From: "Digest" <ianatos2site dot com>
To: "OS/2GenAu Digest" <deadmail>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 01:00:00 +1100 (EDT)
Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 200
Reply-To: <deadmail>

Date:- 05 November 2001

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

Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2001 11:04:08 +1100
From: Ed Durrant <edurrantatbigpond dot net dot au>
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: <djnatpeninsula.hotkey dot net dot au>
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 <edurrantatbigpond dot net dot au>
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 <jimboyleatoptushome dot com dot au>
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
