"What version of Windows are you using?"

The trouble is that I foolishly picked up the Plug and Play version of the hardware, and from that point onward, the pain began.

OS/2 currently does not support Plug and Play except for PCMCIA cards, and hey, I don't have a notebook. I didn't know it was a PnP card at the time, the thought wasn't in my mind when I picked up the box. I just knew that a few hours earlier I had dropped in on #OS/2 in IRC and asked "If I get a SoundBlaster/CD-ROM bundle, will it work okay with Warp?" They said "No prob," one even pointed out he was using such a pack and everything was peachy.

So the soundcard was plugged in, the old 5.25" drive lost and the CD-ROM put in its place, cables plugged in, a 'Y' splitter for the power cable (the last plug was being used by the CPU fan I put in a few months back), closed the case and switched it on. My belief was that after selecting the SoundBlaster 16 and Creative Labs CD-ROM from the Selective Install, everything would be done with.

Not so. (Couldn't you guess?)

Plug and Play cards may embody the latest tech, but they can't act like a regular jumpers-and-IRQ style card with an out of date OS (now don't shout at me, OS/2 is out of date in this respect, and if you're patient enough all that will be cleaned up with Merlin, okay?). So of course the regular SoundBlaster drivers wouldn't work. No sound, no CDs, no Coca-Cola.

After failing to get either component working I had to resort to tech support. Creative Labs has a 1-800 number, but it's an automated system that must be running on Windows and therefore hasn't heard of OS/2 (or it is running on OS/2--being an excellent platform for mission-critical applications--it's just that the guy with the annoying sales-pitch voice had never heard of it). All questions unanswerable by the automated support are directed to a non-800 long-distance toll call. So I called, and I paid. They put me on hold for about 15-20 minutes before someone got to me. Of course the first question they asked was "What version of Windows are you using?"

Ahem.

I'm polite on the phone unless I'm given good incentive to shout (and a poor tech support guy for Kipplinger's Tax Cut got the brunt of that when he told me in a snotty-nosed voice that IBM wasn't committed to OS/2. Hah, my money went to TaxDollars for that one). Anyway, I told the tech support (by a slip of his tongue he implied that he was just 'hired help' and reading from a screen) that I was using OS/2 and listened as he stumbled and apologized humbly to me. We talked for about 15 minutes and to my partial relief he told me there were OS/2 drivers to make the Plug-and-Play SoundBlaster work. Catch: The CD-ROM doesn't work through the SoundBlaster interface (thanks to OS/2 not being fully PnP compatible.)

The technician told me that there were a few alternatives I could try.

1. Slave the CD-ROM under my hard drive (it's an IDE CD-ROM after all). Unfortunately I have 2 hard drives, so then there's
2. Plug the CD-ROM into the secondary IDE port. Bummer, my controller card doesn't have a secondary IDE port (and neither does my motherboard.) So on to
3. Whenever I start the computer, boot to DOS first, run the DOS utilities that come with the package, then 'warm boot' to OS/2 (I can't run the same utilities under OS/2 because they generate nice little General Protection Faults).

Okay, I decided to go for option 2 and buy a new controller card with a secondary IDE port. That cost me $80 (the only store in town that had one also felt free to jack up their prices) and it didn't work with spectacular results.

Being thoroughly British born and bred, with an appreciation for the fine arts and classical music, I swore at it liberally.

I set the drive to Master, I set the drive to Slave, I plugged it into the primary, I plugged it into the secondary, I loaded the IBM drivers, I loaded the manufacturer's drivers, I tried every permutation of software switches, I changed religions 3 times and for a dangerous moment considered the other operating system.

Not a bloody thing would make it go.

I called tech support again.

"What version of Windows are you using?"

I politely told the man I wasn't using Windows and he put me through to the WinNT/OS/2 support guy (different person from the one I'd talked to the night before). We had a long chat and I found out that he has OS/2 as well (possibly a requirement of the job, he probably has NT too) and knew his way around Selective Install and the CONFIG.SYS. When I told him the controller card was a 'DTC' one he groaned and mentioned that only half an hour ago he was assisting someone else with the same thing and that nothing would work. My heart sank, he sighed, we both got down to seeing what we could do.

We couldn't.

The ruddy piece of plastic and solder was useless and I'm counting myself lucky that the electronics store has a 30-day return policy.

So what did I end up doing? I lost the second hard drive of course, slaved the CD-ROM under the main hard drive, and made-the-stupid-thing-work. I now have 200 megabytes less than I used to have, although that's alright I suppose since I can probably manage without for a while. If the controller card didn't see the CD-ROM on the secondary port it might see the hard drive instead (but I don't know yet).

In retrospect I should have bought the non Plug-and-Play hardware and saved myself a lot of trouble, but where is the non-PnP hardware anymore? Our local OfficeMax has nearly exclusive PnP hardware, I'm just lucky that Creative Labs is very good at OS/2 drivers (they've even ported all those flashy-looking CD, MIDI and WAV player apps) and their tech support does have an OS/2 crew.

But why do they ask "What version of Windows do you have?" It's asked as if you're supposed to have Windows. As soon as I tell them I have OS/2 they shuffle me around and put me on hold for another 15 minutes, while I bet the Windows users are in and out with no problem. ("Hey Frank, it's another one who tried to shove the soundcard through the floppy slot.")

With the same amount of breath they could have said "What operating system are you using?" and it would have been more polite to OS/2 users like us.

Alas, I think they fear some users don't know what 'Operating System' means and it'll take a few more breaths to explain it to them.

We shouldn't have to put up with this, we're not babies.

End of rant.

P.S. If the tech-support guy I was talking to last Wednesday is reading this, send me some e-mail, I was the one with the British accent.

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