Author Topic: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions  (Read 113297 times)

melf

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #60 on: March 31, 2013, 09:07:43 pm »
Just a report on split folders. I just discovered that my folders no longer open in split view. I haven't made anything intentionally, so I do not know why this has happened. But it suggests that the setting should be "easy" to change globally.

Pete

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #61 on: March 31, 2013, 10:14:31 pm »
Hi All

Subtitle: Printers bitch and Printing problem resolved

During eCS2.2 beta install I decided to not install cups - I already have it installed and working and planned to simply hook up my newly created eCS 2.2 printer object to this existing cups installation.

Of course, I soon discovered, probably as a result of not installing cups, that my eCS2.2 install does not have the cups OS/2 bits necessary to hook up to the existing cups installation.

However, the eCS2.2 installation does contain all the old printer drivers that anyone could possibly not need.

This seems wrong to me.

I think the ecups OS/2 bits - ecups.drv, cups.pdr, cupslpr.exe and associated documentation should have been installed.


I found the wpi files containing ecups.drv and cups.pdr but could not find cupslpr.exe anywhere on the dvd. Is it simply missing? - or is it created somehow by the CUPS Wizard? Looking at the docs it seems that is the case.

I had a look at CUPS Wizard hoping that it would help but it seems to be designed to create both cups and eCS printers at the same time. That is something that I do not want to do as I already have a working cups printer.

So, I copied cupslpr.exe from my eCS2.1 installation.

Having created an eCS printer from the ecups.drv package and hooked it up to the cups.pdr port I find that I cannot print.

Printing from an application results in a print job in the os/2 printer queue; in this case \var\SPOOL\CanonPIX contains *.SHD and *.SPL files but they do not get to the cups spooler.

OpenOffice gives an error message when the 1st print job fails "Error during spooling to cups server". I checked localhost is set in HOSTS and tcpip configuration has Use host list first checked. I changed the cups.pdr cups server from localhost to 127.0.0.1 but that makes no difference.

I've obviously got something wrong, somewhere...

I compared the various gcc*.dll and libc*.dll files in H:\ecs\dll (eCS2.2 install) and L:\ecs\dll (eCS2.1 install with working os/2 cups printer).

I discovered 1 difference: L:\ecs\dll contains libc064x.dll

I was not sure whether libc064x.dll would make a difference but I copied it to H:\ecs\dll and repeated my print test from OpenOffice (1.1.5). Success!!!


As libc064x.dll does not get installed by eCS and does not seem to be part of the cups packages installed with eCS I can only guess that the port created by the CUPS Wizard does not need libc064x.dll


I hope the above is useful to anyone struggling to get an existing cups setup working with an eCS2.2 printer.


Regards

Pete

Davorin

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #62 on: March 31, 2013, 10:47:30 pm »
I installed ECS 2.2 on one partition and left an installation of 2.0 on another one.
When I booted into 2.0 later, all the drives that were opened under 2.2 would open in icon view mode and folders couldn't be opened by double clicking on them.
The view mode can be changed from the drive's properties menu while the folder settings can be changed under System setup - Workplace Shell.

After opening the drives in Split View mode, the contents of the folder in the right pane are sorted into columns.
Horizontal scrolling is necessary to view the entire contents. It would be convinient if the scroll wheel could be used to horizontally scroll through the contents.


melf

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #63 on: April 01, 2013, 11:46:37 am »
Just a report on split folders. I just discovered that my folders no longer open in split view. I haven't made anything intentionally, so I do not know why this has happened. But it suggests that the setting should be "easy" to change globally.

Quoting myself, this is kind of mysterious. Except for the above mentioned, I discovered another change, namely that some programs now minimize to desktop, in spite of my setting in workplace shell, that it should minimize to viewer. Seems as most do it, eg, FF, OO, Maul, VPC and more. So far only PMView and DVD Toys does not.

It also seems as folders in my D drive opens in icon mode, while only folders on C drive opens in split view. Confusing!

Holger Schuett

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #64 on: April 01, 2013, 11:54:15 am »
Quote
In the eCS 2.2 installer, it is obvious that the USB problems could have been averted, and the Dani driver problem probably could have been averted, without anybody actually having to spend an hour to install on a machine that might be affected, then spending another hour to try to figure out what is wrong. I expect that other problems may have been caught too.

