Author Topic: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!  (Read 7771 times)

axel

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Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« on: April 30, 2020, 01:14:06 am »
Hi OS2World,  I thought I'd join and see if I can broaden my skills a little further with an OS I used in 1995.  Wow.
Funny how things happen, I scored an AGP/Sempron PC complete the other day and whilst looking for something to boot on it came across an ECS 2.1 CD.  Insert ATI9000 AGP and an Intel Pro100 PCI and behold 1080p OS/2.  I'm keen to tinker with it and funny enough - I use Firefox and Thunderbird as core tools to do my job. This is interesting, I'll have a go.
I have been a Linux user (exclusively) since 2004 so have been self supporting as well as assisting other Linux users via forums for years.
From internet searching I'm finding the remaining community to be smaller than I thought.  Searching OS/2 issues in web searches is rather unfruitful. It looks like ArcOS/ECS users are likely supported by subscription based support services.  Is OS2World a good place to discuss user issues?  Where else?

Pete

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2020, 01:35:34 am »
Hi Axel

Welcome back to the weird and wonderful world of OS/2 and minor variations.

A lot of software ported from linux requires various ported libraries, lots of which are available in rpm packages.
As a linux user you probably have used yum/rpm to (un/)install software and will find a frontend to help with that here https://www.arcanoae.com/resources/downloadables/arca-noae-package-manager/

You may also find that eCS2.1 yum/rpm installation needs updating before looking at what other packages are available.

ArcaOS support is included in a purchase of ArcaOS.

General OS/2, eCS, ArcaOS support/discussion is mainly here with the occasional newsgroup post.


Regards

Pete



axel

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2020, 04:36:18 am »
Hi Pete,

Thanks for the reply.
Appreciate the link to the package manager.  I have read about it in my recent browsing.  It's hard to know what requires a subscription and what doesn't at this early stage for me.  As you can appreciate it's baby steps for me without too much commitment.  I will be playing with additional software after I have explored what eCS has built in already.
Indeed I have most experience with apt/deb primarily, along with yum as well in my CentOS admin days.
I can tell you working at the OS/2 command prompt is alarming for me after using BASH for 20 years!

I haven't found (yet) any guide or write up from an experienced user as to what they enable/disable, install/uninstall or need to configure for a new install. It looks like I'll be on my own there.  It's funny web searching anything OS/2/eCS/ArcaOS brings up dozens of "history of OS/2" articles as far as the eye can see...

I currently have a mouse button issue I'll post in another section.  It's a bit of a show stopper at this point!

Regards

Thomas M.

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2020, 11:12:52 am »
Hello Axel,

another Forum to ask questions (in german language) and search for information might be found here

https://www.os2.org/portal

Thomas

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2020, 03:11:54 pm »
Hi Axel. Welcome to OS2World.

Maybe you already know, we haven't hear from the eComStation guys (Mensys and XEU software) since 2016 (aprox). The latest and greatest OS/2 OEM version today is ArcaOS from Arca Noae which is actively updating the installer and doing their best for bugfixing the platform.  If you have the resources I recommend you getting ArcaOS to be able to access the latest drivers and support.

You are in the right place to ask away about ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation.

Welcome back.



Martin Iturbide
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David Graser

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2020, 04:09:29 pm »
You need a good file manager.  It makes things much easier to do.

https://ecsoft2.org/system/files/repository/fm2-3-24-0.wpi

A good place to get OS/2/eCS/ArcaOS software is

https://ecsoft2.org/popular

David

ivan

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2020, 07:47:49 pm »
Hi Axel,

What is your motherboard?  I have had several AMD Sempron based boards up to the Sempron 3850 APU on an ASRock AM1H-ITX which is now my standby unit.

The only problems I have had are with the new AMD Ryzen based boards because they don't have real USB 2 ports and we don't have USB 3 drivers.

axel

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2020, 08:58:12 am »
Hi Axel. Welcome to OS2World.

Maybe you already know, we haven't hear from the eComStation guys (Mensys and XEU software) since 2016 (aprox). The latest and greatest OS/2 OEM version today is ArcaOS from Arca Noae which is actively updating the installer and doing their best for bugfixing the platform.  If you have the resources I recommend you getting ArcaOS to be able to access the latest drivers and support.

You are in the right place to ask away about ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation.

Welcome back.

Thank you I will look into ArcaOS at some point hopefully.
Presently I'm enjoying playing around with eCS to get a feel for things first.  As I mentioned earlier I found myself a little surprised on how far even eCS came from Warp.  I completely understand it's no longer active.  I'm definitely not here to log bugs and feature requests :)




axel

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2020, 09:07:42 am »
Hi Axel,

What is your motherboard?  I have had several AMD Sempron based boards up to the Sempron 3850 APU on an ASRock AM1H-ITX which is now my standby unit.

The only problems I have had are with the new AMD Ryzen based boards because they don't have real USB 2 ports and we don't have USB 3 drivers.

Acer T125 desktop.  Old AGP+PCI with Via chipset.  Funny enough, since I first posted I have tried installing on 3 other PCs of different ages, learning more as I go about the install options.  I understand there is a USB3 issue.  Also read something in the forums about Ryzen support.  I'm using 10 years and older stuff here at this stage.

ivan

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Re: Old OS/2 user, now newbie!
« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2020, 11:39:53 pm »
I had an Acer T180 running as my main computer for years before I built my own Ryzen unit to take over that role.

Ryzen base computer boards work well if you use a real USB 2 addin card although there are usually a couple of odd requirements, first they really need ArcaOS to run the SMP side of things and second, depending on the board layout they might need the hard disk to be imaged to start with.  I have built several Ryzen based units for friends and out of interest I used the hard disk with the base image on it to test them - one failed because I didn't have a spare USB 2 card available so no kb or mouse.  When/if we get USB 3.0 drivers it should be a different story.