As of Nov 29, 2000, here are a list of known issues with the eCS Preview:


When doing a CD boot, after the IBM506S driver finishes displaying the drive configurations, the next few lines crawls along on some machines. (pre 10/7/00)

With these machines, if we turn off the /V option with the IBM506S.ADD driver, the problem goes away. However, we felt that it's important to leave the /V on - at least for the preview version.

Work around: Relax and have a cup of coffee or something. Go make a phone call.

After the last phase of the installation, upon reboot, you might end up with a black screen and nothing happens after that. (pre 10/7/00)

Work around: Simply hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot the computer.

Note: Appears to have been fixed in newer version of MCP (10/29/00)

In WiseMachine, when you first click on "Installed Applications", there is nothing under the "Applications" branch. (pre 10/7/00)

Work around: Right click on the "Applications" folder and do a refresh.

Note: Fixed (10/29/00)

Not every Rexx script under WiseMachine has been fully tested. (pre 10/7/00)

When you do a drag-n-drop deployment of an application, WiseMachine executes a Rexx script for that application. These scripts were adopted from the network version and has not been fully tested under a local non-diskless station.

Work around: If you have problem with certain application, be sure to go to our website at http://www.ecomstation.com and follow the link for more recent instructions.

Note: Over 2/3 has been tested (10/29/00)

WiseMachine is not WPS aware (pre 10/7/00)

The preview version of WiseMachine is not a SOM application. What that means is that if you moved an installed application from it's original location to a new location, WiseMachine is not aware of that automatically.

Work around: What you need to do is to bring up WiseMachine again, do a drag-n-drop to the new location, and uncheck the "Copy program to destination location" option, and do an Install. This would force WiseMachine to update all of it's record of that application. In the future, WiseMachine will be updated to include the ability to do this automatically.

WarpCenter Display (pre 10/7/00)

When you click on the Disk Space Monitor of the WarpCenter, if you have an unformatted drive, it screws up the WarpCenter display to the right of the disk space monitor.

Work around: remove unformatted drives from the Disk Space Monitor

BTW: WarpCenter still does not display the "Connections" properly when you click on the OS/2 Warp image on the left hand side. The entire network folder does not get displayed (same problem in Warp 4 - looks like it was never fixed).

CRC error with floppy causes a trap D if you ask eCS to retry (pre 10/7/00)

Work around: Don't select retry. Select stop.

pnpisa.snp hangs certain systems - particularly OEM notebooks (pre 10/7/00)

Work around: Copy SNDBLAST.SNP on top of PNPISA.SNP. If you're booting from CD, you will have to generate the diskettes and do that to the diskette.

flashpt.snp not found (pre 10/7/00)

Work around: Ignore the message

Note: This message no longer appear with later drop of the Conv Pak (10/29/00)

Object Desktop Installation program (pre 10/7/00) and Navigation problem (10/7/00)

You need to read http://www.stardock.com/support/os2/od/odbug20/sec1.htm before attempting to run the OD installation program.

The OD Navigation function does not work properly under eCS (and reportedly has not been working since certain Warp 4 fixpak). We will report this to Stardock and IBM.

Work around: None

Peer to peer doesn't remember userid password (10/7/00)

This is an old old bug. We will report that to IBM this time.

Work around: Put in USREID as the userid and PASSWORD as the password. Change the userid and password after installation.

Peer to peer service start troubles (10/18/00)

Peer services do NOT start automatically in eCS.

Work around:

Edit the IBMLAN.INI file, the line that now states:

wrkservices = ,MESSENGER

And change it to read:

wrkservices = MESSENGER,PEER

Or ....

You can edit the STARTUP.CMD file, remove the line that reads:

NET START REQ

and replace it with:

NET START PEER

Connections doesn't start automatically (10/18/00)

The peer to peer CONNECTIONS defined do *NOT* start automatically on LOGON, regardless of what you specify in the CONNECTIONS settings notebook.

Work around: Include the appropriate NET USE commands in your startup.cmd.

Can't see other eCS stations (10/18/00)

Yet another issue is the ability of the eCS machine(s) to see each other, and themselves, on a LAN. This is evident in both the "Create Connections" and the command line "NET VIEW" commands.

Work around:

Edit the IBMLAN.INI file, and change the line that now reads:

srvhidden=yes

to:

srvhidden=no

Dragging a exe file onto the desktop does not create a program object automatically (10/7/00)

Unable to reproduce. Works fine on all systems we tested.