I really believe Doug is right about this, and I must admit I am getting quite annoyed with the beta right now: I managed to install finally on my R52. I used the Ibm1s506.add and the *flt in the beginning and had to switch to the daniatap.flt after part 1 of the installation.
But: no nic and no wireless after finishing the installation. For the nic I can choose either the original Broadcom dirver or a genmac, the wireless is supported by genmac, I never had an issue there with ecs2.1.
Now I was able to get as far as the nic and the wireless are listed while booting and seem to be installed but nothing works after boot is finished.
Then I found out that apm no longer works. Just to explain, usually I use ecs2.1 on this system with apm working like a charm, suspend resume, everything works great.
So when I decided to give the 2.2beta another try I chose the legacy mode for installation, just like I have done many times before with ecs2.1.Ok, so this is a beta and I really am willing to send a bug report concerning apm, but: first I have to overcome the dani.problem, then I find myself without a Nic or wireless working to find out that apm does not work having spent several hours with an installation which should be no problem at all.
Why has the way the Nics or the wireless are installed been changed? Ok the new interface for the network installation (naps) looks good, but I would rather appreciate if it would work. I can not get rid of the feeling, that the focus has been only on apic working and all other issues have been neglected and that there are problems now due to this, that never occured before

Alex Taylor

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #65 on: April 01, 2013, 03:44:27 pm »
Please note: we have discovered that GenMAC is failing to install properly, which explains most if not all of the networking problems people have experienced after installation. 

This is one of those weird breakages that slipped through into the beta due to a flukish circumstance that managed to circumvent all our testing.  This also explained why I was for so long unable to reproduce the problem: internal builds do not have it.  It's the build process for the final uploaded ISO release itself that caused the failure in GenMAC. 

At any rate, it is likely that anyone who has non-functional networking following the install has been hit by this problem.  The solution is to reinstall \CID\SERVER\ECSPKG\GENMAC2.WPI from the installation DVD.  (It may be necessary to then reconfigure the NIC(s) using NAPS or MPTS.)

I would like to reiterate: these problems are not caused by the new configuration GUI.  However, they have exposed some limitations in the new GUI w.r.t parsing a malformed or corrupted configuration. An updated version which addresses this will be provided in the next release.

Holger Schuett

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #66 on: April 01, 2013, 05:28:54 pm »
Sorry Alex if this sounded like I wanted to blame the new GUI for everything, this was not my intention. I really appreciate that there are people working on ecs. Only this time it was quite frustrating trying to install, inspite of this being a beta version.
By the way: I did reinstall the genmac.wpi, but not the one from the dvd but one I had downlaoded from netlabs, is there a difference?

Doug Bissett

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #67 on: April 01, 2013, 06:08:42 pm »
Quote
Please note: we have discovered that GenMAC is failing to install properly, which explains most if not all of the networking problems people have experienced after installation. 

Well, that is not the only network problem that exists. It is also not the most serious.

WARNING: If you install using the Multimac r8169 driver, supplied with eCS 2.2, it may disable the interface on your NIC. The symptom is exactly the same as if you had pulled the cable. The BAD part is, that the interface will not enable again (even in windows), until you remove ALL power from the NIC. On laptops, that usually means power off, pull the plug, and remove the main battery. On desktops, it means power off, and pull the plug. After a minute, or so, turn it all back on, and it should work again until you try the bad driver again. Then you start over.

Apparently, this does not affect all Realtek NICS, but I have at least two of them that have the problem, and I know of one other case where it has happened..

Many users are going to have the problem, and assume that eCS 2.2 has killed their NIC. At the same time, they will not be able to get on the internet to find out how to recover from the problem.

This problem existed before eCS 2.2 was released, and David A. (at least) knew about it. That driver (along with a few others) never should have made it into the eCS 2.2 beta.

Roderick Klein

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #68 on: April 01, 2013, 10:51:20 pm »
Quote
In the eCS 2.2 installer, it is obvious that the USB problems could have been averted, and the Dani driver problem probably could have been averted, without anybody actually having to spend an hour to install on a machine that might be affected, then spending another hour to try to figure out what is wrong. I expect that other problems may have been caught too.

I really believe Doug is right about this, and I must admit I am getting quite annoyed with the beta right now: I managed to install finally on my R52. I used the Ibm1s506.add and the *flt in the beginning and had to switch to the daniatap.flt after part 1 of the installation.
But: no nic and no wireless after finishing the installation. For the nic I can choose either the original Broadcom dirver or a genmac, the wireless is supported by genmac, I never had an issue there with ecs2.1.
Now I was able to get as far as the nic and the wireless are listed while booting and seem to be installed but nothing works after boot is finished.
Then I found out that apm no longer works. Just to explain, usually I use ecs2.1 on this system with apm working like a charm, suspend resume, everything works great.
So when I decided to give the 2.2beta another try I chose the legacy mode for installation, just like I have done many times before with ecs2.1.Ok, so this is a beta and I really am willing to send a bug report concerning apm, but: first I have to overcome the dani.problem, then I find myself without a Nic or wireless working to find out that apm does not work having spent several hours with an installation which should be no problem at all.
Why has the way the Nics or the wireless are installed been changed? Ok the new interface for the network installation (naps) looks good, but I would rather appreciate if it would work. I can not get rid of the feeling, that the focus has been only on apic working and all other issues have been neglected and that there are problems now due to this, that never occured before

