From: "Digest" To: "OS/2GenAu Digest" Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 01:00:00 +1100 (EDT) Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 200 Reply-To: Date:- 05 November 2001 Please reply to ianatos2site dot com to post to the list. The posting problem will be fixed in November, this only affects people on the digest list. 1================================================ Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 11:04:08 +1100 From: Ed Durrant Subject: [os2genau] OS/2 State of Play I have just posted the text below on SlashDot in response to a query as to what has happenned to OS/2 - I thought this summary may also be of interest to members of this group: Although without any great fanfare, except in OS/2 circles, there have been several upgrades to the OS/2 Warp OS in the last 6 months. The first was from BigBlue (IBM) in the form of OS/2 Warp 4 Convienence Pack 1. This is a "round-up" of fixpacks, new hardware drivers (including USB and DVD) and a few new utilities. This is what I am presently running. CP2 is due out in the next 6 weeks and it will include further options that otherwise the user would need to download and install themselves, such as a new IBM Browser based on the NETscape / Mozilla 6 code. These Convienience packs, dont change the look and feel of OS/2's WPS. The release in the last few weeks of eCommstation from Serenity Systems (an American IBM Business partner) certainly does change the look of OS/2. eCommstation is based on the IBM Convienience pack base but has several third party (commercial / shareware & freeware) packages integrated into it. Some consider this to be the answer to Windows XP's desktop look. There is more OS/2 application software available today than ever before! Wordprocessors: Lotus have currently V 1.6 of their smartsuite available (this is the equivalent of the Millenium edition on the Windows platform) and are about to release version 1.7, with V 1.8 rumoured to be in development also. Sun's Star Office V5 is a (IMHO) better office package than Microsoft Office or Lotus Smartsuite and its Freeware. Unfortunately Sun are not going to release V6 for OS/2 however it is reported that the WIN32 version works well via ODIN (see below). Browsers: Netscape 4.61 is still doing good service. Opera have released a beta of their OS/2 version of "the fastest browser on the planet", however Java does not work yet. A fully functional version is expected to be released very soon. This browser can "emulate" IE to sites that refuse to work with anything else! IBM have released their new Browser and will be updating it. If has full Java 2 support and has had some speed improvements over the freeware version. Mozilla/2 or Warpzilla are two names for the freeware version of the Netscape 6 browser. At present this browser only supports JAVA 1.1 however as new releases come out of this almost every day, I would expect this also to support JAVA 2 very soon. CD-Burning: As well as the commercial RSJ product, the freeware CDRecord has advanced to a point where it is reliable and works well with all recent CD-R / RW drives IDE or SCSI. Scanning: HP scanners have always been well supported under OS/2 however through another freeware application SANE/2 many many more scanners are also supported. At present the scanner still needs to be SCSI. Some people have claimed success with some makes of parrallel port scanners but no support is yet available for USB attached scanners, but I can't belive this will stay so for much longer now that IBM has extended the USB support in OS/2 to cover the OHCI standard as well as the UHCI one. Windows 32 Bit application support: I guess I saved the best 'til last! If you can't find a native OS/2 application you may be able to run the WIN32 version of a product under OS/2 now thanks to one of two applications. The first has been in development for siome time, getting better and better with every release - this is ODIN (previously know as WIN32-OS2). This "interpretor" takes Windows binary executable code and converts it to OS/2 executable code "on-the-fly" amending calls to apis to address either OS/2's own APIs or those supported by code within ODIN. Although this method obviously slows down the execution of the WIN32 code, it often isn't that much after initial loading (where the code is converted from Win32 to OS/2). What runs is native OS/2 code ! Examples of aplications that run well via ODIN are Lotus Notes V5, Star Office 6, Real Player V8 and many, many small Windows utilities like WinZip. The second WIN32 under OS/2 option was only announced a couple of weeks ago. The Connectix Virtual PC is going to be extended to support the running of OS/2 under Windows and Windows under OS/2. In this case a full version of Windows will need to be purchased/licensed (this is not needed with ODIN). Beta versions of the Virtual-PC code along with lots of the applications and code described above will be on show at Warpstock Europe this month. Checkout http: //www.warpstock.de for details. As has been so often said, If OS/2 is dead, someone ought to tell the 70% of Finanicial institutions and many military, govermental and Nuclear Power companies around the world that rely on it for it stability and performance ! Cheers/2 Ed Durrant 2============================================== From: Subject: [os2genau] eCS Install Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 13:44:43 -1000 I tried one last time to install ecs I reinstalled Warp 4 to a logical partition and moved my applications to the c: primary partition. And so had a primary partition for w98 and a primary C: HPFS for OS/2. OS/2 is installed on E: which is a logical partition and logical partition F: was empty and made bootable for ecs. But ecs aparently can not be installed to a logical drive. The install program will only list bootable primary partitions. Even though LVM shows partitions e: and f: as bootable, when returning to the installation, they do not appear in the list of bootable partitions. Maybe over Christmas I will try and install the Convenience pack version, or should I say the ecs version of the Convenience Pack. Regards Dennis. 3============================================== Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 15:48:20 +1100 From: Ed Durrant Subject: Re: [os2genau] eCS Install Something isn't right - I managed to install to G: (a logical partition). Are you running on an LVM machine ? As opposed to one with partitions set up through FDISK ?? If not, this could be where you problem lays. The BEST option when testing eCS (or any new OS version for that matter) is to install on a completely new machine or at least swop your harddrive in your system to a new (un-partitioned) one, so that there can be no conflicts. As documented previously on this list, I had all sorts of problems installing the current eCS release onto my existing system, and I think they also were related to with what the drive was partitioned. IF YOU HAVE A COMPLETE BACKUP of your system, you could, from Warp 4 or Windows, delete a partition (ie it becomes freespace) and then boot the eCS install and take the advanced path and create the partition as part of the install process. This route will howver, probably change the way your Drive is partitioned from FDISK to LVM. This doesn't always go smoothly - hence the point about having a FULL backup of your system/apps/data. Cheers/2 Ed. djnatpeninsula.hotkey dot net dot au wrote: > I tried one last time to install ecs > I reinstalled Warp 4 to a logical partition and moved my applications to > the c: primary partition. > And so had a primary partition for w98 and a primary C: HPFS for OS/2. > OS/2 is installed on E: which is a logical partition and logical > partition F: was empty and made bootable for ecs. > But ecs aparently can not be installed to a logical drive. The install > program will only list bootable primary partitions. > Even though LVM shows partitions e: and f: as bootable, when returning > to the installation, they do not appear in the list of bootable > partitions. > Maybe over Christmas I will try and install the Convenience pack > version, or should I say the ecs version of the Convenience Pack. > > Regards > Dennis. > 4============================================== Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 17:49:53 +1000 From: Jim Boyle Subject: Re: [os2genau] eCS Install ... on a logical partition I'm running now on eCS installed on my F: logical partition. No Problems. If I remember rightly, I had a running Warp 4 Convenience pack, original WARP4 on C: plus W95 C: (rarely used) and just created the new logical partition with LVM and performed install 'as per the book'. I did have a problem that the video hardware wasn't recognised correctly (Thinkpad 770) so I just installed VGA default during installation and then upgraded to Scitech display doctor after eCS installation was finished. No issues arose, so discount any suggestion that eCS cannot be installed on an LP. Question raised by Ed Durrant is pertinent. If you have you used Warp FDISK or FDISKPM to establish the partition, you may need to tell LVM about it by using CREATE VOLUME function of LVM. You'll find details in the HELP for LVM or LVMGUI. Jim Boyle jimboyleatoptushome dot com dot au