Can not install eCS on system with Tekram controller (10/22/00)

The Tekram driver runs in conflict with the sym8xx.add driver that's in the config.sys of the CD boot - causing various strange behaviour.

Workaround:

These are the steps you need to follow for a successful install:

When installing from diskette, got the message Loading, please wait.... and gone no further (10/22/00)

disk #0 was created with a wrong diskette label.

Workaround:

The label of disk #0 is wrong. You need to change it from VFDISK to DISK 0 by issuing the label command.

Note: Fixed. (10/29/00)

Various WiseMachine errors (10/23/00)

Workaround:

Download the file http://www.touchvoicecorp/ecs/wisemachine.zip to your \TVoice directory, and issue the command \TVoice\WiseProg\Unzip\Unzip \TVoice\WiseMachine.zip from the \TVoice directory.

I can not install without the Dani drivers (10/29/00)

Workaround:

After the screen where the slash and backslash are walking over the dots up and down (during the final installation phase from eCS diskette 2) when you see a screen with the text "If you booted from the eCS CD.... etc.....Press F3", press F3 twice to get the command prompt. Then insert eCS diskette 1 and type: "copy a:\DaniS506.add x:\os2\boot" and "exit" and "Enter" (for reboot).

If the above doesn't work, wait for the machine to reboot and when you see the eCS Prev1 boot blob on the upper left corner of your screen, hit ALT-F1 and then F2 to go to the command line. Perform the above copy and retboot the machine.

The config.sys file at the root of the installation partition x: includes the "basedev=DaniS506.add /a:2 /P:1F0 /a:3 /P:170" line from my eCS diskette 1 already. The installation of eComStation will now continue using the Dani-driver !

3Com ISA 3C509B card causes eCS to trap (10/29/00)

System traps during network install with the following message:

c0000005
DOSCALL1.DLL 0002:0000a459


Workaround:

This is a known bug. Most 3COM NIC drivers trap when used with a fast CPU (about 500MHz or more). Go to the 3COM website and grab the *very latest* drivers which will solve the problem for *some* NIC models (the 3C509 is amongst them AFAIK).

Trap 6 during install (10/25/00)

During installation got strange TRAP 006 errors.

Workaround:

Turn off second level cache during install.

OS/2 cannot operator your hard drive or floppy diskette (10/29/00)

That message is put out when the country.sys file cannot be read for some reason..

The following is according to Daniela Engert:

Let's assume the hardware and the drivers are working properly (all adapter channels and all attached devices are operated by an eCS driver). Then there are two common scenarios which cause the mentioned error:

1) The bootmanager "sees" partitions differently from OS2DASD.DMD and propagates a bad boot drive letter up to OS2KRNL. In most cases this is caused by unsupported partition types (B, C, and F) located in front of the OS/2 boot partition (in partition scan order). Note by Kim Cheung: this would happen, for instance, if you have a FAT32 partition in front of your eCS boot partition. VOICE (http://www.voice.org) has an article about handling FAT32 partition.

2) The adapter channels or units are ordered differently in BIOS and OS/2. This usually happens when more than one adapter is in the system (e.g. an on-board IDE controller plus a SCSI host adapter or an additional EIDE controller, either on-board or a PCI plug-in, more than one of them equipped with DASD units). In this case, their order of appearance in CONFIG.SYS is important! Most BIOSes have options to reorder the adapter channels, and the OS/2 drivers are required to match that (either by reordering the ADDs in CONFIG.SYS or - in rare cases - by some ADD options trickery). Please note: this is not an absolute requirement, but it is hard to get away with a non-matching adapter/unit order.

Unfortunately resolving such a problem requires major knowledge and can't be done automagically.

LVM can't access old boot manager partition (10/29/00)

There have been report that LVM fails to work with old boot manager partition left there from previous versions of OS/2. However, others had indicated that they have no problem.

Workaround:

If it affects you, remove the old boot manager and reinstall it under LVM.

TRAP E from in-joy and DIOP dialer (pre 10/31/00)

Workaround:

Try the new kernel from ftp://testcase.boulder.ibm.com/ps/fromibm/os2/w41023.zip and the testfix file from the in-joy web site (http://www.fx.dk/ibmfix/testfix.zip). It has been reported that these two fixes works for some but not for others.

