Unreleased preview of Microsoft’s OS/2 2.0 is a glimpse down a road not taken

From hero to zero in 34 yrs.

Or

You die a hero or live to become the villain.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Where IBM wanted OS/2 to be used mainly to boost IBM-made PCs and designed it around the limitations of Intel's 80286 CPU, Windows was being created with the booming market for PC-compatible clones in mind.

It was far enough along that preview screenshots appeared in PC Magazine, and early builds were shipped to developers who could pay for them, but it was never formally released to the public.

But software archaeologist Neozeed recently published a stable internal preview of Microsoft’s OS/2 2.0 to the Internet Archive, along with working virtual machine disk images for VMware and 86Box.

The preview, bought by Brian Ledbetter on eBay for $650 plus $15.26 in shipping, dates to July 1990 and would have cost developers who wanted it a whopping $2,600.

It's a fascinating detail from a turning point in the history of the PC as we know it today, but as a usable desktop operating system, it leaves something to be desired.

In January, an Internet Archive user discovered and uploaded an early build of 86-DOS, the software that Microsoft bought and turned into MS-DOS/PC-DOS for the original IBM PC 5150.

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