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Messages - Mathias

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151
Hehe thanks Dave, but the Scheme archive only holds colour schemes, not effects. - Good idea though!
I've tried the Warp V3 scheme first (system-wide), then applied the Icon Theme of Warp 3, rebooted as I was told, and... everything looked indeed much more Warp 3'ish, with the exception of the sunken edge @ selector bar in menus. That one is missing still. (see the attached picture)

152
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Ivan @ appearance:
Hehe yep, maybe Windows 8/10 was a bad example. ; ) - Rather meant colourful effects, like when a progress bar advances, in general getting away from the legacy black on greyish KDE looks.. --> https://www.sallyx.org/sally/images/linux/linuxjpg/kde4.jpg

To make things clear: I like it as it is, and I do not miss anything, graphic wise. But it's not me alone. I've bought the license already. The product needs to convince others too now. ; ) - And what I hear, they are not pleased by the aged look of the current product.
As for myself I'd wish for a Warp 3 theme for ArcaOS, including these cewl sunken edge select bar from back then, instead of the warp4'ish oblique one-coloured (text colour inverting) select bar, like Win95 did back then.. urgh - Liked the Warp 3 flavour a lot better.
Warp 3 select bar in transparent sunken edge: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2-scr-08.gif
Warp 4 select bar in white on blue: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2warp4-scr-a5.png

But as you said the main concern are not the looks at the moment:
- USB3
- up2date browser (many remote maintenance-, backup- and observation tools have web based control inferfaces nowdays, which do not work in Firefox 38 yet)
- video card drivers (resolutions, 2D and maybe even 3D acceleration)


> I do hope that all goes well for you in Leipzig

Hrhrr, thanks Ivan! I'll put a report together after the event in May 2019, and post the results here in the forums. : )



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Rick @ net tetris:
That sounds like a cewl project! Will the be usable until May 2019?


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Gregg Young @ DOS graphics fix:
> Have you tried the vcompat.sys driver? It claims to fix some things that will allow more DOS games to work. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/vCOMPATv035b.zip I'm not really a gamer so I can't say how well it works but it might be worth a look. It also addresses the 2GB disk size limit issue.

Sounds like THE honey pod I've been looking for! : )) - I'll check this out asap! - Thanks Gregg!


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Roderick Klein @ migrate.exe database:
> Its not that difficult if that would be stored centraly.

Totally agreed! If there is such a thing, there should be a central spot to update and download the db.
Makes no sense to reinvent the bike 50 times.. ; )
If not, I'd offer my webserver to host the thingy, OR even better: Upload to hobbes, if they also take such stuff. : ))

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Ian Manners @ OS/2 gaming sites:

> I have some of the stuff at http://www.os2site.com/sw/ecs/games/index.html

Wo~howww.. *bookmarked* :D
This needs some time to look into. I'll be testing this shortly, I hope. : )

Thanks Ian! : ))

153
Martin, whoa! Never knew ¨Enigma¨ had an OS/2 port! How cewl! - Liked the DOS version A LOT back then!
Also excellent web site, the OS2World Gaming one! Besides the vast ammount of games, it`s easy to filter and look up what you want! - Thumbs up! : )

In this case, I need to look through ALL the OS/2 games, as I could also imagine to show OS/2 games besides the DOS games too.
Of course optimising DOS games to run nicely in OS/2 and ArcaOS is a huge task. I know time is an enormous factor. Perhaps we can try some of the ¨well known¨ DOS games and optimise them to run smoothly with the current ArcaOS release. : )

154
Hi Martin! : )

Agreeing on all your aims for 2019, I'd like to add a thingy:

I wrote Lewis to let him know that I'll be taking a fresh ArcaOS PC to the (Computer Retro Gaming Night ) on May 11th of 2019 in Leipzig's HTWK (DE). Since he is planning to roll out ArcaOS in DE too, I'd like to help him where I can.

As a first step, I'll see how interests are on HTWK in Leipzig with gamers. Lewis agreed to send merchandise for ArcaOS, so there will be stuff to take with you. Also, since this is a gaming con, remembering good old Warp 3, I had many many DOS games running there, which were hard to start in MS DOS without endless memmaker sessions beforehand. In Warp3 they just ran fine, raising memory emulation lever all to the right. :D - ArcaOS can do this too!
Lewis mentioned, he's got plans to make ArcaOS known to retro gamers as THE retro gaming platform for DOS and Win3.x games.
Of course this will require some optimisations for special games, so in the end almost all the good old games can be run on ArcaOS. (Remember? "better DOS than DOS" in the 90'ies).

