Author Topic: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up  (Read 347 times)

UberCoder

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eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« on: September 05, 2025, 04:29:09 pm »
Hi all,

After batteling with and losing to the Warp 4.52 installation process, I have deceided to try my luck with eCS 2.1.

This, too fought me, but its all installed now & working. I'm posting this incase a future new eCS2.1 user has a similar problem.

The initial phase of the installation went well. I had initially wiped the HDD with 'ClearHDD.exe'. I chose the default install option.

After the initial reboot following the completion of Phase 1, I selected to boot up from the HDD (the default option). The black screen with the 'eCS Blob' was shown & quickly replaced with the graphical eComStation splash screen. This then cleared and I was shown each device driver (basedev) as it was loaded. The last line being 'c:\os2\pmshell.exe'. After a short pause, the screen cleared. There were a couple of brief flashes, as if the screem mode was being changed, but beyond that, nothing. the HDD activity light was off. Nothing changed. Eventually I rebooted (ctrl-alt-del worked).

I'm not sure how many of these steps were actually necessary, but the followig got the installation back up & running for me:

  • On boot up, on the eCS Blob screen, press Alt-F1, to open the recovery menu.
  • Select F3 to install the basic generic display drivers & reboot when this complete (Note: for me, this initially did nothing...but read on
  • On boot up, on the eCS Blob screen, press Alt-F1, to open the recovery menu (again).
  • Select F6 to boot without checking hardware
  • You now should see the GUI being build on screen, but in 640x480x16 mode. Just complete Installation phase 2 from here.
  • After Installation phase 2 is compete & you've rebooted in the eCS (for real), You'll see as Final Installation Steps (or similar) dialog. select the 1st tasb ('Screen') & select to change you video driver. You'll be presented with a list of 4 options 'Snap', Panorama', 'Gradd' and 'VGA' (selected).
  • I selected 'Snap', closed the dialog & rebooted.
  • When the system came back up, I was able to select all the screen resolutions & colour depths my video hardware supports.(Note: any change requires a reboot)

That's it. Hopefully if anyone comes along in the future having a similar situation to what I had, this will help them.

cheers

P.

Dave Yeo

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Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2025, 04:41:04 pm »
Good you got it working. Sounds like you installed with the wrong video driver, though I would have expected at VGA to come up.
SNAP is likely the best option for your old hardware

Martin Iturbide

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Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2025, 07:23:34 pm »
Hello UberCoder

Good to see you have eComStation running.

Just of curiosity, on which hardware are you running it?
I don't know if "Testlog generic" will work on eComStation, but you may give it a try to get the pci.exe report. (or use pci.exe directly)

Regards
« Last Edit: September 05, 2025, 07:40:01 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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UberCoder

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Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2025, 07:30:23 pm »
Thanks - though I'd prefer to have made Warp worK, since this project is really a nostalgia trip back to when I used Warp on this PC at work back in the early 2000s...but I guess beggars can't be choosers!

UberCoder

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Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2025, 07:44:41 pm »
Just of curiosity, on which hardware are you running it?

Martin, its a Patriot 'Bookshelf' PC. the MoBo is an ECS BKMVP4 v3 Socket 7 board with a K6-2 processor ar 450MHz & 288Mb or 100MHzRAM (oddly a 256Mb stick and a 32MB stick). The onboard video is a VIA Trident Blade3D. The audio is C-Media CMI8738AM and the network is a Davicom 9102A Fast PCI Ethernet adapter.

I've found the suitable drivers for all the onboard peripherals - but obviously I need to get them onto the machine before I can apply them! Fortunately the network driver is small enough to get on a floppy disk, so that'll be first. Then I hope I can set up the Samba client and then I can pull the rest across my home network. 

Cheers

P.