OS2 Print Drivers

February 5, 2007 11:21 AM

I'm looking for an original copy of the IBM OS2 Warp Version 3 program on 3.5 inch disks for a reinstall of the print drivers (omni.drv- HP Deskjet 500) They were placed on disk 2 to 4. The original program contained 21 floppy disks. Any assistance or ideas would be appreciated?

At my work (neurologists' office), we can no longer print any results from evoked potentials testing. It appears support for this OS2 that we need ceased on 12/31/2006 and we're having trouble finding these drivers. We can only load the drivers from floppy disks. We looking for the IBM OS2 Warp Version 3 program on 3.5 inch disks for a reinstall of the print drivers
(omni.drv- HP Deskjet 500) They were placed on disk 2 to 4. The original program contained 21 floppy disks.

Does anyone know where we can obtain these? Thanks in advance.

posted by battlecj to computers & internet (9 comments total)

perhaps eBay?
posted by aeighty at 11:26 AM on February 5, 2007

I have backups of all the floppies from OS/2W3 on a FAT drive someplace (but the backups are in OS/2 XDF format, so you'd need to be able to write that -- I think WinImage). I'll look for them this evening if you haven't found copies yet.
posted by j.edwards at 11:53 AM on February 5, 2007

I can suggest the OS/2 Warp 3.0 FixPak for laserjet printers, from a non-IBM site (it's an IBM file). Download the file, unzip it and copy the contents to a blank 3.5" drive. I give you about a 20% chance of success, sorry. If you do have a CD of OS/2 Warp (and I assume your machine does not have an installed CD drive), there is a utility that will extract the diskette images off the CD (the name of whicheludes me now). Good luck, j.edwards may be able to save your bacon if this doesn't work.
posted by nj_subgenius at 11:57 AM on February 5, 2007

This isn't a direct answer to your question, and you don't give a lot of information about the problem so I'm guessing a bit. Forgive me if I'm off track. But, if this is a case of the printer working one day and not the next, when you haven't changed anything in the operating system regarding printing, you may be going about this the wrong way.

OS/2 is not known for requiring periodic reinstallation of drivers. If you have been using the system for years (10 years??), printing successfully all the while, it's much more likely that what you have today is a HARDWARE failure.

In that case, try a different printer, or cable, make sure the wires are tight, and so on. Or try moving the cable and printer to another computer to test them. If you haven't shut down and TURNED OFF all the pieces, be sure to do that (don't just reboot).

Of course you ought to have the floppies anyway, since you depend on this legacy system... But if you have a hardware problem, and you mess with the drivers (especially if you're not experienced with OS/2, and is anybody anymore?), you will likely make the situation worse. I know it's tempting to try messing with drivers first, especially if you're used to fixing Windows machines, but be sure before you do that you have done all the possible troubleshooting.
posted by putril at 12:00 PM on February 5, 2007

please follow putril's too-true advice first!
posted by nj_subgenius at 12:06 PM on February 5, 2007

this ebay listing for OS/2 3 on CD or there's another listing for OS/2 3 on floppies. If you're willing to wait a few days for the shipping, you should be able to get either of these for under $20.

You might also find one of the archived HP drivers (Laserjet/PaintJet/PostScript/PCL...) in the printer section of the hobbes.nmsu.edu's OS/2 archive.

Specifically, OMNI printer driver for Canon/Epson/HP printers (omni460.zip) might in fact be what you're looking for.

Good luck!
posted by notpeter at 12:27 PM on February 5, 2007

Thank you to everyone for their suggestions.

So far notpeter's omni printer driver has us mostly working, right now. We're obviously going to get a working set of the whole operating system and try some of the other things mentioned here.
posted by battlecj at 2:27 PM on February 5, 2007

I have my original 3.5 diskettes for OS2/W3 in my hand, however the printer drivers say disks#1-3.

If I dir them, they only show 1-1K file on each, so I assume they are packed in some non-standard way.

If you need to borrow them, let me know.
posted by MtDewd at 4:00 PM on February 5, 2007

If I dir them, they only show 1-1K file on each, so I assume they are packed in some non-standard way.

They're in XDF format (the first track of XDF floppies is "standard", so often a readme or some driver is stashed there). You can read and copy them with the xdfcopy tool, which I've stashed here (89k EXE file), along with the images I had (3.8M ZIP file), which makes this advice little redundant, but maybe not if my images don't work.
posted by j.edwards at 10:25 PM on February 5, 2007