Currently I've got around 60% of all my DOS games running fine on ArcaOS, but 40%... well.. there are some issues like slowish execution, no sound, or it doesn't work at all.. no error messages whatsoever. - If "we" can establish ArcaOS and/or OS/2 in general to be THE DOS gaming platform, this will be helping a lot to make OS/2ish operating systems more widely known among gamers. - Needless to say this opens markets too...


Of course localisation helps spreading the product to other countries than the US too, so I'll keep translating parts of ArcaOS into DE in 2019 as well. Also some software testing as usual. : )

P.S.: If you have the opportunity to visit the retro gaming night @ Leipzig's HTWK, be sure to be part of it! Visiting is free, but also bringing your own exhibits is free of charge! Your audience are ~3.000 to 3.500 people visiting each year. - Your chance to present your stuff for free! : )) - Also a nice chance to meet each other and discuss OS/2 related topics :D
Pics: [ 01 ] [ 02 ]


edit:
OS/2 and ArcaOS needs a fresh browser! - Be sure to support [ the QT5 port ] to make some progress.
Also an open source graphical FTP client would be VERY helpful.. like Filezilla, also supporting SFTP...

And in general: ArcaOS needs a fresher, more modern look. Showing ArcaOS to people at work (all developers), they agreed it looks aged. And they wondered if this is REALLY an up2date operating system. - Sure they are used to Windows 10. I know it's always nice to have stuff running under the hood, but looks are also important to get the interest of customers. If it looks like back in the 90ies, only a very small ammount of people will give it a try. It needs to look MUCH more modern! To make it backwards compatible to also run on old computers, Windows (again) shows the way: Designs that can be turned on and off. Can be off (default) to save ressources and turned on if it needs to look nice (like for instance on modern PCs that have enough ressources to manage the "extra weight" of an overload of graphics).

155
Comments, Suggestions & Questions / Re: OS2 on emulation machine
« on: November 21, 2018, 08:11:06 pm »
Mhmm.. maybe development-wise.. sure : )
In the meaning of developing stuff to make OS/2 and co work nicely in VMs.

156
Off Topic discussions / Re: General Introductions
« on: November 19, 2018, 12:35:36 pm »
Hi Rick!

That's a nice idea. I like to join introductions, as I agree getting known to each other might open new paths and ressources to move things forward more easily, than alone.

First of all, of course I suppose there are similarities in all our lifes.. like for instance a girl friend / family reduces PC time quite a bit. In the time before I sat on the machine whole day long, now only one or two hours a day. Real life consumes loads of time, we all know this, and therefore activities needs to be optimised and priorised, in order to get (atleast) the most urgent things done.

Anyway.. born in 1980 I spent my young years in German Democratic Republic (socialism), and already fell interested in computers when our school visited a library. I found books about automation and computers, that ease the production process. Somehow fascinating, I thought.. and liked the machines... not primarily their goal. Unfortunately these things were inhumanly expensive at that time, and so I focussed on other things. Then starting with Germany finally reuniting in the late days of 1989, my dad got fired as a book printer in the company, as all the GDR companies were in need to produce goods more focussed to market interests. Also all GDR companies had way too many employees back then, as automation was expensive, so man power did the job.

As fired, he tried to look for new jobs, in 1990 he decided to buy a PC, using the dismissal wage he got from the company. As things go normal, kids are always interested in things what their parrents do, trying to absorb as much as possible, I always spent time with him on the computer (486 SX/25 with 4 MB RAM, later upgraded to SX/33!!! :D), getting used to DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. After a week, we decided to buy a mouse, as Windows "somehow" was more usable with such a device.. ; )

Some time soon I discovered QBasic, and tried out examples in the general help. Testing further, I spent more time on that machine than my dad, which of course upset my mom and him, but always told them this is soo fascinating, and also productive, as it helps to develop forward-thinking mechanisms, also to think around the corner in order to achieve things.
Finally they saw the benefit and let me do my thing, still my dad also wanted to use his computer, and so when I turned 14, they bought me a dedicated machine. (Will never forget that day *__*)

This was in 1994, when they got me a 486 DX-66 with 8 Megs of RAM, PCI bus and a whopping 512 MB IDE HDD. Quite the machine for back then, as I learned later.. ; )
The machine came preinstalled with a dualboot between DOS 6.0 and OS/2 Warp 3. Of course I used DOS more since I knew more about DOS, and it was quicker to boot up.
But more and more I found OS/2 to be quite cewl and there were soooo many new things to discover!! *__*

