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From: "Digest" <ianatos2site dot com>
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Date:- 08 September 2001

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1================================================

Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 20:38:47 +0830
From: Leigh Bunting <vh_gdnatinternode.on dot net>
Subject: Re: [os2genau] HTTP downloads

Ian Manners wrote:

> I still havent figured out why but some people cannot use FTP
> to ftp.os2site dot com  (also on the bottom menu front page).
>
> Its not a windows thing either, most OS/2 and Win users get in
> ok, some dont.

Thanks for that Ian. I have managed to download and install ODIN via
ftp-ing the .wpi
file from your site.

How well it works, I shall find out later.

Cheers,
Leigh Bunting
Colonel Light Gardens
South Australia
Find out more about Col. Light Gdns. here -
http://www.chariot dot net dot au/~pknight/clghs/

2==============================================

Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 19:18:07 +0830
From: Leigh Bunting <vh_gdnatinternode.on dot net>
Subject: Re: [os2genau] Game Hidden in Star Office !

Ed Durrant wrote:

> There is a game hidden in the Star Office  spreadsheet.

Nothing happened in my version 5.1 PE

Leigh Bunting
Colonel Light Gardens
South Australia
Find out more about Col. Light Gdns. here -
http://www.chariot dot net dot au/~pknight/clghs/

3==============================================

From: "John Angelico" <talldadatkepl dot com dot au>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 22:51:28 +0800 (WST)
Subject: [os2genau] OS/2 SIG Report August meeting


Melbourne PC SIG Meeting Report
Report Date: 7 Sep 2001  (900 words)
Meeting Date: 28 August 2001
Report by: John Angelico (03) 9544 8792

There was movement in the SIG room, for the word had passed around
that ... eCS was loose!
Yes, members attending our August meeting were mostly seated by 6:30
starting time, reflecting the intense interest in our main topic.
Eventually 22 members and guests were present.

Latest Headlines
Finally eCS has been released in Australia, after considerable delay
- though by no means the fault of Orion Solutions. Most people were
receiving their copies by post in the week before the meeting. There
was quite a bit of discussion on various factors associated with eCS
- price, relationship to IBMs Convenience Paks, development etc. We
announced that an InstallFest would be scheduled for a Saturday in
late September, subject to people (like Mark from Orion Solutions)
being available.

Basic OS/2
Continuing my series on the "bread & butter" topics of OS/2 for those
who wanted to discuss those seemingly simple things that can trip us
up in the use of our favourite platform. I covered areas such as
Windows support, standard OS/2 utilities (Seek & Scan Tool, the
Productivity folder), Customising various functions (eg clock, mouse,
keyboard settings for disabled use etc) and Palettes (Launchpad,
WarpCenter, Fonts, Colours, Sounds).

eCS - One Way To Do It
After our break, I resumed with a brief summary of how I had
installed eCS on one of my desktop machines.

Hardware: Cyrix P166 CPU, 64Mb RAM, 1 IDE hard drive, Symbios SCSI
controller, 2 SCSI hard drives, SCSI Fujitsu Magnetic-Optical drive,
Tseng ET-6000 video card with 2Mb VRAM, Banksia internal fax/modem,
Realtek 10Base-T network card, and HP 6L laser printer. Not the most
up to date rig, that's for sure!

I had many partitions (C to H) and some odd hardware, so I prepared
with plenty of reading both online and offline. I arranged to collect
my Registration Key file before the install, and left it in a file on
a MO cartridge (not a good move). 

My plan was to reformat the boot partition and do a clean install as
recommended by Serenity Systems and Orion Solutions. I also had some
instabilities in my existing setup (five years since a clean install,
if I recall) which I did not want to carry forward. I therefore made
sure I had a system backup and that my laptop was close by and still
capable of a good Internet connection should I get desparate for
online assistance.

My main concerns which almost led me to a panic revolved around the
new Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and the compatibility volumes I
needed to create. Therefore I explained to the SIG the understanding
I had reached regarding how Volumes relate to Partitions. eCS and the
new OS/2 use the LVM because they ONLY recognise Volumes for the
storage of files (ie. no longer does the system software deal with
partitions). In combination with the new Journaling File System, this
allows for easily extensible volumes in the future.  

Initially, to ensure we retain backward compatibility for all users,
LVM allows us to identify a partition (old parlance) with a
Compatibility Volume (new parlance), so that all our existing files
of data and programs can be seen by eCS without a complete backup and
restore. Compatibility Volumes are also essential in a multi-OS
machine, to permit continued use of those partitions by their own
OSs. This topic generated considerable discussion and improved
understanding by all present.

Thus, in eCS terms we may have a Boot Manager Volume (usually
hidden), a Bootable Volume (for the system to boot from; not a
Compatibility Volume), a non-bootable Compatibility Volume for other
OSs and existing files and a non-bootable Volume (not compatible, but
extensible with the Journaling File System).
 
So far, with limited use of LVM, I understand it to be something like
a combination of Partition Magic and the old CheckDisk program. We
recommend for now that it be run from the command line rather than
the GUI.

By choice, I elected to set up my new eCS system by re-creating all
my objects manually, since I wanted to make substantial changes to my
configuration. Most OS/2 users would want to at least look at the Add
Programs utility in the System Setup folder before doing it the long
way, as I did.

I described some of the traumas I endured because of my haste, and
pointed out how these might have been minimised with a little extra
care. Most of my applications only required new program objects and
associations with their working files. Some required registration
codes, and a few I needed to reinstall because the installer created
associations and object classes in the system INI files. 

At this stage only two Windows programs don't function because of
some missing Windows DLLs. One is the MS-WordViewer which I have
replaced with Lotus Smartsuite in any case. The other is Crystal
Reports v6 because I can't successfully reinstall from original
media. 

Official closing time of 9:30pm advanced upon us rapidly so to
summarise, I did it the hard way but I knew that before I started.
Even with a few hasty decisions, I was able to get myself back into
production within 2 working days of what amounts to open heart
surgery on my system.
  
--End of Report--


Best regards
John Angelico
OS/2 SIG
talldadatmelbpc dot org dot au or talldadatkepl dot com dot au
--------------------------------------------

PMTagline v1.50 - Copyright, 1996-1997, Stephen Berg and John Angelico
.... eCS: too powerful to be Windows, too easy to be Unix.