The feeling there has been to much focus on ACPI is not true. And on that statement you have to believe me on my word :-)

As for the USB drivers. The beta was not released of eCS 2.2 until all issue's where traced and fixed on our equipment. We had 1 system that would hang on the USB drivers after the last device driver was loaded, this delayed the beta release with 3 days. Just like ACPI the USB drivers have been tested on very broad range of systems. Also the USB drivers shipped in eCS 2.2 beta are not 100% the same compared to Lars Erdmann his drivers. The drivers had been slightly modified by David and tested on his 10 systems at home.  Also all systems in the Mensys office where used to test the USB drivers and to test booting from USB CD ROM (another 30 systems or so). And all these systems are of different brands and chip sets BIOS makes etc.

Just like other components, like ACPI and Panorama the DANIS506.ADD driver has received internal and beta testing by other people. It has just not been tossed in the eCS 2.2 beta.


As for the suspend/ resume with r51 and APM. This was discussed on os2.org. The suggestion was raised to load the preboot menu by default in  "legacy mode"(with APM installed by default). But this would make older laptops work with suspend/resume. But some laptops like T61 crash on APM.SYS just loading. Besides that with eCS 2.1 the default install mode would be "modern hardware safe mode". APM.SYS is not installed by default.

Alex discussed where the Genmac problem came from. Now back to working away the bugs and replying.

Roderick Klein
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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #69 on: April 01, 2013, 11:31:52 pm »
Quote
Please note: we have discovered that GenMAC is failing to install properly, which explains most if not all of the networking problems people have experienced after installation. 

Well, that is not the only network problem that exists. It is also not the most serious.

WARNING: If you install using the Multimac r8169 driver, supplied with eCS 2.2, it may disable the interface on your NIC. The symptom is exactly the same as if you had pulled the cable. The BAD part is, that the interface will not enable again (even in windows), until you remove ALL power from the NIC. On laptops, that usually means power off, pull the plug, and remove the main battery. On desktops, it means power off, and pull the plug. After a minute, or so, turn it all back on, and it should work again until you try the bad driver again. Then you start over.

Apparently, this does not affect all Realtek NICS, but I have at least two of them that have the problem, and I know of one other case where it has happened..

Many users are going to have the problem, and assume that eCS 2.2 has killed their NIC. At the same time, they will not be able to get on the internet to find out how to recover from the problem.

This problem existed before eCS 2.2 was released, and David A. (at least) knew about it. That driver (along with a few others) never should have made it into the eCS 2.2 beta.

Sadly the Realtek dossier is far from simple.  And eCS 2.1 also had the same issue!
That the old driver from 2.1 works for you has serious issue's and would cause kernel traps on other systems.

While these details may be boring to you as users its kind of Realtek its fault. Sounds nasty ?
The same problem (to some extend even happens in some cases). David told me this problem also is referenced in the Linux Realtek sources he ports to eCS
Realtek makes a complete and utter total mess of its cipset and PCI id's it uses.
In other words some chip ID's have so many revisions its a night mare to trace the changes.

On Windows I also had one time. Installed and yes the NIC was dead. Downloading the Realtek driver from realtek.com.tw fixed the problem.
We still need to further improve this driver. But looking for example how easy it was to port the e1000e.os2 and Nvidia driver  (also updated it).
Does 2 NIC drivers have no issue's.

Roderick Klein
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Doug Bissett

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #70 on: April 02, 2013, 08:00:54 am »
Quote
s for the USB drivers. The beta was not released of eCS 2.2 until all issue's where traced and fixed on our equipment. We had 1 system that would hang on the USB drivers after the last device driver was loaded, this delayed the beta release with 3 days. Just like ACPI the USB drivers have been tested on very broad range of systems. Also the USB drivers shipped in eCS 2.2 beta are not 100% the same compared to Lars Erdmann his drivers. The drivers had been slightly modified by David and tested on his 10 systems at home.  Also all systems in the Mensys office where used to test the USB drivers and to test booting from USB CD ROM (another 30 systems or so). And all these systems are of different brands and chip sets BIOS makes etc.