From then on I had more time to spend on the machine and "it was okay" with my parrents. So I could develop my stuff, play some games from time to time, fiddle around with hard- and software.. required some cables and a modem to access BBS systems, etcetc

With that we found some cewl chaps in Berlin, who ran a couple of lines on his BBS. They also developed in Basic, just in QuickBasic, including an EXE & DLL compiler. This one also was able to include files to projects, so for instance I could include mouse support to my applications.
From then on I somehow felt the urge to quit working on my 80x25 terminal program, and go graphical all the way, like FX-Term did, back then. Also the fascinating RoboBoard BBS where one could login and select if he would like to see 80x25 mode or 640x480 graphics mode. WOW! I wanted to develop such a thing too! - And so it went.. :>

Later I learned, that in other schools people also learned to work in Pascal or even C++. - But in ours... naw... not even Basic. Too bad. I would wanted to have such a thing.
Atleast I could ask my computer-education-teacher to lend me an rs232 cable in order to try nullmodem too! This was the time, where the school got an IBM Aptiva PC running OS/2 Warp 3. From that day on the computer education teacher decided not to bug me with the usual lessons about how to boot up and shut down the computer in order to start "write.exe".. and I could enjoy some free time on the Aptiva, trying REXX a bit. : )
To me it appeared like I was the only guy to use this Aptiva machine somehow.... always felt unused, no settings changed, everything always was as I had left it the time before. :o

Anyway.. as the time went by, I noticed that dosshell.exe (DOS), nc.exe (DOS), fileman.exe (win3.11) all had the same problem: They use up valuable memory, which should better be freed up for applications to launch! - So I wrote an application surface like Dosshell, also graphical with mouse support.
The idea was to...
1) start my own file-man surface with a wrapper, written in batch, basically in an endless loop, until a trigger is set by the surface itself that says to break the loop and quit the surface.
2) when executing something, the surface sets the flag to loop, ends the surface and executes the intended application.
3) After the started application is finally ended, the batch file will read the flag and see.. "okay.. do a loop and execute the surface again."

So, basically it ended itself to free up memory, and re-executes after the app again.
Week by week I wrote some applications for my surface.. like a text editor, but mainly I experimented with some libs to include to my projects.

At the end of 1996 I ended development on my surface and the whole DOS thing, as all of this felt odd due to the launch of Windows 95. Instead I started over with Visual Basic and found this quite interesting too. : )
Also I went to job school starting with 1997 where I first came in contact with Windows NT4, C++ in HP Unix, using vi and old school terminals. Oh yes.. xD - Among the grey on white terminals, there was ONE green on black terminal, which I took. :> - Interestingly the school had domain policies in place that forbid the use of the internet on *normal* PCs... but the admins had forgotten the HP Unix terminals... and so we could "surf" ftp servers and stuff from there freely at any time *__* Yihawww! : ]

After education at the end of 1998 I was enabled to write perl, CoBOL, C++ (not visual), some html and JavaScript. yeah. xD - The school insisted on the idea that EVERYBODY will need our CoBOL knowledge to get beyond the Y2k problem on their machines... but infact nobody "called.." - So as we thought the time was completely wasted. The companies that still use CoBOL have their valued experts.

Anyway, after being employed at a software company (still working there) that produces software to optimise railway processes, I found myself developing in Visual C++ finally. But as a matter of interest, I also did the hard- and software maintenance in that company (including licenses), which both were things that nobody else wanted to do..
I found out that both, developing software and maintaining the machines was not a good thing, since both tasks had release days, and it turned out to be impossible to do both things at a time.
The company grew and grew (I was the 10th employee that joined), and as there were more international railway companies interested, our company grew further and at some point I was completely occupied by administrating the software solutions to work together, buy new licenses, read, read, read, tell the boss, making decisions, buying new hardware for customers to pre-release our software products bundled with hard- and software, etcetc... later on we decided to offer our customers to host their applications here too. At this point this already was a 12 hour job per day.. and so we had to hire two more admins... as I had 64 days of holidays over, and many many over-working-hours accumulated. Also not to think to fall ill..

