eComStation 2.2 Beta Demo CD English first impressions

[melf]

My son kindly let me try the CD on his gaming computer, with an Intel Core i5 2500K and 3,3 GHz CPU, with 8 GB of RAM. Seemed to boot fine but unfortunately hanged on the screen where one shall confirm network cards. It didn't react on Enter. I tried with settings in the preboot menu where I disabled all network cards, but the result was the same. Maybe eCS lost contact with his USB keyboard in some way?

[Roderick Klein]

That issue is fixed with the upcoming beta CD of the demo CD.  We did some SMALL fixes. But needs some more work.

Now testing on the last or second last internal beta of eCS 2.2 before it goes public :-)

Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.

[melf]

Great! Today?

[melf]

Trying to interpret the latest message on http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/eComStation/message/87934 it seems like the eCS 2.2 beta now is delayed to Monday...April 2012 was  the first plan , then November and  December and latest estimate was this very week........ Does the beta have to be perfect before a release??

I wouldn't be surprised if the GA release which is planned to the second week in April is delayed to Warpstock 2013 the 24 of May.

There is a lot of messages on different websites but never an official statement on ecomstation.com . I think this is crazy, and a waste of resources both with regard to Mensys themselves and with regard to the interest of their costumers.

[Chenbiao]

I tested the demo cd with 3 computers:
1, notebook Dell Latitude E4300. Starting up was smooth and the Intel network card was recognized. Touchpad didn't work.
2, notebook Dell Latitude E6420. AHCI driver was loaded automatically and worked fine with the cdrom. Intel network card wasn't recognized. Desktop was started up successfully. Touchpad doesn't work.
3, desktop pc with AMD 790gx chipset and AM2+ cpu. Starting up was smooth and reltek 8169 network card was recognized.

Other problems:
1, has to use usb mouse with notebook. The wheel roller didn't work on every mouse.
2, firefox loaded the Chinese web pages too slow, at least couple of minutes. During the loading the page the cdrom was non-stop reading, looks like the font file was continuously being launched into the memory.
3, the desktop looks plain and can't attract new comers.

[Martin Iturbide]

3, the desktop looks plain and can't attract new comers.

I was told the same thing from someone that didn't use OS/2 and booted eCS CD for the first time. It is like the desktop looks like too old school. Since I'm used to it maybe I can not notice it, but I also think that a design update on the GUI is necessary. Plus  I always liked the idea of the "navigator" that the other OSes has.

[Roderick Klein]

A new demo CD has been uploaded last night that also has the latest Realtek 0.3.1. driver onboard
that should fix the problems with the Realtek driver.  As reported previous news postings most issue's with OS2AHCI, danis506.add and USB stack should be resolved now. But we would like to know if it now works for everybody that reported bugs.

Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.

[Doug Bissett]

A new demo CD has been uploaded last night that also has the latest Realtek 0.3.1. driver onboard
that should fix the problems with the Realtek driver.  As reported previous news postings most issue's with OS2AHCI, danis506.add and USB stack should be resolved now. But we would like to know if it now works for everybody that reported bugs.

I have tried this on 5 machines. The results are pretty good. It boots on every one, and it will connect to the internet on all of them (including 3 that had troubles with the older Realtek driver). The USB problems seem to be fixed, as are the Danis driver problems. I did not see a problem with OS2AHCI, but the new one didn't break it.

I think the demo needs more variety in the sample programs. Perhaps a JAVA photo editor of some sort, and a simple word processor like FocusWriter.

3, the desktop looks plain and can't attract new comers.

Anybody who really cares about how it looks, is going to be disappointed. EComStation will probably never look like windows, but it is also unlikely to ever be under attack by viruses. I guess it depends on what the potential user is really looking for.

[Pete]

Hi All

I'm not very impressed with the Demo CD myself.

When I boot from "Menu with own values" the system hangs on "Creating objects"

When I boot with the "Default values" my USB Trackball does not work - not sure about any other usb devices as I could not be bothered to try and keyboard my way around the Desktop testing things.

At least I now know there has been no improvement of USB mouse related drivers since the release of eCS2.2 Beta...

Ah, well. Guess we can look forward to the next Live CD and hope it is much improved.


Regards

Pete

[Roderick Klein]

Hi All

I'm not very impressed with the Demo CD myself.

When I boot from "Menu with own values" the system hangs on "Creating objects"

When I boot with the "Default values" my USB Trackball does not work - not sure about any other usb devices as I could not be bothered to try and keyboard my way around the Desktop testing things.

At least I now know there has been no improvement of USB mouse related drivers since the release of eCS2.2 Beta...

Ah, well. Guess we can look forward to the next Live CD and hope it is much improved.