I hate to have to point this out, but Lars knew about the problem with USBEHCD.SYS, days before the release of eCS 2.2 beta. Obviously, somebody decided to ignore the situation. Whether the beta should have been delayed, yet again, or released with the far more stable 186 version of the USB drivers, is a decision that needs to be made. It is true, that a few people had problems with version 186, but they were far fewer than those who had trouble with the 189 version. Then, if you made other changes, that were basically untested by those who did have known problems, I don't feel sorry for you at all. You deserve all of the flack that you are going to get.  I do feel sorry that eCS users don't have a good product to test.

Quote
Sadly the Realtek dossier is far from simple.  And eCS 2.1 also had the same issue!
That the old driver from 2.1 works for you has serious issue's and would cause kernel traps on other systems.

Fair enough, but that is no excuse for releasing a driver that was known, days before release, to have a very serious problem on some systems. I have two systems with different Realtek NICs, and both of them experienced the problem where the interface was disabled, until I did a full power off to get them reset. FWIW, the only driver that works with the Realtek 8168 in my Lenovo ThinkPad L530, is the old RTGNDA driver, which is not included with eCS 2.2. It is not perfect, but working most of the time, is a lot better than not working at all, and causing serious problems that the average user would have no idea what to do about.

In fact, I haven't got around to checking the on board Realtek 8168, that died the first time I tried the old r8110 driver (it was new at the time). The symptoms were exactly the same. It had been working with the GENMAC driver before that (with a few problems). It may actually work if I enable it, and load a good driver in it.

Quote
Realtek makes a complete and utter total mess of its cipset and PCI id's it uses.

I realized that a couple of years ago, yet you recently recommended Realtek NICs. When I got the L530, I found no place where they mentioned the wired NIC chipset. I specifically got an Intel WiFi, looking forward to support from Multimac. If I had realized it had a Realtek wired NIC, I probably would not have got it. My older T510 has an Intel wired NIC, and a Realtek WiFi, which is also waiting for Multimac. I guess I will get the T510 repaired (something died in the power control circuits), and switch the Intel WiFi with the Realtek one. The L530 has other problems, so it might as well be totally useless, and live in the windows world.

FWIW, The WiFi in the L530 is an Intel 8086:0891. I can get GENMAC to load three windows drivers, and they all seem to work, but I can find no way to get the radio turned on (there is no physical switch). It acts exactly like a wired NIC with the cable disconnected. I can load the driver, assign an IP address with IFCONFIG, and I can PING it, but that is the end of the road. I think there are a number of other machines, with Intel WiFi NICs, that have the same problem.

Today, I also observed a very interesting phenomenon. I was doing some big file copies, using SAMBA client on the machine with a Realtek 8169 chipset, and the r8169 Multimac driver. It was doing a sustained data transfer at about 9,000 KB/s. At the other end was a SAMBA server running with an NVIDIA chipset, and the Multimac driver. I then started up an RSync data transfer, using the L530, with a Realtek 8168 chipset, and the RTGNDA driver. It was running happily at about 32,000 KB/s, to the same NVIDIA  chipset, which was happily handling about 41,000 KB/s data rate. This is, of course on a 1 GB network. Looking on the internet, it is suggested that a 1 GB network should be able to run near 60,000 KB/s. In fact, my antique IBM ThinkPad A22e, running an Intel 100 Mbs NIC, runs at  sustained speed of about 8,000 KB/s. There is a serious problem with the Realtek Multimac driver, which needs to be fixed, since it seems to be a popular brand with many manufacturers using it.

Roderick Klein

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #71 on: April 02, 2013, 11:02:23 pm »
But the driver we shipped for USB is based Lars his work and David made changes to the code and was extensively  tested on the systems we have access to.
It has also been tested in all equipment with USB mouse/keyboards and USB sticks. So it has just not been sling shotted out the door.

About the realtek driver is only things where that simple. The original DVD ISO that was released (with the broken USB drivers), from what I can tell from CVS log.
revision 1.3
date: 2013/03/25 19:52:03;  author: atr;  state: Exp;  lines: +188 -196
R8169 driver test build with improved DemoCD support
----------------------------
revision 1.2
date: 2012/11/25 02:39:06;  author: atr;  state: Exp;  lines: +204 -145
Latest Multimac drivers, latest PNGdesk.

Just after I did that CVS checkout for the first DVD ISO the driver from 2012 was still in the ISO. The original first eCS 2.2 ISO was build 2 PM (a few hours before Alex checked in the new driver!).
So it was not a last minute checkin. infact this driver has a fix to also load firmware files from CD for the demo CD.  As for the defect is the defect the same as with the previous driver that you opened the ticket ? Anyway if you want to talk about Q&A in overall amount of trouble report with all drivers this simply seems to be the best driver we could get out that was 0.2.2. build. That you got a much newer version was "bad" luck. Not a last minute fix.