This normalised the work hours, as intended, and I could finally look to build a family also.... which kept me occupied also from then on hehe.. Real life all the time, which limits computer time (besides work) to 2 - 3 hours per day... which usually are spent with our son playing Minecraft or such.. also creating things. :>
Just in case somebody is interested, yes we do also have a server up and running, that concentrates on building things, no enemies enabled, no rules but the usual ones.. do not destroy what you don't own.. do not steal, etcetc.. so quite laid back. No need to be there every day or week. : ]

In 2013 I all of sudden remembered on my good old 486 DX-2 with 8 MB of RAM. Of course I still had this machine, as it was my first computer. *___*
Found it in the basement, and still was in quite a good shape. - Interestingly no rust on the case, but the case turned a bit more yellow on the plastic parts. This clearly is in a HUGE contrast to the painted metal parts... one day I'd like to bleach the plastic ones to match the metal parts..
But first of all I turned on the machine. Unfortunately the screen remained black, but ran nicely.. no beeps and such.

I asked my mates in the Amiga IRC channel, from whom I know they make old Amigas fit again.. and indeed they could help me.
The main culprit was the drained BIOS battery, which was not yet a CR2032, but such a solid black block, mounted on the mainboard. This one needed to be ordered new.
Luckily there was no physical damage to any of the components, just the PSU needed to be replaced. So the AT PSU had to go, being replaced by an ATX one, which included the need to invent something, so the AT board can make use of an ATX PSU. - This solved, and upgraded to 24 MB MB EDO RAM, the machine is nicely doing its work again. : )
Installed SuSE Linux 6 to be able to do some forensics like dd_rescue and produce images and stuff, utilising the machine's 3,5" and 5,25" floppy drives.
Then DOS 5.0, upgraded to 6.0 (in order to keep Dosshell.exe), then 6.22, then installed Windows 3.11, then OS/2 Warp 3 again. Yihaww, finally back to where it was back then! *__*
Excellent machine.
This thingy accompanies me on my yearly visit @ Leipzig's computer gamers night, where usually also a lot of retro machines have found their display. This event is nicely visited, and most of the time, there even is no space to walk between people within the house. The event is hosted on a high school complex, and a whole house of four stories is used for this. No entry fee, just come and see... and if you have something to display.. let them know and you'll get your license to do so .. also for free. : )
In case you'd like to know more, please let me know. I've got info material! : D

After a while I heard that ArcaNoae was working on ArcaOS and was impressed! Instantly I knew I had to give this a try and bought a copy as soon as possible.
Soon I learned there is no german translation yet, so I got myself involved. Translating all the small parts, until the big stuff comes together is quite a cewl thing, and easier than I thought... translation wise : )) - Of course behind the scenes Lewis and Alex do the main work, whom I'd like to THANK big times at this occasion btw! : )

In 2019 I'll take my ArcaOS machine to Leipzig at this Retro Con. Let's see... :D



157
General Discussion / Re: ES/2, the open source OS/2
« on: October 26, 2018, 10:04:55 pm »
Time is indeed the critical part here. Of course I`d love to learn more and understand better how everything works and what could be changed, etc.
Thing is though, work + family already kills almost all of my time. The rest is used for translations and sleep.
But please DO contact me, when you are ready to start. : )

158
General Discussion / Re: ES/2, the open source OS/2
« on: October 26, 2018, 09:52:02 pm »
Sure. But I have not yet done OS/2 development. I`d love to be of more use to the OS/2 community, but for now I`m translating ArcaOS into DE part by part.
If the day would have 48 hours I might be able to do more most likely.. ; )

159
General Discussion / Re: ES/2, the open source OS/2
« on: October 26, 2018, 09:34:34 pm »
Martin, obviously I meant ArcaOS with ¨where everybody else is¨. ; )

Rick, I am working for a company that builds software to optimise railway inspection and maintenance processes.

Well I wish you all the best for your project, Rick. I can see the benefits, and will be happy to try things out as soon as there is something to see.

160
General Discussion / Re: ES/2, the open source OS/2
« on: October 26, 2018, 03:45:07 pm »
*g* Don't get me wrong guys; I'm not against open source. - Not at all infact. - It's just developer power and knowledge in projects with "low global interest" should imho be concentrated and not spreaded wide, as the progress in whole could be faster witih more devs working on one project. May it be open or closed : )
I doubt though, that ArcaOS will ever be opensource, since it relies on a closed source base, that is even licensed by thirdparties.

Years ago I always wanted the Warp 3 feeling on a linux desktop, but could never find a Window Manager, that could deliver the look & feel. In the end this might be the outcome of an open source project.. which itself would be great already! - But then again.. there is so much more around that, what OS/2 is all about. That would take years and years of developer power to rebuild, if it can be made at all. Developer power is needed. It's all fine, when you have enough people at hand, that work together nicely. But many open source projects start out nicely with flags flying, and 5, 10, 20 devs at hand... but as time goes by, people become interested in other things, develop a real life, gets occupied there, and it's hard to find replacement in such a niche product, that OS/2 is. Infact the number of people who know OS/2 is getting smaller and smaller, people that could develop software for it ... even worse.

