> Can you still get OS/2 to work with all the new hardware?
>
> Define the hardware.
>
> If you stay with mainstream manufacturers, the odds are quite high. If you go with just pulling shit out of a bin with no prior research, you're in for an extremely painful experience.
>

Its not quite that bad. Use to be a lot worse. Now there are some standards to write to so drivers can encompass large swaths of hardware. With Scitech Display Driver (now SNAP) for OS/2, just about any video card is supported. And you can swap in a new display card and boot it right up without fooling around (try that in windoze). With the UNIAUD audio driver a fair amount of sound chipsets are covered. With USB, particularly the more standard ECHI, most USB devices are supported. And you'd be surprised at how many OEM's still write OS/2 drivers for products like sound cards. I just installed eComStation on a generic laptop with builtin RTL3189 NIC and a Realtek ALC201 sound chipset. Both work with drivers from Realtek. My biggest disappointment in the laptop is that even though it has an ATI M6 video card with 32MB on it, the 15" display only does a native 1280x1024, so running 1600x1200 makes one have to pan the desktop, which really sucks. Wish I had know that when I bought it.

Printers and modems are a sore spot, as these have become empty shells relying on windoze only drivers. OS/2 only has limited win-modem support (one driver that works with some Lucent modems) and the IBM OS/2 OMNI printer driver supports for the most part only basic printing features for real printers. Epson continues to be one of the better options for low end printers since there are the EPOMNI drivers coming from IBM Japan for many of those (OS/2 must still be used by someone important in Japan). I'm told that Xerox Docucenters are very well supported under OS/2 as well, but those are beyond my needs or means.

The problem is with funky proprietary devices that don't stick to or have no standards. USB scanners fall into this category, but even they are being worked on under OS/2. and there are still few drivers for a lot of the wireless networking cards. Only the Cisco 340, IBm High Rate and a German company (Artem) are supproted, but a more universal wireless driver is being worked on.

Since many huge customers are still supporting large OS/2 environments, IBM has to provide at least basic driver support. Unfortunately as they try to squeeze out what's left of the OS/2 user community, most new drivers are no longer free. One has to either subscribe to IBM's Software Choice program or buy Serenity System's eComStation OEM version of OS/2.


Mark