Question about OS/2 3.5 floppy image files

old_dog

I want to load OS/2 onto a (real) computer with a (real) 3.5 floppy drive. So I down load OS/2 WARP 4.0 (3.5) from the Winworld Library and unzip it. Yikes! 111 image files. Before I go out and buy a crate of 3.5 floppies I take a look at these files. Most are 1,474,560 byte image files but many are 1,884,160 byte image files?????????? Never heard of such an animal.

So I download OS/2 3.0, same story but only 43 image files and some are 1,884,160 bytes in size.

Finally I try OS/2 2.0. OK only 21 image files and all are 1,474,560 bytes in size.

Can anyone explain what is going on with these apparently oversized image files?

BigCJ

They're standard 1.44Mb diskettes using a wonky, non-standard format called XDF.

Read more here:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-xdf-diskette-format

FluffyBunnyFeet

May I suggest downloading OS/2 Warp 4.52 instead. The installation cd is bootable so no need for floppy disks

BigCJ

FluffyBunnyFeet wrote:

The installation cd is bootable so no need for floppy disks

The OP didn't describe their computer, so we don't know the state of the optical drive. It might have a working one, a broken one or not even have one at all. Also, some BIOSes from the OS/2 era didn't allow booting from a CD. Besides, there's just some kind of nostalgic charm when installing something from floppies...