In the end, the main attraction for devs to get known to OS/2, and actually produce something usable and user friendly, is interest at first. Then, over years, interest might wander off, and what's left is money to keep the majority of people going on. That's the point where closed software was in an advantage until now, but today we have platforms like patreon and co, where opensource does not necessarily mean, developers do everything for free..

Anyway... I'd be happy to see such a project, but as a developer I can somewhat guess the ammount of work that is necessary to come to that point of functionality that we have today in OS/2.
That's another reason, why I suggested to rather invest time and efforts into already existing projects. "where everybody else is", to take on the big task to bring OS/2 onto new computers, while still keeping backward compatibility for older machines..

161
General Discussion / Re: ES/2, the open source OS/2
« on: October 26, 2018, 10:38:25 am »
Dear Rick,

in general I DO like opensource and also the way everybody can contribute/participate in creating a cewl product.
On the other hand though, I see many many forks are being created. Developer power is being "wasted" to do the same thing, just in another project, to "reinvent the bicycle" again.

This is not too much of a big deal in the Linux world, as there are enough functional distributions around. But for OS/2, there is only ONE product left, that is being maintained and looked after, which is ArcaOS. In my opinion all developers with the ability to help this project should concentrate their work force and knowledge to that one product.

By forking OS/2 again, lots of developer power is needed for the other project as well, two or more people working on the same problem in a different project. This is quite inefficient, especially when you see that OS/2 is a dinosaur that has already died out almost, and now comes back to life slowly.

You asked for our opinions, so I will tell you mine: If I had the power and knowledge to actively develop for the core operating system and its features, I would rather go and help ArcaNoae out, but start my own thing. Not only that ArcaNoae already has the knowledge and sources, so developers can jump right into work, they also have the IBM/Microsoft licenses, lawyers and all the necessary stuff, that could get in your way later, when developing "your own thing".
There always is a gap between what's allowed and what could be done.. - So developing stuff is not the only thing, but also to legally create something. Else you might run into lawyers that could take your thing away later on.

Another aspect are drivers and support for hard- & software. Will your forked product be 100% compatible to OS/2? Also in later stages, people might develop software for your forked version, that might maybe not run under native OS/2. The users might end up with two OS/2ish operating systems, where only one of these can run their favourite software... and therefore they would need both of them to be able to run all their stuff.

This does not only sound complicated, it actually is. In the end, users might come to think "Nah.. OS/2 is too complicated and nothing works, always need two versions of them", which might hurt the big scope dream about an up2date OS/2 being liked by its users.
Then this would require even more developer power to write wrappers or to generally make the two OS/2ish operating systems compatible... .... a never ending story.

Meanwhile all developers, that are able to produce nice OS/2 applications, could also have concentrated their time and efforts onto one operating system, that already exists, to make that one even better than it ever was..

Just my thoughts..

162
Applications / Re: DLLs not found in libpath
« on: October 19, 2018, 10:28:58 am »
David, did you report this on the [official tracker]? Maybe it is of interest for the developers.

163
Web applications / Re: Firefox ESR 38.8.0
« on: October 18, 2018, 08:35:42 am »
Absolutely agreed. - Even though this Firefox release should have been made by Bitworks.. *g* - Still, all the involved parties did a great job realising these projects! - Thumbs up. Both of them. : )

164
General Discussion / Re: ReactOS 0.4.7 released
« on: October 18, 2018, 08:16:59 am »
Morning Dave,

I see. :o - Too bad, that there was no interest back then. But how about now, with ArcaNoae? I suppose THE maker of THE OS/2 operating system of today would be quite a bit interested..
So IF there is any interest still from the ReactOS guys, wouldn't that be a nice project? - Imagine the possibilities... :D

Just out of curiosity, thinking of wrapping/mapping 32bit to 64bit, I remember, there was an application called Win32s all of sudden, when I grew up. It was used to enable Windows 3.11 to run some 32bit applications (not all of them). - Wouldn't that be possible again a la Win64s? ; )
Maybe I have no clue to ask such a question, but would that be possible to write such a "wrapper" for 32bit to 64bit these days?


165
General Discussion / Re: ReactOS 0.4.7 released
« on: October 17, 2018, 05:50:04 pm »
I always wondered what would happen if the makers of ReactOS and ArcaNoae would work togetehr to enable ArcaOS to run more modern Windows applications....

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