You can also try the WSeB UNI kernel at ftp://testcase.boulder.ibm.com/ps/fromibm/os2/uni1023.zip.

NOTE: Try these kernel ONLY if you are experiencing trouble

Newer JFS version (pre 10/31/00)

There is a newer JFS version we have been told that ftp://testcase.boulder.ibm.com/ps/fromibm/os2/jfs1009.zip is a good fix to have and that ftp://testcase.boulder.ibm.com/ps/fromibm/os2/jfs_miss.zip has some missing jfs files.

I can't install eCS pass 1024 cylinders (pre 10/31/00)

Depends on your hardware. If you have a new bios that understands Int13 extensions, than you can install past the first 1024 cylinders. By and large, old Pentiums don't have this, btw.

Depending on your hardware, this can mean 512 MB, 1 GB, or 8 GB. With LBA, you can boot from up to 8 GB. This does include most pentium class systems. With 486s and earlier, you're likely to be restricted to 512 MB or 1 GB, depending.

Note that this isn't a CPU restriction; it's a restriction due to the BIOS. For example, a new BIOS for a mainboard may allow a board that can only boot from 8 GB or less to suddenly allow booting from anywhere on a large hard drive.

Can't install eCS to certain partitions (11/03/00)

I created a partition on my secondary master IDE drive and tried to install eCS to that partition. The installation seems to go perfectly until I remove the diskette ans reboot, I get the message, "operating system missing, system halted." If I reboot I get my boot manager choices from before thew installation attempt. It is as though LVM changes made in the install don't "stick."

Workaround:

You need to replace the Warp 4 boot manager you are using with the one created by LVM. LVM has that menu item - use that, and then the new one will fit in and allow the greater selection of partitions to install on.

1608 error during network install (11/03/00)

This is a long standing issue dating as far back as Warp 3. Some NIC cards don't like to be poked by the MPTS sniffer. Warp Server install used to have a /NS option to deal with this but that option is not available with eCS.

Workaround:

Unplug the NIC card from your computer during install and reinsert it afterwords.

Unpack error when installing SmartSuite 1.5 (11/29/00)

> >> EPFIE196: An error occurred while executing M:\INSTTEMP.EPF\EPFIUPK2.EXE O:\ss\english\WORDPRO\LWPWK6O.DL_ L:\LOTUSW4\WORDPRO.

Workaround:

1. Download http://service.indelible-blue.com/eCSbeta/LWPWK6O.EXE
2. run LWPWK6O.EXE to extract LWPWK6O.DL_
3. xcopy the smartsuite directory to a harddrive
example: XCOPY G:\SS C:\SS\ /S/E/V
4. Copy the extraced LWPWK6O.DL_ file into the
\ss\english\wordpro directory.
5. From the \ss directory, run INSTALL.CMD

SYS3175 when installing SmartSuite 1.5 (pre 11/29/00)

Installation stopped.

Workaround:

(a) Download the updated WiseMachine package at http://www.touchvoicecorp.com/ecs/wisemachine.zip

(b) Make sure WiseMacine is not running.

(c) From the \TVoice directory, unzip wisemachine.zip (with the overwrite and directory options if your unzip doesn't do it automatically). You get a new \TVoice\WiseProg\WiseManager\WiseMachineLocal.exe, \TVoice\WiseProg\WiseManager\SmartSuite\*.*, and \TVoice\WiseProg\DeskTop\CreateSmartSuite.cmd.

(d) Start up WiseMachine, Drag-n-drop SmartSuite to your destination drive. Modify the destination top-directory to say lotusw4

(e) Check the box "Use Unpack...." and click Yes at the warning message screen

(f) Insert the Lotus CD into your CD-ROM and point Source to one of the files in the \english directory of the CD (or whatever language directory there is).

(g) Click Install

This will unpack and transfer the ENTIRE Lotus CD to your harddrive.

(h) Close down WiseMachine.

(i) DON'T REBOOT THE MACHINE YET. Run the Lotus supplied install program. For my case, the install program doesn't crap out with SYS3175 any more.

I wasn't able to get rid of this step because I think Lotus is putting some registration and path information into the emunated Windows registry files and I don't have time to investigate more details there to be able to get around it with WiseMachine. I should be able to do so in the future.

(j) Restart WiseMachine again, go to Installed Applications, right click on SmartSuite and do a Create ICON.

Using this method, you should be able to get all but Organizer to work.