The 'worst-selling Microsoft product of all time' sold just 11 times, and eight people returned it — why you've never heard of OS/2 for the Mach 20

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A specialized version of OS/2 holds—and will likely continue to hold—the record.

A photograph of the Microsoft Mach 10's turbo switch.
(Image credit: Dave W Plummer)

Microsoft can sell almost anything these days; even the relatively unpopular Xbox Series consoles have sold tens of millions of units. The company is a household name, and whether you like it or not, you've probably given Microsoft money at some point or another. That wasn't always the case, though. Back in the mid-1980s, it wasn't even clear that Windows was going to hang around that much longer, as Microsoft was working with IBM on an alternative to both Windows and the DOS on which it relied: OS/2. While it ultimately failed to displace Windows in the market, OS/2 was very well-regarded among PC users. Despite that, a very specific version of OS/2 was indeed the worst-selling Microsoft product of all time. Meet OS/2 for Mach 20, which sold a total of 11 copies, of which eight were then returned.

Let's take a trip back to the mid-80s. Back then, computers were well on their way to becoming ubiquitous but hadn't quite reached that status yet. We were still in a transitional period, where a lot of companies were computerizing operations, but still operating under ideas of budgeting that were squarely rooted in 1960s office dynamics. Computers were very expensive, but also very definitely the future, so you could probably convince the folks holding the keys to corporate expense accounts that you needed this huge layout for company PCs.

(Image credit: Microsoft Corporation/Infoworld Magazine)

That was the marketing promise, at least, of very popular "Turbo Cards," including Microsoft's Mach 10 hardware upgrade card. The Mach 10 was a card with a ribbon cable that ran to your PC's CPU socket. You replaced the CPU with that connection, and the much faster 8086 CPU on the card, with its own local memory, took over. While you were still limited by the meager capabilities of the 8-bit system bus and slow storage, this really did give a significant speed-up in CPU-bound tasks.

The Mach 10 wasn't particularly popular (owing at least in part to its high price), but Microsoft — perhaps encouraged by the wild success of its much earlier CP/M card for the Apple II — nonetheless decided to try a second time with the Mach 20. This card had more features, including the ability to expand the memory by connecting a daughtercard directly to the Mach 20 expansion board, saving a precious expansion slot on the motherboard. It also came with a faster 80286 processor compared to the 8086 of the Mach 10.

The Mach 20 also wasn't particularly popular, but it was apparently popular enough for Microsoft to decide it warranted a release of OS/2 specifically for the Mach 20, and that specific release was purportedly the worst-selling Microsoft product of all time. The specific number is essentially hearsay by this point, but Raymond Chen writes:

One of my former colleagues spoke with the person who took over from him as the support specialist for OS/2 for Mach 20. According to that person's memory [...] a total of eleven copies of "OS/2 for Mach 20" were ever sold, and eight of them were returned. That leaves three customers who purchased a copy and didn’t return it. And the support specialist had personally spoken with two of them.

Raymond Chen

IBM's OS/2 2.0 was the very first fully 32-bit operating system for x86 PCs, released after Microsoft quit the OS/2 project. (Image credit: Nathan Lineback/ToastyTech)

As comical as it is to think about an operating system release receiving a whopping 11 sales, and then eight of them being returned, it really isn't surprising at all. The specific release in question required the esoteric Mach 20 hardware, and OS/2 itself wasn't particularly well-understood outside of hardcore enthusiasts; most of those who returned it probably purchased it with no understanding of what they were getting into. It's possible that the three who kept it were perfectly pleased with the product, but we'll probably never know.

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Zak Killian
Zak Killian
Contributor

Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • etoven
    I think someone might be going a little bit senile... possibly the author. Nobody ever had a production run of packaged software back then of just 11 units.
    Reply
  • Former_Bubblehead
    The author likely never layed eyes or hands on OS/2. And, we"re talking here about a hardware product that cost several thousand dollars at the time so was not likely to sell many copies. Perhaps a few hundred over its entire product lifetime if it was lucky.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Former_Bubblehead said:
    The author likely never layed eyes or hands on OS/2. And, we"re talking here about a hardware product that cost several thousand dollars at the time so was not likely to sell many copies. Perhaps a few hundred over its entire product lifetime if it was lucky.
    True. The hardware and OS/2 were two entirely different things as well. The history of OS/2 is one that most know nothing about. It was a solid OS that got lost to the annuls of time.