Regards

Pete

You kind of send the same email to the supportteam address as requested. Thanks for that.
 I wrote this reply:

>
>Booting from \"Menu with own values\" results in system hang when \"Creating objects\"

Oke lets try and pin point the problem.  You made any changes in the
preboot menu ?

What happens if you disable ACPI ?  Did you have a ticket open on
svn.netlabs.org for ACPI and a Gateway system with ACPI or I'm mixing
you up with somebody else ?

>Booting with \"Default values\" results in USB Trackball not working when Desktop loaded.
>
>Overall, this needs a lot more work.

If you did not modify in the preboot menu (boot with own values) and
boot with default value's is the same (in effect). It could rather be
pointing at something else as in a random problem that is somehow
occurring.

What happens with the demo CD if you take out the USB mouse and reconnect it ?
It would help if you could open a ticket in the eComStation bugtracker so we can try and trace and solve this bug.
But having stuff discussed in forums and emails makes it hard to track for developers.

Regards,

Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.

[Pete]

Hi Roderick

You kind of send the same email to the supportteam address as requested. Thanks for that.
 I wrote this reply:

>
>Booting from \"Menu with own values\" results in system hang when \"Creating objects\"

Oke lets try and pin point the problem.  You made any changes in the
preboot menu ?

What happens if you disable ACPI ?  Did you have a ticket open on
svn.netlabs.org for ACPI and a Gateway system with ACPI or I'm mixing
you up with somebody else ?

>Booting with \"Default values\" results in USB Trackball not working when Desktop loaded.
>
>Overall, this needs a lot more work.

If you did not modify in the preboot menu (boot with own values) and
boot with default value's is the same (in effect). It could rather be
pointing at something else as in a random problem that is somehow
occurring.

What happens with the demo CD if you take out the USB mouse and reconnect it ?
It would help if you could open a ticket in the eComStation bugtracker so we can try and trace and solve this bug.
But having stuff discussed in forums and emails makes it hard to track for developers.

Regards,

Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.

I set the following in the preboot Menu:-
Language to en_UK
Keyboard to en_UK
Video to SNAP
Changed AHCI driver to Danis506
Removed USB Keyboard support
Set USB Floppy support to 0


ACPI should work... It is possible that I enabled multiple CPU support. I will have to retest with only 1 CPU active.

No, I don't have a Gateway system  :-)

I had problems with the USB drivers supplied with eCS 2.2 Beta that look very similar to the problem with the LiveCD - ie the USB Trackball does not work with the supplied USB drivers but does work with the IBM 10.162 drivers.

I thought I had opened a ticket about the USB problem on the eCS Bugtracker but cannot find it... I do know that at the time I installed eCS 2.2 Beta I was using a *wired* USB Trackball. I seem to recall having a bit of a problem with the eCS Bugtracker around that time so maybe I did not report the USB problems. They do get briefly discussed in the eComStation 2.2 Beta First Impressions thread - on Page 6.

I'll have to do a little more testing and then file Bug reports about the USB problems.


Regards

Pete

[ivan]

Hi Roderick,

Since you are reading this thread I will add a few comments regarding the live CD.  These are from people that I have shown it to.

First, general comments.
1) You need to know a lot about the physical computer to be able to fill in the information. [this was from several people when the default values didn't work - French keyboard, monitor resolution etc.]
2) Detection of network card very poor.  [it appears to find intel nics but that is about all - see 1, also it never found any wireless cards]
3) Does not pick up USB mouse or trackball.  [these were all working with the operating system on the various computers]

Next, specific shortcomings, not exactly complaints but things that people think they need.
1)  No File Explorer.  [this I overcame by having File Freedom on a USB stick]
2)  The open folders are 'clunky'.  [for some reason all the folders are set to 'multiple columns' and 'maintain sort order' even if there are only a few items in the folder - this creates a redundant scroll bar at the bottom of the open folder - it would be better if they were set to 'gridded' or 'as placed']   

When it works people are generally impressed - after finding the correct nic, setting folder defaults and providing a file explorer.

There is still a way to go but being a beta release I expect the final release will work with more systems on default settings.

[warp]

I tried the May edition of eCS 2.2 beta Demo cd on the desktop pc with the ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX mainboard.

The boot process goes ahead for a while, then I got the messages:

Processors Initialized: 1
Integrated ACPI Support Driver for eComstation v 3.21.07
Copyright (c) 2005-2013 Mensys BV
WARNING: Some devices could not be assigned an interrupt
(out of range)

Insert eCcomStation Demo CD and press any key. If the CD is already inserted, try modifying the storage driver settings in the CD boot menu.