coding for the redbooks that development was putting out around the Warp release.
In later jobs, learning the Windows API, I discovered how much better OS/2 was in many ways.
I used to have about 8 feet of shelf space dedicated to that whole set of OS/2 docs, whitebooks and redbooks combined. It was kind of a sad day when I gave them away.
Did you digitize them first?
Had entirely forgotten about this until seeing Hobbes and OS/2 together. Oof, the memories.
OS/2 is dead. Nobody needs it or that hobbes. Let it burn.
How many times has OS/2 died and we are still using it today ??
We are happy using OS/2 at it’s new incarnation, ArcaOS. We hang out at OS2World.com and soon Hobbes will be replaced with a new system.
We’ve created another mirror for the former Hobbes website.
https://os2archive.infracritical.com (shortened URL: http://os2.be).