Author Topic: News from the front line  (Read 25050 times)

Joachim

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News from the front line
« on: July 06, 2015, 06:15:20 pm »
Since early 2015 I am working fulltime on eComStation for XEU.com. Since that time we have been doing a lot of stuff in the background, for example updating the chinese build of eComStation (largely based on the excellent work of Alex Taylor of course) and for some weeks I've now been cleaning up the bugtracker. Some bugs recently set to resolved include:

3077: Patched TPCIP32.DLL needs to installed to prevent crashes in Mozilla apps on SMP systems.
3511: New ACPI and VMware
3409: USB keyboard and mouse not working

These have been fixed mainly by integrating newer level of drivers in eComStation, which has been done earlier, but it's still worth mentioning there is progress. In the coming weeks we will continue to clean up the bugtracker and work towards the release of eComStation 2.2.

Best regards,
Joachim Benjamins

Pete

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2015, 08:13:17 pm »
Hi Joachim

Good to hear there is progress with eCS2.2 - I , amongst others, look forward to the release.


Regards

Pete

dbanet

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #2 on: July 06, 2015, 09:56:11 pm »
Please open the bug tracker for users without an eComStation license to watch the progress (so that one can see what he/she will pay for: support) and fill bug reports (you ain't no gonna reject free bug reports, are you? Any software company has got testers, which don't work for free).

I cannot think of any reasons not to do that.

dbanet

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2015, 10:04:21 pm »
Do you guys cooperate with Arca Noae? They make quite some good progress and have people working on hardware drivers employed.

Does XEU have anything to do with Mensys?

What is the general plan for OS/2? Are you gonna keep the same thing: packing a distro with updates from community and rarely updating hardware drivers? Or something worthful?



Don't really hope for answers. Companies dealing with OS/2 behave so strange with the community.

(neither can't see how's that "front line", assuming so little progress. The front line is at another place)
« Last Edit: July 06, 2015, 10:09:14 pm by Boris »

ivan

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #4 on: July 06, 2015, 11:40:42 pm »
Joachim said In the coming weeks we will continue to clean up the bugtracker and work towards the release of eComStation 2.2.

Is this like it was in 2013, then 2014 and now more than half way through 2015? 

Somehow I don't believe it will happen.  I would like to be proved wrong but past experience shows otherwise.

The items mentioned by Joachim are rather minor and have been addressed already by other people.  If they are the types of things on the bugtracker I can see why they will never open that to general view - it appears to be rather pathetic.

Now, if they were working on updated drivers to work with new hardware and updated SNAP Graphics, again to allow use with new graphic cards then it would indeed be news.  As it stands this 'announcement' is rather meaningless.
 
« Last Edit: July 06, 2015, 11:42:46 pm by ivan »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2015, 11:56:45 pm »
Hi

I agreed that XEU deserves the heat after two years of no real news and no single software release, but I also noticed a boycott campaign by someone calling OS/2 community members one by one to tell to do not help XEU at all.

At OS2World I'm not going to be in the middle of "commercial strategies" or "hatred revenges". I hope I can assist anybody that wants to help this community and give something back to the platform as open source, so we do not repeat the history we had with IBM.

I really hope that XEU get up on his feet and show us something.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #6 on: July 07, 2015, 08:32:47 am »
Now, if they were working on updated drivers to work with new hardware and updated SNAP Graphics, again to allow use with new graphic cards then it would indeed be news. 

I have got an SSS at Mensys (now XEU I guess) and one from Arca Noae. When I look at them in a impartial/neutral way:

- Arca Noae: All the latest available main drivers are at hand, changes and progress are reported

- Mensys/XEU: Allmost nothing happend during the last years, no reports, no progress

If I remember correctly what I have heard at Warpstock Europe and what is written at Arca Noae http://www.arcanoae.com/arca-noae-a-new-name-but-with-familiar-faces/ almost all "important" developers of drivers and system parts (A lot of the good software parts come from bitwise like Firefox, Java etc.) are in some way linked to Arca Noae.

As one can read from the changes of the 3.22.08 ACPI Readme David removed the checks that one need eCS to use this. So one can install it on Warp 4.51/2 i.e. (with latest free availiable kernel), so it seems to me that I am able to update my Warp 4.52 clone in a legal way and do personally do not have a need for eCS at all anymore.

I asked Joachim at Warpstock if it would be possible to say at least something about eCS - as it was a good chance to do so I thought - but I was not able to get any information. He said they would say something on Sunday but I already left on Saturday evening as I told him. I heard from another attendee that there has been something said when the micros have been turned off.

So it seems to me that there will be no eCS release (at least with the latest drivers availiable) as long as XEU does not have an agreement with Arca Noae or the Developers.

For me it would be interesting to know what kind of "License" one need to use the 106SMP kernel - is there a need to have an eCS license? Fortunately ACPI does work with Kernel 104SMP as well.

.. but I also noticed a boycott campaign by someone calling OS/2 community members one by one to tell to do not help XEU at all.