As I explained the problem does not occur with all Linux distro's but its certainly true the Realtek NIC's are not the easiest to get working.  And don't take my word for it. The comment is (according to David) in the Linux sources (problems with realtek revisions).

If you could consider the this a beta or alpha ? Looking at the extremely complex overhaul and the amount of defects reported up until now. If you compare it with previous eCS versions.
Vast amount of bugs have been fixed and don't stick up. But this last statement is certainly vastly debatable :-)

Roderick Klein
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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #72 on: April 03, 2013, 01:09:42 am »
If you look at the overal list of drivers updated in eCS 2.2 its this.

ACPI.ADD large updates and bugs fixed.
APM.ADD /acpideamon same thing.

AMOUSE.SYS (suspend resume fixe)

IBMKBD.SYS (suspend/resume and SMP fix

UNIAUD16.SYS added ACPI suspend/resume
(no new chipset support currently).

e1000e.os2 mayor code updates and added suspend/resume support. Same thing is true for Intel

danis506.add also received fixes to fix suspend/resume issue's with ACPI.
It also received further updates and fixes to support new chipsets and fix an until now never reported +512 GB disc geometry bug.
The last bug was found by the tests performed at Mensys.

Panorama code has had mayor updates and gotten PAT/MTRR updates and wide screen enabler for Intel/ATI.
Fixes to the OS2AHCI driver.
The bootable JFS code has received a mayor clean and has a mini kind of cache system build in and the amount of disc I/O reads it needs todo
is reduced very far.  (this is used to read JFS before JFS.IFS is loaded).

New USBMOUSE and USB keyboard and USBHID.SYS driver.

Updated TCPIP32.DLL and DOSCALL1.DLL to fix SMP problems in the code.

Then the USB host controller UBSEHCD.SYS, USBUHCD.SYS and USBOHCD.SYS and USBD.SYS.

Looking compared to previous beta's of eCS and the amount of bugs we can filter get its down to basicly about 6 mayor bugs.

Thats the device driver portion of it. We include Cups, Java 6, Java RDP client. INI cleaner DMT.

I'm gladd with the bugs of course not. But I do hope its shown that eCS has receved mayor maintance to try and keep it much easier to run.
(Apart from the bugs we now have).

I want to post this list of device drivers, hope I did not forget any.

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eirik

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #73 on: April 03, 2013, 02:38:10 am »
Having followed the eCS 2.2 beta debate, but not installed eCS 2.2, my impression is that we are looking more at an alpha build.  If this release had been called an alpha build, people would not have had so high expectations that things were going to work "almost out of the box".  Many of the frustrations that people have voiced are because they expected more from a beta build.

OS/2 and its successor, eCS, have until now not been associated with the MicroSoft testing strategy -- let's release it, and see what happens.  Calling this release a beta gives those associations.  The way I read things, I will probably not install eCS 2.2 once the GA is released, but wait a bit to see if other issues are sorted out.  This loss in faith is bad for eCS and for the enthusiasm among eCS users.

Mensys should admit they were too fast this time, rename this release to an alpha, keep the tracking system to get more test reports for a month or so, then sort out reported problems and release a working beta.  Most users have up and running systems (otherwise they would not be users), and they are unlikely to install something they think is bound to fail. Please, restore our confidence by not overselling. Less confidence is the same as less customers.  Or to be in a positive mood: more confidence is more users.  And that is needed if eCS is to survive.

The vision behind the extensive eCS 2.2 work is excellent and needed if eCS is to run on modern hardware.  That type of customer confidence is also needed for survival.  But this confidence is based upon the first confidence that originates from promises being held.

Eirik

ivan

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Re: eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions
« Reply #74 on: April 03, 2013, 04:13:48 pm »
Just a couple of questions based on what I see here.

First, is the emphasis now for installing on notebooks?

Second, why is Intel video given a wide screen boost and not Nvidia?   Out of the several hundred machines we maintain for clients we have ONE with an Intel video - and it runs headless -  while the remainder are about 60% ATI and 40% Nvidia video based.  For those clients that want wide screen 1920x1200 (16/10) monitors we are scouring the second-hand sites and getting as many ATI PCIe cards as we can that are listed in the Snap readme.

As a supplementary question, did anyone ask what hardware support was actually required or is the support based on the hardware that a limited number of people have for testing?  If the later is the case, did anyone consider asking for volunteers to do testing - even if it was under an NDA - and if not why not?

I would love to be able to go to our clients and say with confidence that there is now available a version of OS/2 that will install on ANY computer they would like to purchase.