OS2 Hardware and Drivers

Video Cards and Drivers

SciTech Display Doctor 7.0 for OS/2 IBM Special Edition offers GRADD display adapters that work quite well with all newer video cards, including the SiS chipsets that are included on many of the recent computers. I particularly appreciate the fact that these drivers recognize and use all 8 MB of my ATI RAGE video card (the ATI driver only recognizes 4 MB and is very slow compared to the SciTech driver. I've experienced some problems with a few WinOS2 programs, but nothing significant - mostly a white shadow effect. Look for the drivers under the Display Adapters SciTech suite of drivers section on IBM OS/2 Device Driver Pak [no longer available].
If you are looking for a better video driver, check out the SciTech Doctor OS/2 drivers.
S3 video cards are a mixed bag, depending upon which chipset is used in your card.

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Sound Card Drivers

Creative Sound Blaster has been pretty much the standard for games under most platforms for a long time and OS/2 support has been built in. However, they have decided not to provide OS/2 drivers for newer PCI sound cards (AWE-64 and later) and many have problems running the PnP versions. There is also problems with sound under the OS/2 System and Win-OS/2 at the same time with Sound Blaster drivers (and several others).
The OS/2 drivers for Sound Blaster Live! have been ported from the Linux drivers provided by Creative and are available from Netlabs.

OS/2 Sound Card Fixes

Getting Your Sound Card to Work under OS/2

PCI sound cards for eComStation and OS/2 Warp (a hardware list of compatible PCI sound cards).
The OS/2 drivers for Sound Blaster Live! have been ported from the Linux drivers provided by Creative and are available from Netlabs sound page.
Installing the Sound Blaster AWE64 in OS/2. These OS/2 AWE64 pages previously maintained by John LeMay (PC & LAN Solutions) are now hosted on this site.
Rod Smith's Soundcards for OS/2.

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Scanner Drivers

SCOUG covers Scanners and TWAIN under OS/2 in their January, 1999 issue of Ink.

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Removable Media Drivers

Iomega Zip 100 and Jaz Drives now have better support under OS/2 (including HPFS and multiple partitions in the case of the Jaz).
Iomega Zip 100 USB Drives are supported under OS/2 but the drivers may no longer be available from IBM.

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Universal Serial Bus (USB) Devices

USB is appearing more frequently with products appearing on the market. The USB relieves some of the challenges that IRQ conflicts have created in the past. You will need both the USB Basic Device Support and the driver specific to your device.

The OS/2 Device Driver Pak supported 29 USB devices at last count (but is no longer available).
OS/2 and USB site (hosted by os2warp.be).
eComStation might be a better solution as it has support for newer devices and hardware built-in.

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Other Hardware Lists and Drivers

The hardware vendors in this list are not extensive. Because of the huge varieties of hardware that will run OS/2 systems with varying degrees of success I have included these few sites:

OS2.org Hardware Page.
Hardware (205) includes various users' experiences with hardware by type.
os2warp.be is the leading Website dedicated to OS/2, eComStation and hardware.
OS/2 pre-load list - identifies companies that will pre-load OS/2 on your computer for you.
The Notebook/2 Site rates the OS/2 performance of various notebook computers.
Hard Drives by Craig Miller on OS/2 e-Zine! discusses file systems and hard drives. If you are looking to increase the size and speed of your hard drive this article will help you do both.

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