Welcome to the Hobbes OS/2 Archive
This archive is dedicated to OS/2 software, utilities, drivers, and media. Browse our categories to find programs for Warp 3, Warp 4, eComStation, and ArcaOS.
Getting Started
- Guests (OS/2 browsers): Full browse and download access
- Contributors: Upload and share your OS/2 software
- Editors: Approve submissions and manage categories
Use the navigation above to browse by category or search the archive.
A Tribute to the Hobbes OS/2 Archive: The People Who Built It, the Community That Kept It Alive
For more than three decades, the Hobbes OS/2 Archive stood as one of the Internet’s oldest and most beloved software repositories—a digital lighthouse for the global OS/2 community long after IBM itself had moved on. Hosted at hobbes.nmsu.edu by New Mexico State University’s Department of Information & Communication Technologies, it grew from a humble FTP site into the world’s largest collection of OS/2 software, drivers, utilities, games, documentation, and development tools. At its peak it held tens of thousands of files totaling many gigabytes, preserving not just code but an entire era of computing history. Its story is not just about bits and bytes; it is a story of student ingenuity, volunteer passion, and a tight-knit user-group community that refused to let something precious disappear.
The Spark: 1990 and an Unnamed Visionary Student
The archive traces its roots to 1990 in the Small Systems Graduate Computer Lab at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A computer-science student (who had joined the lab in 1989) was given responsibility for a pair of NeXT workstations. He named them Calvin and Hobbes after the beloved comic strip—Hobbes after the irrepressible tiger. Those machines became ftp-os2.nmsu.edu (later hobbes.nmsu.edu), and the student quietly set up anonymous FTP so the lab’s limited storage could be shared efficiently with the growing OS/2 user base. In his own modest words years later, “I wasn’t much involved with the OS/2 Warp archive other than setting up anonymous FTP and keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn’t consume too much storage.”
That single, almost accidental decision by an unnamed undergraduate launched one of the Internet’s longest-running public archives. No corporate marketing campaign, no grant proposal—just a student solving a practical problem and sharing the results with the world. That spirit of quiet generosity would define Hobbes for the next 34 years.
By 1992 the archive was already so valuable that Walnut Creek CD-ROM burned its contents onto distribution discs, making it one of the earliest software collections to be preserved offline for users without reliable Internet. It had become the de-facto central repository for everything OS/2—shareware, freeware, beta releases, patches, and tools that IBM and third-party developers released over the years.
The Student Stewards: The Real Heroes
Hobbes never had a single paid full-time curator. It was kept alive, year after year, by successive generations of NMSU student assistants and a few dedicated staff members who loved OS/2. Each left their mark:
- Curtis Ewing maintained the site in the mid-1990s before handing it off.
- Josh Shagam, a 19-year-old undergraduate in January 1998, inherited a site held together “with duct tape and paperclips.” In a few intense months he rewrote the web interface, built a C++ search engine and database, completely reorganized the chaotic directory structure (a move that was controversial at the time but stood the test of years), wrote upload scripts, and gave the archive its clean, searchable face. The basic layout and file organization he established remained largely intact for the rest of its life.
- Dave Rocks, head of NMSU’s Information Services and an OS/2 enthusiast, took stewardship in the late 1990s, moving the archive to a repurposed IBM RS/6000 AIX server and guiding it through the transition to a full web presence.
- Later students migrated the backend to PHP, kept the mirrors synchronized, and continued accepting uploads from developers worldwide even after IBM ended official OS/2 support in 2006.
These young people—many of whom were not even born when OS/2 1.0 shipped in 1987—spent countless unpaid hours keeping the archive running because they understood its importance to a worldwide community of enthusiasts, businesses, and historians. Their names deserve to be remembered alongside the archive itself.
The Golden Years and the OS/2 Diaspora
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Hobbes became legendary. When IBM released OS/2 Warp 3 and 4, when third-party developers created new drivers for hardware long abandoned by Microsoft, when eComStation (later ArcaOS) users needed legacy software—Hobbes was there. It served as the primary distribution point mirrored around the globe. OS/2 user groups—VOICE, SCOUG, Warpstock, OS/2 World, and countless national forums—pointed every newcomer straight to hobbes.nmsu.edu. It was more than an archive; it was the living memory of an operating system that refused to die.
The 2024 Shutdown and the Community That Would Not Let It Die
In January 2024, NMSU made the difficult but understandable decision to decommission hobbes.nmsu.edu for budgetary and operational reasons. The site was scheduled to go dark on April 15, 2024. The announcement sent a ripple of alarm through the OS/2 world, but also triggered an outpouring of gratitude and action. The university provided a complete 19 GB tarball of the entire archive. Jason Scott and the Internet Archive mirrored it immediately. OS/2 World (under Roderick Klein) and other groups coordinated preservation efforts. Within weeks, Nathan Woodruff launched hobbesarchive.com, faithfully recreating the original web interface and functionality so the community would still have the familiar experience.
Even when hobbesarchive.com itself faced insurmountable bandwidth costs and had to close in early 2026, other mirrors (infania.net and others) stepped forward. The files remain safe on the Internet Archive and multiple independent sites. The archive did not die; it simply changed address—exactly as the OS/2 community has done for decades.
A Lasting Tribute
To the unnamed student who named two NeXT boxes Calvin and Hobbes and quietly turned them into a public service in 1990: thank you. You planted a seed that grew far beyond anything you could have imagined.
To every NMSU student assistant, to Curtis Ewing, Josh Shagam, Dave Rocks, and all the unnamed maintainers who followed: your unpaid hours, your late-night reorganizations, your careful curation, and your love for an “obsolete” operating system kept a piece of computing history alive for an entire generation. You are the true founders and guardians of Hobbes.
And to the OS/2 user groups—OS/2 World, Arca Noae, VOICE, SCOUG, Warpstock, and every local club and forum around the world—your work is not finished. The files are safe for now, but sustainable, community-funded mirrors with upload capability, regular backups, and new search tools are needed. Let us honor the students who gave us Hobbes by ensuring their legacy continues. Contribute to existing mirrors. Support the groups that host them. Keep uploading new finds. Teach the next generation why this operating system—and its archive—mattered.
Hobbes may no longer live at nmsu.edu, but its spirit lives wherever OS/2 users still gather, still tinker, still remember. The tiger is still out there—irrepressible, independent, and very much alive—because a community that refuses to forget will always keep him running.
Long live Hobbes. Long live the OS/2 community that made it, used it, and will keep it going for as long as we draw breath.
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