    Even in those days, this kind of unaffordable hardware (with all of its limitations) was not going to sell like hotcakes.
    Reply
  • Averagetoaster
    "even the relatively unpopular Xbox Series consoles"
    This is a real grasping at straws to try and make a point.
    Reply
  • Former_Bubblehead
    Averagetoaster said:
    "even the relatively unpopular Xbox Series consoles"
    This is a real grasping at straws to try and make a point.
    Typical so called TH "journalist" of the past several years. Never sticks around long enough to be held accountable or even answer any questions readers may have.
    Reply
  • great Unknown
    COLGeek said:
    True. The hardware and OS/2 were two entirely different things as well. The history of OS/2 is one that most know nothing about. It was a solid OS that got lost to the annuls of time.

    Even in those days, this kind of unaffordable hardware (with all of its limitations) was not going to sell like hotcakes.
    "annuls of time". I don't know if that was a typo, or deliberate, but it is a perfect pun, and I am hereby assimilating it.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    great Unknown said:
    "annuls of time". I don't know if that was a typo, or deliberate, but it is a perfect pun, and I am hereby assimilating it.
    ...it was, indeed. ;)

    For those who may not get the reference, look at the history of MS and OS/2.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    What later generations never saw or knew is that this type of CPU upgrade or replacement was quite normal in the early days of small computers: indeed the CPU board (with plenty of support circuitry) was just another board you'd plug into your S-100 backplane, only to replace it with another a year down the road. An S-100 chassis held up to 22 devices, potentially several RAM boards and more boards for just about every function or interface. With the entire system easily costing as much as new full sized car, swapping the CPU board was much like swapping the engine: certainly not a trivial expense, but often the lesser evil than getting a new car. And "operating systems" were little more than a glorified boot loader, every application basically came with a floppy that contained its own copy of the base OS in the first few sectors.

    E.g I did add a Microsoft SoftCard (clone) to my Apple ]



    and a full 640k/32MB etc. of precious RAM was just way too costly at what they charged for RAM back then! I'm positive that an RTX 5090 including a 9950X3D with 128GB of RAM is still far less expensive than what I paid for an Intel Above EMS memory board with a measily 1.5megabyte of 16-bit 8 MHz RAM way back then in today's Euros.

    It was mostly shifting prices and the fact that the extension busses soon became the slowest component of the systems, which killed that trend.

    * * *

    OS/2's worst aspect was that it was tailor made for the 80286, which was basically a functional equivalent of PDP-11, a ground-laying machine in many ways, but a segmented 16-bit architecture which came out in 1970 and achieved 80286 type capabilities in 1976. It was very adequate and economic for the time, but it had none of the forward vision and abstractions which came with bigger address spaces, 32-bit or beyond.

    One of the first 32-bit designs with mass appeal was the DEC VAX, launched in 1977 and Intels 80386 essentially replicated that giant architectural jump in only three years (1982/1985) which was shortened to two on desktop products with the IBM PC-AT (1984) and the PC compatible Compaq DeskPro 386 (1986).

    That full generational jump in only two years was a shock, the PC software industry took many more years to absorb, but meanwhile OS/2 had the older 80286 design as a deeply baked in liability, that never delivered on the 80286 advantage before that CPU was already obsolete. For Microsoft to jump the queue and grab Dave Cutler and his VMS team from Digital to create WNT (Windows New Technology) as VMS (V++M++S++) clone. was certainly one of the best decisions M$ ever made: OS/2 with its reliance on Intel's slow microcoded segment and task management intrinsics never had the guts and backbone for WARP speed ahead, let alone any hope for portability: it would have been a long painful DRAG.

    From a pure user perspektive OS/2 may not have been as bad as some of the intemediary M$ sins until NT achieved similar and better maturity, its other birth defects (apart from the lack of popularity) may not have become that obvious before it died of its primary one.
    Reply
  • Zoolook13
    etoven said:
    I think someone might be going a little bit senile... possibly the author. Nobody ever had a production run of packaged software back then of just 11 units.
    He didn't say anything about a production run, besides at that time lots of things sold in small number especially niche products.

    However even very large production runs can sell terribly and things like this happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    I'm dating myself by stating I successfully ran a multi node BBS under OS/2. It ran circles around DesqView (I think that's what it was) for multitasking.

    That plus massive drive compression for message files allowed me to squeeze the most out of my 40MB HDD. (More than double, if I remember right.)

    I was most unhappy when OS/2 v4 came out and required a mouse! But my keyboarding skills still work to this day, as MS basically copied everything and never changed them.
    Reply