Microsoft Talks OS/2 For 386s

Joshua Greenbaum
Computer System News

March 6, 1989

REDMOND, WASH. - Microsoft Corp. outlined plans for its long-awaited 80386 version of OS/2 at the Microsoft Systems Seminar held here last month.

The new version of OS/2, due in 1990, will "support all the features of the 386," according to Adrian King, director of operating systems at Microsoft.

The plans for an enhanced OS/2 come at a time of sluggish sales for OS/2.

While OS/2 and the Presentation Manager interface have scored some important strategic gains-particularly in the selection of Presentation Manager technology as part of the Open Software Foundation's Motif user interface-overall sales of the new operating system have yet to top 100,000 units.

"Sales are a little lower than I would have liked," said Steve Ballmer, vice president for systems software at Microsoft. "Making OS/2 popular is priority one, two, three, four, five and six at Microsoft."

Microsoft also unveiled plans to support object-oriented programming in future versions of OS/2 and Microsoft's programming languages.

In addition, the company revealed plans to support low-level database capabilities in its C and Basic programming languages. The announcement should put to rest talk of a DBMS from Microsoft that would compete with the SQLServer DBMS developed by Sybase Inc. and jointly marketed by Microsoft and Ashton-Tate Corp.

The company will also port OS/2 to other platforms besides the 80386, including Intel Corp.'s new i860 processor and some non-Intel architectures. Microsoft officials described the work as being in an early stage and would not specify when a portable OS/2 would be available.

Microsoft's 80386 support will include a number of features designed specifically to assist ISVs in programming in the OS/2 environment.

The new OS/2 will support memory segments up to 4 Gbytes and will have a new file system that can support long file names and much larger storage devices. "From an ISV's standpoint, it removes some of the complexity," said King.

The forthcoming version of OS/2 will also offer full support for 32-bit programming on the 80386 while preserving the compatibility of the 16-bit code required in the 80286 version. Memory paging, proportional fonts, enhanced driver support and changes to the OS/2 shell will also be featured.

The new 80386 version will effectively result in a dual standard for OS/2, although upward compatibility will be preserved. "There will be some divergence between the two," said Anthony Short, OS/2 development manager.

One major feature of the 80386 version of OS/2 will be enhanced support for MS-DOS programs, an admission by Microsoft that MS-DOS will remain important well into the 1990s. "It's a philosophical issue when the DOS compatibility becomes obsolete," said King.

OS/2 for the 80386 will support more than one MS-DOS program running as a background as well as a foreground task, a departure from OS/2 1.1's support for a single MS-DOS task that remains "frozen" in the background.

Also in the wings for Microsoft is support for object-oriented programming, a notion that has gained considerable prominence since the debut of the Next machine from Next Inc. with its support for the Objective C language from Stepstone Corp.

Microsoft is currently developing a C++ compiler based on the C++ language from AT&T. A "visual" version of Basic that incorporates object-oriented programming is also in the works, according to Nathan Myhrvold, director of advanced development at Microsoft. "These two products are the key tools for supporting programmers," he said.

Database enhancements are also in the works for C and Basic. Microsoft announced a long-term goal to build ISAM and database capabilities directly into the two languages. Included in the database functions in C and Basic would be support for form and report writing.