Author Topic: Warpstock 2019 - Presentations Wanted  (Read 4797 times)

Neil Waldhauer

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Warpstock 2019 - Presentations Wanted
« on: August 16, 2019, 10:25:56 pm »
I'm starting this thread to help bring both presenters and attendees to Warpstock 2019 in Orlando, FL

Feel free to reply to this and give your own suggestions.



Suggested Topics
These are the topics that have been requested for presentation in 2019. We'd like you help. If you prepare one of these presentations, you can four options for presentation.
  • come to Warpstock in Orlando and present
  • Present remotely using Skype
  • Pre-record a video to be shown at the meeting
  • have one of us make your presentation

Getting started with Qt development
It's easier than ever to set up a development system. This presentation shows how to get started with creating Qt programs. A demo of building one of the Qt sample apps is included.

VPN
There are many VPN services available for those who might need to use public WiFi or who have other reasons to want a VPN.  None that I've seen has an OS/2 client, although many work on Linux.  Is there a way to use a VPN service with OS/2 and if so, how could one do so?
I recall David asking me about VPN services which were OS/2 compatible a couple of years ago. He may use one (whether or not it came from my recommendation, I have no idea).
InJoy might be a possibility (IPSec). If they run SSL, then OpenVPN build which is publicly available (Hobbes) - as we know from our own building experience at WS 2008 - uses the half-functional TAP/TUN driver (where only TAP works), and is less than suitable. AFAIK, most of the third-party VPNs use SSL.
Having an OS/2, Windows, or Linux system available at home as a VPN endpoint and using InJoy's VPN would work without having to subscribe to a third party service. Of course, this requires a second system to be available, solid broadband, and perhaps a DDNS provider.
Maybe one of the Bitwise guys might like to touch on this. Yuri maintains the InJoy product for them, and is familiar with how it works across all platforms.
The main drawbacks to IPSec, of course, are the need for a dedicated port for the tunnel, and difficulties with NAT traversal in some situations, vs SSL, which travels over the standard 443 and traverses NATs quite well.

USB Cables and You
I've been through a multi-hour remote troubleshooting session with a client using several USB -> Parallel adapters for his invoice printer (Oki Microline 391) and label printer (Zebra). Today, it dawned on me that we have daisy-chained USB cables and the system board, now aging, may not be putting out the voltage it once did. There are length limits for USB cables described in the spec. Length, quality, type of connector, type of device, whether there is a hub in the middle (and its type), a gender changer, and finally whether the device is FS, HS, etc., all play a role in whether the signal will get from point A to point B. There are some interesting USB multimeters available, too, on the cheap.
We get tickets for ArcaOS where printers do not get signal ("but it worked with eCS! - before I moved the printer across the room..."). Too often, people take cable length and quality for granted, and we are relying more and more on USB-attached devices. The problem will get worse with USB 3, simply due to the higher bandwidths available and greater sensitivity to overall cable quality (noise level and impedance).

RPM/Yum
We could do a session on ANPM and yum and how to handle the unexpected, including the nuclear option (how to blow away an entire yum/rpm environment, even when libc and friends are already installed under \usr\lib, and reinstall the bootstrap), how to handle broken yum databases, error messages, empty package windows, broken repository URIs, other python fun...).

OS/2 Memory
Sometimes with modern programs, OS/2 runs short of shared memory, or has fragmentation issues. Discuss how this happens and how to avoid it.

Config.sys (This is now a Warpstock 2019 presentation)
Reviewing the order of execution of statements in Config.sys and the proper order of loading drivers. Explain briefly what each driver does. This presentation is intended to acquaint the less technical user with the software controlled by the Config.Sys file.

OS/2 Demos
Video Wizard (Moving from SNAP to Panorama and back again)
making a new printer work when no drivers are currently available

Meeting details
Warpstock 2019 will be held at the Country Inn & Suites, Orlando Airport, located at 5440 Forbes Place, Orlando, Florida 32812.
This year's event will begin Friday, November 8 and continue through Sunday, November 10
Warpstock 2019 home page: http://www.warpstock.org/staticpages/index.php?page=ws2019_home
More information on Warpstock available at: http://www.warpstock.org
« Last Edit: August 26, 2019, 03:43:50 am by Neil Waldhauer »
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