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Comment by atdrummond | Hacker News Reader

So the previous computers in this class (for the 88k chips) they released a version of System V; the PowerStack also had a Unix, which was a (modified) AIX. The PowerStack II supported Windows NT (I remember using one in the 90s) and had official Motorola discs for this purpose. I’m not sure if the PPC NT was (officially) supported on the PowerStack; I’m not sure it’d be extremely performant on the non-e 603s. OS/2 would have been supported given IBM was the other chip producing partner in the AIM PPC alliance.

Today one’s best bet is a stable PPC Linux release or NetBSD.

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> OS/2 would have been supported given IBM was the other chip producing partner in the AIM PPC alliance.

Officially speaking, no, OS/2 PPC never supported any Motorola machines, only a limited selection of IBM machines. [0]

It probably could have been made to support Motorola PowerStack without too much work, maybe just a few extra drivers. But OS/2 PPC was essentially cancelled by IBM before it was even finished – it appears the "release" IBM made was simply a case of "we promised people we would release this, so let's just ship it unfinished so we can tell everyone we keep our word".

[0] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-warp-powerpc-ed...

You’re correct. Supported was not the proper word choice here; given that I do know people who ran OS/2 on these systems in the 90s, and have done such installs myself, it’s a relatively painless process compared to, say, Solaris or NT on a PPC system that diverges from PReP/CHRP.

TL;DR: While IBM developed OS/2 to work on PPC, they never explicitly promoted or provided direct support for OS/2 on Motorola’s PPC. I was sloppy.

> given that I do know people who ran OS/2 on these systems in the 90s, and have done such installs myself,

I'm amazed to hear anyone actually ran OS/2 PPC (beyond its own development team, and a handful of ISVs IBM recruited to port software to it.)

I would be shocked if anyone used it seriously - I think there was a novelty in simply having explored the software. Same goes for people who install the Solaris port.

Latest upstream kernel should work, because every time I send patches to arch/powerpc I manage to break one legacy platform or another, so there's still people testing them.

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