That really throws some light to some phonecalls I had, thanks for this information, Martin!






« Last Edit: July 07, 2015, 11:49:00 am by Sigurd Fastenrath »

Dave Yeo

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #7 on: July 07, 2015, 08:47:12 am »

For me it would be interesting to know what kind of "License" one need to use the 106SMP kernel - is there a need to have an eCS license? Fortunately ACPI does work with Kernel 104SMP as well.

That would be interesting to know, as well as its pedigree. Hearsay says it has been patched to fix issues with loading DLLs high. Has it also been patched to show 106SMP as well? And has IBM fixed anything since 2006?

Jan-Erik Lärka

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #8 on: July 07, 2015, 09:58:10 am »
We look forward to the new eCS v2.2 and I'm glad to hear that there is progress.

Regards,
//Jan-Erik

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #9 on: July 07, 2015, 09:32:26 pm »
And has IBM fixed anything since 2006?
The kernel 14.106 is a patched version of the last IBM kernel. It was done be Steve Levine, most likely initiated by Mensys.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2015, 02:55:38 am »
And has IBM fixed anything since 2006?
The kernel 14.106 is a patched version of the last IBM kernel. It was done be Steve Levine, most likely initiated by Mensys.

Andreas, do you have any evidence/information/link of that?

As far as I know version 14.106 was part of IBM's XR_C006 fixpack released around Feb of 2007.  This is the last one that I know that IBM coded for OS/2. I don't know if there is any other kind of kernel patch or release from that version. (beside OS/4 which is a different kind of project)

By the way, I tried to documented the last things released by IBM for Warp 4.52 on this wiki page, if I'm missing something please let me know.  And by the way, it is sad that I was never able to get my hands on the latest "APARs" patches that was not included on any fixpacks.

Regards
« Last Edit: July 08, 2015, 03:21:17 am by Martin Iturbide »
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Fahrvenugen

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2015, 03:27:11 am »
Hi

...but I also noticed a boycott campaign by someone calling OS/2 community members one by one to tell to do not help XEU at all.

Hi,

One thing that we all need to keep in mind is that regardless of the fact that 2.2 has been promised for several years and has not been released, we still need XEU around - if only for the fact that it is the only way to easily get new eCS / OS/2 licenses.  If a boycott were to take place then it is entirely possible that XEU's revenue on the product would drop to nothing, which could eventually lead to a the product being withdrawn.  For that reason, I can't see any benefit to such a campaign.

Without XEU, then there is no way to license a new copy of OS/2 / eCS (and I'm not talking about used ebay copies that you have to apply a bunch of fixes to)

« Last Edit: July 08, 2015, 03:30:29 am by Fahrvenugen »

Dave Yeo

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2015, 06:42:02 am »
And has IBM fixed anything since 2006?
The kernel 14.106 is a patched version of the last IBM kernel. It was done be Steve Levine, most likely initiated by Mensys.

Andreas, do you have any evidence/information/link of that?

As far as I know version 14.106 was part of IBM's XR_C006 fixpack released around Feb of 2007.  This is the last one that I know that IBM coded for OS/2. I don't know if there is any other kind of kernel patch or release from that version. (beside OS/4 which is a different kind of project)


XR_C006 was build level was 14.105, which I believe was shipped with eCS 2.1. and dated October 18, 2006, according to README.1ST The 14.106SMP kernel is only available on the 2.2 beta releases (at least I got it from 2.2b2).
Looking at README2, there are only 10 APARs fixed with XR_C006, and that includes a fix for a TRAP 0 when connecting a ZIP drive to a parallel port. Most of the others were important including support for 2TB drives.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #13 on: July 08, 2015, 03:06:15 pm »
XR_C006 was build level was 14.105, which I believe was shipped with eCS 2.1. and dated October 18, 2006, according to README.1ST The 14.106SMP kernel is only available on the 2.2 beta releases (at least I got it from 2.2b2).
Looking at README2, there are only 10 APARs fixed with XR_C006, and that includes a fix for a TRAP 0 when connecting a ZIP drive to a parallel port. Most of the others were important including support for 2TB drives.

Hi Dave.

I can confirm you, I have a VM OS/2 Warp 4.52 machine with XR_C006.
It has the 14.106W4 kernel (849283 bytes. Feb/13/2007 9:33am), checked with bldlevel.  I just checked it right now.

But I don't know where 14.106SMP comes from (IBM or Mensys). I don't have it installed.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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mike

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Re: News from the front line
« Reply #14 on: July 09, 2015, 11:22:09 pm »

.. but I also noticed a boycott campaign by someone calling OS/2 community members one by one to tell to do not help XEU at all.

That really throws some light to some phone calls I had, thanks for this information, Martin!

Interesting fact that people got mad to do something like this... unpaid people from the old company? In general people should decide on their  own. XEU was announced over a year now. Not much has happened since..  XEU needs new updates for eCS or they will just try to sell what they just have - the time will tell.